Dev answered, "A lot of straight guys will share a woman with you, but they put rules in place about how much touching of each other you can do, and for Micah that's no touching. We use Anita like a bridge, or a shield between us."
"I'm not that into men, it's nothing personal."
Dev nodded again, then looked at Micah. "You've liked me less since you realized that Nathaniel and I would do things together that you won't do with him."
Micah's face darkened and I felt the first prickle of his beast, which meant what Dev had said was true and had pissed him off.
I stared at one of my other halves. How had I missed this whole thing? I had to have been in the bed when things were happening, because Dev and Micah were never in the same bed without me, but then I realized that Nathaniel mentioning Dev earlier as a potential shared husband might have had more behind it than just their shared bisexuality. Had he and Dev had more alone time than I knew?
"Okay, I'm just going to say it, I've missed something big. I'm sorry to everyone, but we need to step back and fill me in."
"We don't need to be here for this," Domino said, and stood up.
"But you do need to be here for the power question," Micah said. He turned to Dev. "Can we discuss the magic first, and then we can let Crispin and Domino out of the personal business."
Dev nodded.
Micah turned to the other tigers. "I want to see if the power jumps between Anita, Dev, and me again. If it does, then I'll have us try it with Crispin. If it happens between the three of us, we'll try with Domino, and I think that may be a big enough sampling that we'll just assume it would happen with all the tigers."
"What if it only happens with Dev?" Crispin asked.
"Then the two of you can go, and we'll discuss the metaphysics and the personal stuff in private."
The two of them exchanged a look, then looked back at Micah. "Metaphysics first and then we'll discuss the personal stuff and whether we want to leave Dev on his own."
Dev looked at them. "You don't have to stay for me."
"It's not for you," Crispin said, "it's for all of us. Anita was supposed to look at all the tigers tonight and here we are in an isolated group, caught up in some new magic. It keeps distracting us from what we say is our goal."
"And what goal is that?" I asked, and knew my voice wasn't entirely friendly.
Crispin gave me a look that wasn't entirely friendly either. "To make sure the Mother of All Darkness does not rise again. It should be everyone's goal, Anita, not just the clan tigers, and everyone should be dedicated to making certain the prophecy is fulfilled as completely as possible."
"We are," I said.
"You don't really believe you need to marry one of us to finish the prophecy, Anita. You've made that clear."
I sighed, and would have let go of Micah's hand, but he held on. Jean-Claude was just still under my hand so I stopped touching him. If he wanted to "go away" while he was still sitting beside me, fine.
"Jean-Claude and I are willing to let Anita add another man or woman to our commitment ceremony, and bring them into our bed. I think we're taking the prophecy pretty seriously," Micah said.
I looked at him. "You're the one who brought up the whole marrying-a-weretiger thing, not me."
"I think it's necessary, but am I thrilled with sharing you with another person, especially another man? Not entirely. I see it as necessary, and that's not the same thing as wanting it."
"I'm not going to be forced to marry anyone that I don't want to marry."
"See, none of you believe," Crispin said, voice low.
"We believe enough for Anita to interview more weretigers."
"Why don't you just marry Cynric? He's the one who's already in the house with you," Domino asked.
I looked down, fighting not to make eye contact, or to lower any shields between me and the tigers in the room. I didn't want to share my revelation with anyone, and definitely not with any other tigers besides Cynric, though I wasn't sure it was a really good idea to even tell him. I was still too confused about it myself.
"Cynric was happy to entertain the idea of another woman added to our household," Jean-Claude said in his most pleasant and emptiest voice.
Crispin shook his head. "But you didn't interview anyone, did you? You had a metaphysical crisis and it's all back-burner again."
"They couldn't have planned my fight with Thorn," Dev said.
"No, but there is always something that can be used as a legitimate excuse to postpone things that Anita, or Micah, or Jean-Claude doesn't want to address, and there always will be something."
Domino was looking uncomfortable, as if he wanted to push his chair farther away so it was clear that either he didn't agree with everything Crispin was saying, or he didn't want to get included if we got angry.
"It is true that there will always be a crisis to attend to," Jean-Claude said.
I frowned at him. "We don't do it on purpose."
"No, but you admit that there is always something, right?" Crispin asked.
Micah finally said, "I can't disagree."
"Good, then test the magic, or whatever it is with Dev, and if it works again try it with me; if it only works with Dev we'll see what comes next."
"We haven't agreed to you staying for the personal talk, but let's just do the power test and we'll go from there," Micah said.
"Just let me say that the next time you have serious reservations about sharing me with more people, don't be the one who brings the subject up," I said.
He let go of my hand, and I didn't try to keep holding on. "You don't like Envy well enough to be in the bed with her when she's with Jean-Claude, or Richard."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Just pointing out that I compromise a lot better with your male lovers than you do with the only other woman who's crossed the line to becoming a regular lover for any of us."
"Are you trying to pick a fight?" I asked.
He sighed and rubbed his hands over his face as if scrubbing something away. "I don't know, maybe."
"It is very rare for you not to be the diplomat, mon chat," Jean-Claude said.
"It's just Cynric is like my little brother. Nathaniel calls him a brother-husband and I understand that. There's no weirdness between Cynric and anyone else in our inner circle, but Dev is truly bisexual, as much as Nathaniel is, which means that there are expectations from him that there won't be from others."
"Bisexual and male doesn't mean I want to fuck you, Micah," Dev said, and he was finally getting angry, too.
"I didn't mean it that way."
"How did you mean it, then?" Dev's energy was starting to radiate out like a stove being slowly turned up.
"I'm as happy as I've ever been in my life, Dev. I don't want that screwed up because of some ancient prophecy, or anything else. I've got two people that I love and that love me; we all want to marry each other, and I'm being forced to include another person that we're not in love with, and it scares the shit out of me. What would you do if things were perfect between you, Asher, and Kane, but you were being forced to add a fourth person?"
Dev opened his mouth, closed it, and finally said, "I'd be pissed."
"Exactly," Micah said.
"But you're the one who brought it up earlier," I said.
"I did, because what if by refusing to risk screwing up my own happily-ever-after, I cause the Great Evil to rise again and destroy not only you, Nathaniel, and Jean-Claude, but everyone and everything? The destruction of civilization as we know it seems a high price to pay for not wanting to add another person to our commitment ceremony."
Crispin pointed a thumb in Micah's direction. "What he said."
Dev's energy had quieted. "I'm sorry, Micah, I didn't understand it like that. I think if I were in love I might let the whole world go to hell rather than risk my own happiness."
"I've seen you risk your life to save the day," I said.
Dev gave me a smile that mana
ged to be more sad than anything else. "But that was before I saw Asher after months apart from him and realized just how much I loved him. It was before I thought I had a chance at what you, Micah, and Jean-Claude have. I was raised being told my life was at the disposal of the Master of Tigers once he, or she, appeared, but no one ever explained what to do about love. I mean, they covered lust, because if one of the vamps from Belle Morte's bloodline was our master, then sex would be a given, but love . . . No one ever talked to us about that."
Crispin said, "So you'd lay down your life, but not your heart, for Anita?"
Dev shrugged those big shoulders. "I'll do my duty, but if I had the level of commitment from Asher that Micah has from the people in his life, I'd make that my priority."
"Love can unman you," Jean-Claude said.
We all looked at him.
He gave that graceful almost-shrug that meant everything, nothing, or some emotion in between depending on his facial expression, or the timing. "I have loved people more than I loved my duty. It can be wonderful, and terrible."
"How is it terrible?" Crispin asked.
"Because, mon ami, sometimes if you do not do your duty, then a kingdom can be lost, and you must weigh your love, or even your lover, against the lives of many more. It is a terrible choice."
"That sounds like personal experience," I said.
He looked at me with a pleasant but unreadable face. The shielding between us was as tight as he could make it. Whatever memory was behind his words, he didn't want to share it. I had my own share of things that I'd rather not share, so I'd learned not to pry. Sometimes you really did want the sleeping dogs to keep napping, because once they woke up they tried to tear your throat out.
"Our choice isn't that hard today," Micah said. "Right now we just need to figure out if the power rush between Dev, Anita, and me works every time, or if it's a special-occasion rush."
"I've always admired how you try to keep everyone on track," Crispin said.
Micah nodded. "Thank you, but let's test Dev with us, and if that just works, we'll try it with one of you."
"It's a plan," Crispin said.
"Yes," Micah said, "it is."
23
JEAN-CLAUDE OBSERVED THAT the very first time we met Dev it had been the two of us and then Micah had joined us, so we tried it in that order again. Metaphysics wasn't very science-like sometimes, but now that we knew the phenomenon could be duplicated, we could still use the scientific method to learn more faster.
What I hadn't counted on was how neglected Dev was feeling and how much his skin hunger had grown. Newborns will die from lack of touch; it's one of the causes of failure to thrive. The elderly will also begin to decline faster if they don't have anyone to touch them. Patting someone's hand, or shoulder, a hug, all of it is necessary to be happy and healthy for most people. It doesn't have to have anything to do with sex; in fact, most of the touch that keeps us all going is as innocent as a newborn lamb frolicking on the spring grass, but Dev wasn't a lamb. I tended to think of him as not harmless exactly, but not predatory either, and suddenly staring up into his blue-gold eyes I saw that his energy was very solidly big bad wolf. There was nothing innocent or lamblike about the way his arms wrapped around me, or how his big hands dug fingers into my back, just enough to let me feel the strength in them. I was struck again by how big he was: tall, broad-shouldered, just big, as if he filled out every inch of his six-foot, three-inch frame. If he'd been willing to lift weights like Nicky did, he'd have been massive. I was sort of glad he didn't, as he pulled me close and I saw his eyes unveil themselves. I don't mean they changed to tiger eyes, his eyes were always that, but suddenly I could see the need in him. People say that sex is a want, not a need, but for some of us I'm not sure that's true.
Dev's hunger was naked in his eyes, and I suddenly felt small in his arms. As he leaned over to kiss me, fingers digging deeper into my back, the promise of strength and pain sped my pulse and caught my breath in my throat. How badly had Asher neglected him to fill the mild-mannered and typically gentle Dev with such fierce need?
His lips touched mine and it was as if he drew my golden tiger up through my body, as if that one kiss had reached down through my body and touched the deepest part of me. The gold spilled upward like a shining flame, and the rainbow of my other tigers followed that shining yellow: red tiger the color of flame itself, black like the coals at the heart of the fire, white where some metals will begin to melt into incandescent puddles, and blue where the flame burns hottest of all. All that color, all the power, all that heat spilled up through me and into Dev everywhere our skin touched. The kiss should have looked like a carnival fire eater trying to blow out a plume of colored flame, then being kissed at just the wrong moment, so that the fire poured into the mouth of his lover.
I don't know how much the rest of the men could see, but to our eyes it was like kissing in the middle of a burning color and power. It felt wonderful and frightening, like flame dancing across our skin, but not quite burning . . . not yet.
Then Micah's hand was on mine and the power spilled out through my skin and into him like a river seeking a new way to the sea. His leopard spilled up my arm and brought mine to life so that the calm darkness of it mixed with the tigers and suddenly the heat wasn't frightening. I knew that together we could tame it, control it, and with that thought all my beasts came to life in one woven knot of intermingled power. Lion came to join the tigers and leopards, and then wolf, and lastly hyena. It was the newest beast I carried; less than a year ago Ares had contaminated me with it while he died. He hadn't meant to share the disease that forced him out of the marines. He hadn't meant me to have to use the skills he'd taught me as a sniper to kill him before the madness drove him to harm civilians. Neither of us had meant a lot of things, but I carried a piece of his beast inside me and would until I died. I didn't need anything else to remember my friend but that hot, wild energy spilling up through my body and into the men who touched me.
"Anita smells like all her beasts at once," Crispin said, and just that let me know he was closer to us than he had been.
I tried to turn to see how close. Dev's big hand touched the side of my face so the energy kept flowing across our skin as we both broke from the kiss to look. Micah was only holding our hands, so he just had to turn and look. Crispin was on all fours on top of the conference table. He was sniffing the air, his hands still solidly on the wood, like a much smaller cat when it smells something interesting and wants to investigate without actually touching it first.
"Micah smells like all her beasts and more. Something more, that I don't understand. Domino, what do you smell?"
Domino spoke from behind me, and I turned in the circle of the men's hands, and the invisible rush of that flaming energy, to see him on all fours on the floor, leaning in toward us in an almost identical pose to Crispin.
"Their beasts, all their beasts."
"Does Micah smell like more than leopard to you?"
Domino leaned in closer to Micah's leg. "Yes."
Crispin leaned further, stretching that long torso out, until he could almost have licked Dev. The golden tiger growled softly at him. Crispin backed up a fraction. "Can you smell everything on Dev, too?"
Domino crawled around my legs so he could sniff closer to Dev. It should have looked awkward to see the guard, still carrying all his weapons, crawling on all fours, but he moved as if the tigers inside him knew exactly how to move this human shape so it was graceful even without paws. He sniffed loudly, drawing in the scent, and then reached out as if to caress the energy. Dev growled louder this time.
"Easy, big gold, I'm just trying to taste the energy." Domino raised those red and orange eyes to us. "Dev smells like all the beasts, too."
"That's not the way it's supposed to work," Crispin said.
"How is it supposed to work?" Jean-Claude asked. He was leaning against the wall closest to the three of us. His hands were behind him, so they were pinned between
his body and the wall.
"Anita is a panwere, so she has other beasts, but it shouldn't transfer to anyone else," Crispin said.
"I think it's just the power of them, not the true beasts," Micah said. His voice was half breathy with that edge of growling undertone.
"What if it's not?" Domino asked, still on all fours at our feet.
The three of us didn't truly look at each other, but we shared what the look would have meant in an instant of emotion. The marks were open between us, not all the way, but we were already beginning to think as a unit--three people, one mind, one heart, if we weren't careful.
"Try to change," Domino said.
"What?" I said.
"One of you try to change shape into something you're not."
We all looked down into those startling fire-colored eyes, and then Micah said, "I like these clothes."
"I don't care about mine," Dev said.
"Then you change," Crispin said.
"While we're all still touching?" he asked.
"Yes," all the wereanimals said at once. Jean-Claude and I weren't sure, but we didn't say no.
"Okay," Dev said, "what should I be?"
"What do you want to be?" I asked.
He smiled; it was fierce, more a flash of teeth than a true smile. He knew exactly what he wanted to be.
24
I'D SEEN DEV shapeshift before, but only in a very special type of weapons practice. The fastest shape change often was the deciding factor in a fight between wereanimals, so our guards practiced that just like they did on the gun range, or hand to hand. So I'd seen Dev and all the guards shapeshift, but never while I was touching him. Never while Micah and I were sharing our beasts with each other, and the metaphysics between us all was wide open like a river flooding its banks.