"What you did was drive me away!" he shouted at her.

"You'll get over it. If I have to wait a few hundred years, that's fine. I'm patient."

"Now you're patient," he said with barely disguised contempt.

"I got what I wanted," she said shamelessly, looking up at him. "Now that I know you're Were again, I can rest easy. That's all that mattered to me."

Tarrin was a bit outraged by her declaration, but it fit in with what he knew of her, and he knew her very well. Jesmind could be rather patient when she needed to be. After all, she'd moved to Aldreth and waited there for him for nearly two years, knowing he would come back eventually. But the fear and uncertainty of what happened to him, the prospect of losing him as a mate forever, had affected her judgement very greatly. She had acted with great rashness, despite knowing that she was only making him angry and pushing him away from her, but in her rather precarious position, it was all she could think to do, and her need to do something made her do whatever seemed most able to achieve her desired goal in the quickest manner, despite how it may damage their relationship. She was more than willing to accept him being furious with her, as long as he was Were. She knew, as he did, that no amount of fury would hold in him forever, and even if it did, all she had to do was bait him into a fight to make him release his anger on her. After that, the matter would be settled, and it would be forgotten. It was ever that way between Were-cats. The fight settled all, and after the fight was done, it was as if it never happened. She'd done it to him before, and she knew how to go about it. She knew him almost as well as he knew her.

It took having his Were nature back to see that, to finally understand Jesmind's actions. She did everything she did with only the goal of making him Were again, because she knew that no matter how mad she made him, she could fix that with a little time and a willingness to get beaten up when the time came. It all made perfect sense now, and he had to admire her audacity. Then again, being able to again think like a Were-cat made everything clear.

But it still didn't excuse it. Just because he could understand her actions didn't mean that he was going to forgive her for them. And unlike the last time, when she baited in into a fight that made him lose his anger against her, he had no intention of making it nearly so easy for her this time. He wanted her to feel like he did, like she was being overwhelmed by the will of someone else. She had overwhelmed him with her obsessive need to control his life, and now he was going to repay her by not giving her any chance to let her work back into his good graces.

"Papa, why are you being mean to Mama?" Jasana asked in a tiny little voice, not even looking at him.

"Because she had it coming," he said in a furious hiss. "You'd better be patient, Jesmind," he said with seething disgust, "because it's going to be years before I can look you in the face without wanting to rip your head off. So just stay clear of me." He turned his back on her. "And may every god there is help you if I find out you turned me, Jesmind. I'll come after you, and there's nowhere in this entire world you can go to hide from me."

Tarrin stalked away, towards the door, but Kimmie jumped to her feet and called his name. "What about us?" she asked plaintively. "Are you going to shut us out too?"

"Until I know who did this, none of you come anywhere near me," he said over his shoulder. "I'll kill you. As far as I'm concerned, you're all guilty, even if you didn't do it."

"Not even the children?" Kimmie gasped.

"Not even the children," he growled. "I won't be good company until I find out who did it. I won't punish them for my own temper."

"Cub!" Triana said quickly as Tarrin reached the door, ducked under it absently. She took a step forward, but a withering glare from the male stopped her dead in her tracks.

"I said none of you come near me, and I meant it," he said with an evil look, then he remembered what he came here to do in the first place, or at least one of them. "If you want to be of any use to me, Triana, you'll do as I ask."

"What do you want?" she asked cautiously.

"The Goddess wants Sarraya here. I know you can bring her quickly."

"I can have her here by tomorrow morning."

"Then do it."

"I will, but only if you agree to one thing."

He turned and looked at her, a single eyebrow rising in curiosity while his face showed his irritation, almost anger, that she would dare bargain with him right now.

"I can feel it in you, cub. You're stronger, alot stronger. Things are different for you now, and you're going to have trouble with it unless you get some serious instruction. You need to be taught."

"The Goddess warned me about it," he said bluntly. "Until I calm down, I don't think I could stand to be in the room with you, Triana."

"This goes beyond spats of temper, cub. This is important. Unless you get some training, you're going to hurt yourself, or even worse, someone else. We can agree to meet and not kill each other, because if we don't, you're going to have an accident." She looked at him. "Have you done anything yet?"

"I Conjured this," he said, touching the vest.

"Did you mean to do it?"

The question took him off guard, and caused a little of his anger to bleed off. "Now that you mention it, no," he admitted.

"That's what you have to be careful of, cub," she said with intensity, almost desperation, in her voice. "When you're at the level you're at now, the power comes to you even when you don't want it to. You have to keep a tight rein on your emotions, and don't let your mind wander too often, or you'll miss the telltale signs that warns you that it's reaching for you. You could slip, and it's going to act on whatever it finds in your mind, no matter how outrageous or disastrous it may be." She put her arm out, reaching towards him. "I know you're ticked, cub, but be careful. Keep an eye on the All, and be watchful for the sense of it. If it seems to be getting close to you, that's the sign that you need to get your mind under control, and do it fast. You can't stop it from touching you until I show you how it's done, so you have to make sure that it doesn't do anything you don't want it to do when it does. So please, for everyone's sake, be careful of that."

Tarrin could appreciate the frankness of that warning. Druidic magic had no limitations. The only limits came with the Druid using the power, and if he tried to do something that required more magical power than his body could withstand, it would destroy him. Tarrin understood that danger, but it was the thought of Druidic magic running wild that frightened him more. He'd had experiences where Druidic magic unleashed through him with no control, and the results had been nearly disastrous. The All was notoriously fickle and unpredictable, and any time a Druid lost control of a spell, just about anything could happen. Very rarely were those wild misfires beneficial to the Druid, or anything in his general vicinity. He saw her warning for what it was. It was no ploy or attempt to get into his good graces, it was a very serious, very sober warning from a master Druid to an acolyte Druid about the very real dangers of the demanding magic they commanded.

He nodded once, eloquently. "I will. After you bring back Sarraya, we'll meet so you can teach me what I need to know," he said in a neutral tone.

"I can live with that. Just please, be careful."

"I'll be careful," he promised, then he turned and stalked back through the door, slamming it behind him.

He didn't have much time to think about what Triana said, but what time he had made him appreciate her warning that much more. He did feel much closer to the All now, and it didn't seem much of a stretch for it to reach into him rather than him reaching into it. The Weave did things like that itself sometimes, as it was an active, dynamic force, where the All was also very dynamic and, in its own way, nearly alive. The All had a kind of animating force in it, the part of it that allowed it to interpret what it found in the mind of a Druid and decide on the manner in which the task would be accomplished. It was why Druids had to be extraordinarily careful, for that awareness within the All had no concept of human limitation, and it often took wild liberty if the Druid didn't envision the spell exactly as he wanted it to function. Triana's warning was a very serious one, and Tarrin was serious about heeding it. From the moment he left the females, he kept one part of his mind on his outrage and anger, and another part kept steadfast vigil over the All, ready to warn him should it seem to come closer to him.