Jacob had already Changed back and was being questioned by one of the officers. José was still wolf. He needed more time to rest between Changes.
Rule crouched in front of José now.
The black wolf sat stiffly, not looking directly at his Lu Nuncio. The smell of blood clung to him. José was a strong and skilled fighter with excellent control as well as the three kinds of sense a warrior needs—tactical sense, common sense, and people sense. That’s why Benedict had put him in charge of the bodyguards.
But this was his first human kill.
“You did right,” Rule said, his voice pitched low enough that none of the humans around them would hear. “You assessed the situation and did as you’d been taught. Three attackers, all armed—you had to stop them quickly or risk my nadia’s life. Taking out the one with the gun frightened the others into surrendering. Lily trusted you to guard her back. You didn’t fail her.”
The black wolf’s head lifted slightly. He looked Rule in the eye for one second, then away, his head dipping in a small nod.
Rule shifted to subvocalizing—speaking softly deep in his throat without moving his lips. “You are to say that Lily signaled you to attack. She realized you were following her, and when trouble erupted, she signaled you in the same way I would have, had I been here.”
José’s ears pricked up. Another nod.
Rule raised his voice to a normal level. “You’re ready to Change, then? The officers would like to take your statement.” He stepped back.
Rule knew Lily couldn’t see what happened during the Change. He wondered if that was because she hadn’t grown up seeing it, as he had. He’d read that the visual cortex of a person who’d been blind from birth was used to process the other senses, and so was not available for vision. Perhaps Lily’s brain would eventually learn how to process this kind of seeing.
Or perhaps not. Rule watched as José opened the door to another reality, one where moon and earth were one, just as man and wolf were one. For those few seconds he saw both José’s forms existing in the same space at the same time. For those few seconds, what he saw made perfect sense.
Then José was a man only, the wolf gone. Rule handed him the cutoffs he’d taken from his trunk. They’d do well enough for now.
Lily had been talking to one of the patrol officers. The two of them moved closer now. Lily looked at José—at his face, that is. Lily wasn’t entirely comfortable with nudity, and José was just then stepping into the cut-offs. “José, this is Officer Munoz. He needs to ask you some questions.”
José looked at the young patrolman, whose face was frozen in his best Jack Webb impression: just the facts, ma’am or sir. José’s nod looked much the same in this form as in his other one. “Let’s get to it, then.”
Lily gave a little jerk of her head, telling Rule to come with her. He did.
She stopped several feet away from the nearest officer. “You told him to say I signaled him?”
“I did. Ah—should it come up, you used the one I taught you.” He made a surreptitious movement with one hand—palm held vertically, perpendicular to his body, with the fingers tight and straight. Two quick slashes. It was the standard Nokolai hand signal for attack. He’d already told Jacob to make the same claim.
Lily was relieved. “Good. It’s not that deceitful. If I’d known they were there, I sure as hell would have signaled them.”
Rule had been halfway to the city when he realized he wasn’t going to make it to the apartment before Lily left for her meeting. He’d decided to follow his father’s suggestion after all, and called José, telling him he didn’t want Lily to know she was being guarded.
The mate sense had told Rule where to go, and the Oceanview Mall was closer to the city’s edge than the apartment, so he’d managed to arrive in time to hear shots fired. By the time he leaped from his car, he’d been ready for battle—but the battle was over.
He’d raced to Lily and run his hands over her, demanding to know that she was all right. She’d allowed that. She’d even clung to him for a moment—and whispered in his ear that he needed to tell his people they’d acted on her signal.
“Will your deputy confirm this?” he asked.
“He wasn’t in a position to see, so it doesn’t matter.”
“You think this is necessary, then? My people acted with no more force than necessary. They saved your life and probably the deputy’s as well.”
“I like to think I would have come up with something if they hadn’t been here. There were a lot of attackers, but they were sloppy. Didn’t make me for a serious threat, probably, or they’d have just shot me instead of waving their guns around and yelling. But yeah, José and Jacob saved lives today. Either mine or some of the gangbangers, because I was going to have to shoot them to stop them.”
“That’s reason enough for force, according to the law.”
“This way, though, people will read about two lupi attacking on the signal of an FBI agent. A human FBI agent. They won’t focus on how big and scary you lupi are because these wolves were under the control of a human who’s allowed to use deadly force. It’s like with guns. When people read about a nutcase going postal and shooting up a crowd, guns are scary. When people read about a police sniper using a rifle to take out a killer who’s got hostages, they don’t think, ‘Wow, rifles are scary.’”
Rule smiled slowly. “That’s spin. PR.”
“Don’t talk ugly to me.”
“I’ve been waiting for you to ask what the hell I thought I was doing, sending the guards trailing you without letting you know.”
She snorted. “It’s obvious what you were doing. Why, though—that’s a good question. If you’d had anything solid to worry you, you’d have called me. So was it just a hunch? Or was it because the meet was with Cody, and you weren’t a hundred percent sure of me?”
“Don’t talk ugly to me.”
She smiled and brushed his hand quickly. “Yeah, but when I said that, there was a grain of truth in what you’d said. So . . . ?”
“Do you seriously think that if I suspected you of, ah, sneaking around, I’d send two of my people to catch you at it?”
“Put that way—no.”
“Good.” Yet Rule felt uncomfortable. He hadn’t lied. He did trust Lily . . . but he suspected that the fact that it was Beck she was going to meet had kept his attention on that meeting. Maybe it had fed his uneasiness. How could he tell?
It didn’t matter, he decided. If his feelings were murky, his actions were right. He wasn’t acting like a jealous man, so—
“I guess it doesn’t matter, then, that Cody said my ring was a big KEEP OFF sign.”
“Good.”
Lily tipped her head to one side. “Oh?”
“You’re thinking I’m jealous.”
One corner of her mouth tipped up. “Yeah, I am.”
“I’m not—at least, it’s similar to jealousy, I suppose, but I know you wouldn’t act on whatever feelings you have, but—” He stopped. Ran a hand over his hair. “Dammit, Lily. He matters to you. I can hear it in your voice.”
Deliberately she took his hand, her eyes steady on his. “Lots of people matter to me. I’m not in love with them. I am in love with you. Cody . . . I guess what you were hearing was unfinished business. He and I ended things badly, and that left all these messy regrets hanging around. Regrets about the way I handled things, not about us breaking up. How could I regret that? I’ve got you now.”