Lupi 09 - Mortal Ties

couldn’t do more
     for her back then.”
    “Don’t you think Rule needed to know that his mother had a mental illness?”
    Isen had shrugged. “He didn’t want to know about her. There was no medical concern—he
     couldn’t inherit her condition—so I didn’t force the knowledge on him.”
    “It could have made a difference in how he thought about her. It could have had a
     lot to do with why she abandoned him.”
    “You oversimplify. Do you think Rule felt abandoned? Do you see that kind of early
     trauma in him today?”
    Maybe not. But he hadn’t just missed out on knowing about his birth mother. He’d missed
     out knowing about his brother. “Does he have other half siblings you haven’t mentioned?”
    “No.” Isen had smiled with sly amusement. “Although Benedict has two that he may not
     have mentioned to you. He sees them when he visits his mother’s tribe.”
    No, he’d never mentioned them. Not that Benedict was exactly chatty, so that wasn’t
     surprising. But Rule had never mentioned them, either.
    Otherkin. Kin, but not clan. Lily frowned at a landscape she didn’t see, her legs
     moving automatically. When Cynna spoke, it startled her.
    “After Cullen told me about Jasper, I asked him if he had any stray brothers or sisters
     I didn’t know about. He said no. You knew that his mom was Wiccan, right?”
    Lily nodded. “She taught him spellcraft, didn’t she?”
    “And kept him from burning things down until he was old enough to get a handle on
     his Gift. You maybe don’t know that she was forty when she had him. She used a strong-ass
     fertility charm to help her get pregnant while she was involved with his dad. Those
     aren’t supposed to work, but either hers did or she got lucky. She wanted a lupus
     baby.”
    So different from Rule’s experience…“Rule told me once that his name was Anglicized—that
     the original version was Reule. A French name. Nokolai was French beforethe clan immigrated, so I assumed that’s where the name came from. It didn’t. That’s
     what his mother named him.”
    “You learned that last night?”
    “Isen and I talked quite awhile. Isen called him Rule because it was easier for people
     to pronounce, so that’s what he grew up with. But his mother named him Reule. It means
famous wolf
.”
    “Wow. It seems like she put some thought into his name. It also seems like there’s
     a lot you haven’t told me, if you and Isen talked so long.”
    Lily’s breath huffed out impatiently. “I’m not sure how much to say. Rule doesn’t
     talk about his mother, but I think it’s okay if I do. But somewhere there’s a line
     between what’s okay to say and what isn’t, and I’m not sure where that line is.”
    “I hate to say this,” Cynna said, “I really do. I’d rather nag you into telling me
     everything, but…” Her breath was coming fast and hard now, so that she had to start
     dumping her words out in bursts. “My own rule is that…if I think it would make Cullen
     mad…for me to repeat something…that’s okay. I can talk about stuff that…makes him
     mad if I want to. But if it would hurt him or…make him feel exposed…I don’t say…anything.”
     She slid Lily a look. “But hey. You can…talk about how you feel without…violating
     any…confidentiality deal.”
    “Confused.” And shut out, which she didn’t like, but she understood. Rule needed time
     to come to terms with what this newfound brother meant to him. Only she wasn’t sure
     he knew that. “We’re nearly to the turnaround point.”
    “Thank God.”
    They’d marked the one-mile point with a small stack of rocks. When they reached it,
     Cynna said she wanted to pause and stretch out a bit. Mostly she wanted to get her
     wind back, Lily thought, but that was okay. There was a long, flat rock she could
     use to stretch her hamstrings. She balanced on its edge and dropped her toes slowly.
    The clouds stacked across the morning sky had lost theirearlier blood-and-fire glory by then, fading to soft pink in the east with myriad
     grays and steel blues overhead. Rain by noon, she thought. She wouldn’t be here to
     see it.
    “I wish I was going with you,” Cynna said.
    “I guess you could, if you decided to. Neither Rule or Ruben can tell you no.”
    “The upside of being a Rhej is that no one can tell me no. The downside is that this
     forces me to be a grown-up and tell myself no sometimes.” Cynna hugged one leg close
     to her chest.