Lover Beware

finally taking me to Clanhome. Your father is back.”
    “I’m taking you to Clanhome, yes. I believe my father will see you, though he hasn’t said. He…” Rule sighed. “He’s been back for several days.”
    He’d lied to her. Though she’d warned herself all along not to believe everything he told her, learning that he had lied stripped her of something warm and important.
    “I couldn’t tell you.” He touched her cheek. “He directly forbade me to tell you until…”
    “Until what?” Hurt throbbed inside her. Honor bound Rule to obey his Lupois, whose decisions he was pledged to uphold with his own body. She knew that. And still it hurt. “Until I went to bed with you?”
    “He didn’t want his condition known.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Four days ago, on his way home from meeting with another Lupois, my father was attacked by other lupi. He was badly mauled. He nearly died.”

Chapter 10
    THE RAIN OF last night had vanished as if it had never been. The sky was clear and cloudless, the land around them seriously rumpled, studded with live oak, juniper, and pines. Wind blew in the open windows of Rule’s Explorer, smelling of dust and living things.
    Lily wondered what it smelled like to him. She would never really know what his world was like, would she?
    Returning to the real world was a bitch. She’d been mostly silent ever since they left her apartment, where she’d changed into clean clothes. But the doubts and the questions—and a few uneasy answers—hadn’t waited until morning to hit. They’d plagued her last night, but they hadn’t kept her from making love with him a second time, or sleeping in his arms. Even now the urge to touch him rose every so often, strong and compelling. Rather like a sneeze, she thought. If she ignored it, it went away.
    But it kept coming back.
    He slowed and turned off the pavement onto a well-graded dirt road. “We’re almost there,” he said.
    “Good. Your authority does extend to getting me through the gates, I take it. Since your father doesn’t know I’m coming.”
    “He’ll see you.”
    “How can you be sure now, when before you wouldn’t bring me to him?”
    “It’s complicated.” He grimaced. “I lied about my father being gone because he didn’t want his condition known. Everything else I told you about lupi was true. You’ll need his approval to accomplish anything.”
    She stared at him, angry. “Everything? Are you sure?”
    “Of course I…shit.” He ran a hand over his hair. “I forgot. No, not quite everything.”
    “You admit, then, that you lied about being able to identify the clan of the lupus who killed Charlene Hall.”
    “How did you figure that out?”
    She shrugged and looked out the window. He was wearing last night’s clothes and a pair of wraparound sunglasses he’d had in the glove compartment, and he made her ache. “That’s my job, figuring things out. Your father was attacked by a member of the Leidolf clan, wasn’t he? You believed it was someone from the same clan, or the same group within that clan, who killed the others. So you lied to direct my attention that way.”
    “I didn’t tell you it was Leidolf who attacked my father.”
    “You didn’t have to.” He’d told her enough. Leidolf hated the Citizenship Bill, and they’d very nearly killed its strongest proponent among the lupi—the leader of Nokolai. But what about Rule? He supported the bill, too. If his father was killed, he would be Lupois.
    Fear balled up cold in her stomach. Surely he was a target, too. “Can you identify the killer at all?”
    “Oh, yes. If I ever got close to him, I could. But the clan scents aren’t quite as distinctive as I led you to believe. I could tell Leidolf from Shuntzu, but the various European clans have interbred too much. Not all Germans are blond, and not all Leidolf smell the same.”
    “But your father is sure it was Leidolf who tried to kill him.”
    “He recognized them,” Rule said grimly.
    “Them? How many—”
    “You can ask him, but I doubt he’ll tell you.” He glanced at her, then reached out and caught her hand. “What’s wrong, Lily? You’ve a right to be angry that I deceived you, but I think there’s something more bothering you.”
    His fingers clasping hers felt right. Absolutely right. Lily swallowed. What was she supposed to tell him? Sorry, but I’ve developed an addiction to you after just one night. I have to touch you every so often, which is