Only Human

was embarrassed. Unconsciously she'd kept right on equating clan interests with lupi, and lupi with male. She 'hadn't considered any of the women of the clan as suspects because they couldn't be the killer. Dumb. Lily had taken the woman into custody immediately, unsure that the lupi's veneration of women would protect her from their notions of justice.
    So far, the woman wasn't talking. But she was scared— and not of the police. Lily figured she'd end up with a second witness if she could get the woman into the Witness Protection
    Program. Which was what she was recommending to her chief right now.
    Her fingers paused on the keyboard. Rule was here. She knew it without turning to look, without his having made a sound. She swiveled her chair.
    He stood in the doorway. He wore tattered denim, not black. The last time she'd seen him he'd been furless, naked, and covered in blood—much of it not his, thank God—with Nettie calmly stitching the worst of the wounds. Lily had had to leave with her prisoners and the sheriff.
    He looked a lot better now. Except for his eyes. He had the rest of his expression locked down tight, but his eyes told the real story.
    She shoved the chair back and went to him.
    His arms closed around her, hard. He buried his face in her hair. She knew he was breathing her in, just as she was him.
    After a moment she said, "How do you do that thing with your clothes, anyway? They didn't rip when you turned furry. They just weren't on you anymore."
    His chuckle was real, if strained. "You never run out of questions. I don't know exactly what happens, except that they aren't part of me so they aren't part of the Change. Lily." He ran both hands over her hair. "I've never been so scared in my life. They were on us so fast, and I couldn't stop them. Not all of them. I didn't think you had a chance."
    "I'm pretty fast for a human." She hugged him tightly around the waist, where he didn't have any wounds. "Maybe now you'll relax when I'm driving."
    "Maybe I will." A deeply held tension was easing out of him. "I was still scared, afterwards."
    She swallowed. "I know what you mean. I am, too."
    "I knew you'd let me hold you again. That's the nature of the mate bond. But I didn't know if you would want me to, after what you saw tonight."
    She was the one who had killed someone tonight, not him. But Lily didn't have the energy to get off on side issues. Exhaustion was turning her brain to lint. "Speaking of the mate bond... I don't know what the hell that is. We were interrupted, remember?"
    "I think you've guessed the important part." He cupped her face and smiled into her eyes. "Some say the mate bond is
    nature's way of apologizing for our troubles with fertility. It doesn't happen often, but once in a long while, a lupus finds his mate, the woman who is so supremely right for him that no other will do. His life-mate. I knew you before I saw you, Lily. The moment you walked into the room, your scent reached me and I knew."
    She swallowed. "So it's like true love, lupus style?"
    He brushed a kiss across her mouth. "Very like that."
    "And it doesn't cause problems? With the clan, I mean. If you have to bow out of the fertility business—"
    He laughed. "I've been out of the fertility business since I met you. There can be problems, yes, but not that way. If a lupus is lucky enough to find his mate, no one expects him to keep spreading his seed around. It would be ...abomination. Like rape, or the worst form of prostitution."
    "But it can cause problems."
    He nodded slowly. 'That's the other reason everyone was so curious about you. Just because a lupus finds his mate doesn't mean she'll be able to accept him, his people, and his ways. Sometimes ..." His throat muscles worked. "Sometimes he has to choose between his clan and his mate. But you had no fear-scent." His thumbs stroked along her cheeks. "You have no idea how important that is, how everyone rejoiced for me. Women who are deeply afraid of us often can't adjust. They may try, but they can't become one of the clan."
    Happiness swelled inside her, so large and grand she had to tell him. "I love you, Rule." He kissed her, and that was delightful, but after a moment she pointed out, "You're supposed to say it back to me."
    His eyebrows lifted slightly. "You know how I feel."
    "Wrong answer." Her lips twitched. "This mate bond doesn't make everything perfect, does it?"
    "No. It just makes everything possible."
    A long time later he was sitting in the