Lover Beware

completely—”
    “You mean that’s an option?” She shook her head, baffled.
    “And if their Lupois tells them to be truthful and complete, they will be? Even if they disagree with him?”
    “They will, or they’ll challenge. If he does so rule,” he added calmly, “I’ll go with you as Lu Nuntius when you ask your questions.”
    “Lu Nuntius? What does that mean?”
    “It’s my title. My presence will be official, representing the will of the Lupois. In practical terms, it means I’ll be in wolf form.”
    “To answer any challenges,” she said flatly.
    “And because my sense of smell is more acute in that form. It’s almost impossible for a lupus to lie in the presence of his Lu Nuntius. Rather like a devout Catholic trying to lie to a priest while hooked up to a lie detector.”
    She considered that in silence, sipping the truly excellent coffee. “Do you think he’ll tell everyone to answer me honestly?”
    “You said you don’t try to predict your grandmother. I don’t make predictions about my father, either. But I hope he does as you wish.” His mouth tightened to a grim line. “He was betrayed by one of his own people. I want the traitor named.”
    Lily was only startled for a second. Her mind skipped through possibilities, sorting her few facts into a new shape. “You think someone here—someone from his own clan—set him up.”
    “It was an ambush. Carefully planned, and requiring knowledge that Leidolf shouldn’t have had.”
    “Someone told them where he would be.”
    “Yes. And who would be with him. I’m hoping you’ll be able to arrest the bastard so I don’t have to kill him.”

Chapter 11
    DID SHE TRULY want what Rule thought she did?
    Off and on for the rest of the day, Lily tried to answer that question. She knew what she needed—to stop a killer. Make an arrest. Turn up proof that would stand up in court. She’d play by the Lupois’s rules for now and ask none of the questions burning in her, and hope he cooperated in turn.
    But how far did she want his cooperation to go? Was she willing to let Rule put his life on the line in order to get to the truth? Because that’s what that whole Lu Nuntius business amounted to.
    In the normal course of things she didn’t have a lupus lie detector along on interviews, and she did okay. So what if she had to handle things the hard way here? Cops dealt with lying or reluctant witnesses all the time.
    But if she didn’t find out who had betrayed the Lupois to the other clan, Rule’s father would. Once he was well enough, he would look for the traitor himself, and his justice would be final—and administered by his son. There wasn’t a thing Lily could do to stop it, either, if she couldn’t find the guilty party first. Not if they fought in wolf form. Killing a lupus in wolf form wasn’t murder.
    Lily was really growing to hate that law.
    After they finished their coffee, Rule changed clothes. He wore blue for her, as he’d promised—denim blue. A ragged pair of cutoffs. He looked magnificent in them, especially since he didn’t wear a shirt. Or shoes, for that matter, but neither did most of the people she met that day. Lily felt seriously overdressed, but wasn’t about to leave her gun behind. Since most people found a gun out in plain view distracting, she kept the jacket on.
    Clanhome was a shock of toppled preconceptions.
    Lily had pictured a patriarchal, heavily masculine society. Everyone knew lupi were always male and didn’t marry. She’d expected to see a few women who were kept around to have babies, tend the children, cook, and clean. That’s how men all over the world arranged things when they could, wasn’t it?
    By lunch, she’d met Rule’s uncle and one of his brothers, his first grade teacher, three of Paul’s friends, several dogs, and an assortment of lupi…and Nokolai. That was a surprise, though it shouldn’t have been: they were all Nokolai, but only some were lupi. Because only about two-thirds of the clan was male.
    When she made a rather foolish comment on the number of girls and women she saw, Rule said, “What did you think we did with our girl children? Drown them? Expose them at birth on a hillside?”
    She learned that between 350 and 450 people lived at Clanhome at any given time. There wasn’t enough work here to support everyone, so some officially lived here but had jobs that kept them away a lot. Others lived and worked on the clan’s ranch to the north, and the rest