Lupi 09 - Mortal Ties

I didn’t
     want to get h-her in trouble, that’s all.”
    She was such a bad liar. Lily didn’t need Rule’s slow headshake, not with the way
     the girl stumbled over the pronoun. “You think he needs protection. You’re afraid
     he asked too many questions. That his interest wasn’t simple curiosity.”
    Silence.
    “Do you think I can’t find out who he is?”
    “It wasn’t him. I told you that. It was a woman. She’s not connected to the clans
     at all. I sold her the information. I was angry, like Isen said. I didn’t like being
     here instead of at university, so I-I sold the information.”
    Rule was shaking his head.
    “Stop,” Isen growled. He walked up to them—no, it was more like a slow stalk, ending
     three feet from Brenda. He didn’t say a word, but slowly she turned to face him. Slowly
     her expression changed as defiance faded into fear.
    Isen continued to stare at her as he boomed out, “She has confessed! She admits she
     sold the information about the workshop to a human. She has betrayed Nokolai willfully,
     knowingly—”
    “No!”
    The slim young man whose shout answered Isen stood among the Laban contingent.
    The young man started toward them. The man to his left grabbed his arm. “Hank—”
    He shook his clanmate off and kept coming. “She’s innocent,” he said loudly. “The
     Chosen is right. She hopes to protect me. I was the one who sold the information,
     not Brenda. She had no idea I would do that.”
    Lily released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She’d been right.
     This is what Isen had been going for—not poor Brenda’s bungled confession, but the
     one they were about to hear.
    Of course, things were still going to be tricky. He was lying, too.

TWELVE

    H ANK Jamison was twenty-seven—an adult, by lupi standards, but a very young one. He was
     tall and slim and beautiful, with large, dark eyes and an extra helping of the physical
     grace all lupi possess. He looked like a Renaissance poet who moonlighted as a swashbuckler.
     He should have been banned from all contact with women under the age of forty.
    Hank insisted calmly and definitely on his guilt. His Rho had nothing to do with this,
     nothing at all. He’d been greedy. He’d wanted money, and someone—he refused to say
     who—had paid him well to give up Cullen’s secrets. He asserted all this without a
     quiver of emotion.
    Hank’s physical control was good, and he was smart enough to clam up once he’d made
     his announcement. Rule smelled no guilt on him. He wouldn’t, though. Hank was lying,
     but Rule wasn’t his Lu Nuncio, and he was trying to protect both his lover and his
     Rho. No guilt for him there.
    An hour after Hank’s confession, Lily was on her way back to Isen’s home with Isen
     and Rule, who was two-footed again. Cynna had left to get Ryder from the tenders;
     Cullen had left for his workshop to run some kind of test.He was still obsessed with why his ward hadn’t made flames whoosh up. And Hank was
     in leg-irons at the guard barracks. He wasn’t locked up because there was no way to
     imprison someone at Clanhome. Lupi didn’t believe in that. Step far enough out of
     line and you might get dead, but you wouldn’t be locked up.
    Brenda Hyatt would be formally removed from Nokolai. The ceremony of expulsion was
     different for a clan female than it was for a lupus since the mantle wasn’t involved,
     but it went by the same name:
seco
.
    Lily had checked a few things with the other witnesses before Isen dismissed everyone.
     As she’d suspected, Brenda hadn’t been the only one Hank had talked to about Cullen’s
     device. Just the most cooperative.
    As they were leaving the meeting field, someone brought Isen his phone. He used it
     to call Leo, the Laban Rho…who wasn’t answering. As they neared Isen’s house he put
     his phone up without leaving a message.
    “Does that make him look more guilty, not answering your call?” Lily asked.
    “Leo never answers my calls right away.” Isen opened the big front door.
    “Doesn’t he have to answer when you call?”
    “He has to obey.”
    Rule filled in that sparse answer. “It’s as you and Cynna were discussing earlier.
     Laban is subordinate, but their Rho is very much a dominant. Leo will call Isen back—I
     assume you left a callback number?” he added to his father.
    “Of course. I believe I’d like coffee. Would you two care to join me?”
    “Sure,” Lily said. Might