Only Human

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 likely to play hell with my job. "Things went pretty far, pretty fast with us last night. There's something I'd meant to ask you. Or tell you."
    "A jealous boyfriend I don't know about?' His voice was light.
    "No. That's just it. If there had been a man in my life, last night wouldn't have happened. Fidelity is very important to me. You might say it's nonnegotiable."
    "I see. You don't think I can—or would want to—be faithful to you."
    A little bump of hope, quickly squelched, stuck in her throat. She swallowed. "Lupi don't respect fidelity."
    "Normally, that's true. We consider jealousy a sin." He drove in silence for a moment, one hand holding hers, one on the wheel, staring straight ahead. "You need to see for yourself to understand. That's one reason I'm bringing you to Clan-home. So you'll understand."
    CLANHOME WAS VINEYARDS and forests, steep slopes and a long, narrow valley cradling what amounted to a village or very small town. The Nokolai held roughly seventeen thousand acres, and were jealously protective of their wilderness; only a small part of the land was used or settled.
    To Lily's surprise, dogs raced the Explorer as they drove down the single main street. Modest stucco, timber-frame, or adobe houses lined the dusty street and peered out from the pines and oaks covering the slope to her left. Lily saw a gas station, a small open market, a cafe, a laundry, and a general store.
    And children. Laughing, playing, arguing, they raced around in swirls and eddies like flocks of birds. The youngest ones, boys and girls both, wore shorts and nothing more.
    So did most of the adults she saw—the men, at least. The two women standing talking in one neatly fenced