Human Nature (11 page)

“I can’t really relate to your need for time alone,” he’d admitted. “I try to respect that need, but I don’t feel it myself. But mantles aren’t intrusive, no more than clothing is. You don’t spend your days thinking about how clothed you feel. We don’t notice the mantles every moment, but they garb us, keep us from ever being naked, stripped, isolated.”

Interesting, she’d thought, that he compared being alone to being stripped. As for her, she might not notice her clothes most of the time, but she always enjoyed removing them at night. Especially her bra.

“Charles,” Ruben said, “Lily appreciates the honor you do her, but she’s embarrassed.”

The wolf huffed again and lowered himself to lie on the floor next to Lily. He sniffed her leg, then settled his head on his forepaws with a sigh of what sounded like satisfaction. And promptly dozed off.

“Charles is one of Wythe’s elders,” Ruben said softly. “Last month he celebrated his one hundred and fiftieth birthday.”

Lily blinked. “He fought a bear when he was a hundred and forty nine years old?”

“He told me he was glad the bear didn’t kill him because he always wanted to go out on an even number.” Ruben regarded the sleeping wolf wryly. “Charles has spent much of his century-and-a-half mastering the art of stubbornness. He’s good at getting what he wants. He wanted to remain wolf for his last days, so of course I granted that. He also indicated—strongly—that he wished to spend those days near his Rho instead of at our elder home. He persuaded me to allow that, too.”

In other words, the wolf dozing at Lily’s feet was dying.

Lupi lived longer than humans. A century and a half wasn’t unusual. Some lived even longer, and they were healthy and vigorous almost up to the end. But there came a moment, a distinct point when they began to fade—“like a switch was turned off,” one of the Nokolai elders had described it to Lily. They called the remaining span of their lives the waiting time. Some waited only a few days. For most it was a couple weeks, and a few lingered for a month or two. But for all of them, after that point the Change was too taxing without help.

Help was available. A Rho could propel any of his people into the Change, even those who’d passed into the waiting time.

The bathroom door opened and Rule stepped out. He wore a dress shirt with the almost-black slacks, but hadn’t yet donned his suit coat of tie. His hair was still damp. “Ruben.” He nodded once.

Ruben matched his nod. “Rule. You slept well last night?”

“Very well, thank you. And you?”

“I slept well, also.”

Charles snorted.

Lily glanced down, her eyebrows raised. He still looked like he was sleeping.

“Charles,” Ruben said dryly, “does not approve of our little experiment.”

Nokolai clan was the majority owner of a perfectly good house in Georgetown, which was somewhat closer to the political action than the Brooks’ home in Bethesda. Lily had stayed there several times. Rule was the public face for his people, and he came to D.C. occasionally to advocate for them. The house had recently been renovated, too—the basement could now sleep up to sixteen guards. But she and Rule weren’t staying there this time. Ruben had suggested that they could sell the Georgetown house and stay with him and Deborah when they needed to be in Washington.

War was expensive. The clan could use the profit from the sale. First, though, they had to find out if two Rhos could share space comfortably—with “comfortably” being the key word. Rule and Ruben could share space if they had to. They were both aces at control, they liked and respected each other, and neither of them would attack or knowingly offend the other. But lupi need hierarchy. They need to know whether they’re the dominant in the room, and each man’s instinct would push him to test the other in subtle ways. When they asked about each other’s sleep last night, they weren’t being polite. They were gathering data.

After a pause Ruben added, “Though I did have an odd dream.”

“Shit,” Lily said. She and Rule looked at each other. When an off-the-charts precog said he had an odd dream, you wanted to pay attention. Ruben’s Gift usually manifested as hunches. Crazy accurate hunches. Lily knew of only one time that Ruben’s Gift had escalated into out-and-out visions. Then, the fate of the world had hung in the balance. But those had been visions, not dreams. “Or maybe not. I hope not. Is a dream the same as a vision?”

He smiled, but it was a bit crooked. “No. For some reason, on the rare occasions that my Gift tries to tell me something about my own future rather than larger events, it often manifests as a dream. Precognitive dreams are distinctive in that they’re unusually vivid and memorable. Also, they tend to recur, and are often couched in symbolic terms. This one certainly was.” Ruben’s tone indicated that he did not approve of dreams that failed to state their meaning clearly. “It may be that I have an enemy I’m unaware of. There were a lot of masks in the dream. But that wasn’t what I came up here to discuss. Deborah wishes to know if you’d prefer cantaloupe or strawberries.”

“Strawberries,” Lily said. “Maybe if you told us what, exactly, you dreamt—”

“I don’t think that would help.” Ruben looked distracted, as if he were listening to another conversation. His face cleared. “At least that much is plain. It won’t help to tell you more at this time. Strawberries, you say?” He gave them a pleasant nod and headed back downstairs.

Eileen Wilks
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of the Novels of the Lupi, including
Unbinding
,
Ritual Magic
, and
Mortal Ties
. She is also a three-time RITA Award finalist and the recipient of a Career Achievement Award from
Romantic Times
.

Looking for more?
Visit Penguin.com for more about this author and a complete list of their books.
Discover your next great read!