Inked

are mine , Camille. Even if you share yourself with others, you’ll always belong to me . I’m your alpha . I’m your mate.”
    As he spoke, an image flashed through my head. A dragon circled overhead as a fox watched from below. Quickly the images came, and just as quickly, they were gone. I blinked, wiping my eyes. I was tired and spent. But in my heart, I knew that they related to the future—to our future. Just like I knew that a shadow loomed, waiting for me to discover it. And Trillian would be there to help me weather the approaching storm.
    But I left all of that unsaid. Instead, I kissed him back, savoring the taste of his lips on mine. “Yes, I belong to you. And you belong to me. You saved my life, you saved me from humiliation at my boss’s hand. And I think…you saved me from myself.”
    “What do you mean?” His voice was low.
    I let out a long sigh. “I don’t know. But in time I think I’ll understand. And for some reason, the idea of that knowledge makes me very much afraid.”
    “Hush,” he said, tapping me on the nose. “Don’t worry about what might happen. Live for today. There may be no tomorrow, so for now, enjoy what we have and revel in it. I know I’m going to.”
    Trillian sought my lips again, and in the silver fire of his kiss, I forgot about visions and shadows and the future. For now, there was only his touch and my touch, and the merging of souls and bodies.

human nature
    EILEEN WILKS

Note: Readers who are following my Lupus series will want to know that the action in “Human Nature” falls at the same time as some of the events of Night Season . While Cynna and Cullen were off having adventures, Lily and Rule had their hands full, too.

1
    THE blouse was silk, crimson, and new. The blood was crimson, too.
    Lily looked down at her ruined blouse, grimaced, and slid out of her government-issue Ford. She ought to put on her jacket. It was too damned chilly for April, dammit, and the jacket would hide the blood and her shoulder holster. She tried to avoid alarming the neighbors, which both blood and gun were apt to do—but the blood was still damp.
    Bad enough she’d ruined the blouse. She didn’t want to ruin her jacket, too. It wasn’t new, but it fit like a dream.
    Good thing she didn’t have far to go. Wonder of wonders, there had actually been a parking spot only two houses down from the pleasant two-story row house where she was staying while in Washington, D.C…. which had been way too long. She missed San Diego. She missed the heat. She missed her cat, her grandmother, her father. She even missed her sisters. And maybe, though she was sure it was a sign of imminent mental collapse, she actually missed her mother.
    Lily could have parked around back. There was a single-car garage off the alley with room for a second vehicle behind the first if you left the garage door open and didn’t mind having the rear of your car jut slightly into the alley. But then getting the other car out—Rule’s Mercedes—would be a pain, and she had places to go in that car tonight.
    It was her birthday. She intended to celebrate, dammit.
    Lily stabbed her key into the lock, entered, and shut and locked the door behind her. Rule was at the back of the house. That was one of the cool things about the mate bond: she knew where he was. The direction, anyway, and in a rough sense the distance.
    “Sorry I’m late,” she called as she sped for the stairs. “I need to shower and change, but I’ll hurry.”
    “They’ll hold the reservation.”
    The man who’d spoken came out of the dining room that bridged the parlor with the kitchen. His black dress shirt was unbuttoned at the neck. His black dress slacks broke at just the right point on his black shoes. His hair stopped just short of black, being mink brown, thick, and a bit long for current fashion. He had a lean face, sharp-featured, with a sensuous mouth and eyes the same color as his hair. The dark slashes of his eyebrows mirrored the pitch of his cheekbones.
    Dressing all in black made most men look like Goth wannabes. Not Rule. Maybe it was the excellent body beneath the civilized clothing that made it work. Maybe it was the sheer arrogance of the man. He looked good. He knew it. He would have looked good in tattered jeans, a doorman’s uniform, or in nothing at all.
    He knew that, too. Lily’s heartbeat hitched and she paused without intending to, one hand on the banister, and just looked at him.
    Mine.
    It was a