Lover Beware

go to the trouble to trick me?”
    “We are a secretive people. Too much so, perhaps, but we’ve had reason to be wary. My father knew his councillors wouldn’t agree unless they trusted you. They in turn wanted to meet you without your knowing who they were. Didn’t you wonder why everyone you met put you to work?”
    “I thought it was a custom or something.” She’d fixed tea and swung a hammer, helped clear away deadfalls in the woods, washed a baby, and swept an old woman’s floor. “What did they learn by watching me work?”
    “What did you learn by watching them while you worked together?”
    It was a fair question. An excellent question, actually. “A lot. One of the biggest surprises was how familiar some of it seemed.”
    She’d startled him. “Familiar?”
    “Sure. The respect for tradition, the importance of family, work, and honor, the duty owed to one’s elders—that’s all very Chinese, you know.”
    “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
    “You don’t know much about my people, either.” Not yet. Would he? Did he want to learn? “I also began to get a grasp of why some lupi oppose the Citizenship Bill. It will change a lot of things, won’t it? Your whole governance structure is based on the challenge. Not that I like it, but it does provide a check on the Lupois’s power.”
    “Some of my people believe the proposed law will make tyrants of our Lupois, yes. But humans evolved a system of checks and balances that doesn’t necessarily involve killing each other. We can, too.”
    They came out from under the trees and walked for a few yards along the shore before drifting to a stop. The sky overhead was salted with stars. Ahead, moonlight spilled across water as dark as Rule’s eyes had been when the Change tried to take over. “The moon is almost full.”
    He looked at her. “You aren’t at all frightened, are you? Going for a moonlit stroll with me doesn’t worry you. All of the lupi councillors who met you said you gave off no fear-scent.”
    “They didn’t give me any reason to,” she said, surprised.
    “Neither have you. Maybe if I’d met a young teenage boy I’d have been worried, given what you said about them.”
    “They live separately until they learn control.”
    That made sense. “So—who were they? Which of the people I met today were councillors?”
    “Nettie, Nicholas Masterson, Emile Hunter, Arthur Madoc, Fera Bibiloux—”
    “Fera? The blind woman? But…” Her voice trailed off as she remembered the odd feeling she’d had, sitting in the dimly lit cabin drinking tea while the old woman worked her loom, her hands sure in spite of her lack of sight. A prickly feeling, yet peaceful. Belatedly she understood that she’d been in the presence of power. “Okay, I guess I understand that. She’s Gifted, isn’t she?”
    “Something like that. Fera said you made good tea and would be welcome to return—from her, that counts as approval. She also said that something you haven’t told me is going to come as a big surprise. She seemed amused, so I gather whatever it is won’t be too much of a shock.”
    “Ah. Well…”
    “You don’t have to tell me right this second.” He sounded amused himself.
    Her heart was beating a little too fast and her mind jittered along the surface of her thoughts like a water bug. “I’m more than a little surprised that Nettie is a councillor. I thought they would all be Nokolai.”
    “Nettie is Nokolai.”
    “Is she?” They were facing each other now, their hands clasped. “Did she become part of the clan when she married your uncle? Or does mating mean something more than marriage?”
    He touched her cheek. “I should have known you would turn up a clue or two. You heard about mates.”
    She nodded. Hope and guesses tangled in her throat, keeping her from speaking. So much depended on the accuracy of those guesses….
    “There is something about my people you don’t know. Something no one outside the clans knows.” He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Over half of all lupi never father a child. And fertility is…limited…in the rest of us.”
    It wasn’t what she’d expected to hear. “But—you have two children—”
    “By two different mothers. Few women conceive by us, and of those who do, none has ever borne more than a single child.”
    “It’s the magic in you. It screws with the results in DNA tests, too.”
    “You see why only a lupus who has sired sons is able to