“You have more in common with Cullen than you’d like to think.”
No, she didn’t. “Is there anything else you haven’t gotten around to telling me? Anything important?”
Two slow beats of silence were enough of an answer. Her stomach hurt. “We haven’t been together long. I know that, but—”
“That isn’t it. I… hell.” He ran a hand over his hair. “I’m not supposed to tell you. It’s… it falls within the Rhej’s province.”
The priestess or historian she was supposed to talk to in a couple days. “So this a clan secret. A lupus secret. It isn’t just about you.”
He didn’t say anything. She turned away, padding over to her side of the bed. She could understand. She would probably have to keep secrets from him, too, sometimes. FBI secrets.
But they wouldn’t be about her. Dammit. Maybe it was childish, but she wanted Rule to tell her, not this woman she’d never met. She yanked back the covers.
“Lily.”
She scowled at him.
“I’m probably sterile.”
Her mouth opened. Closed. She swallowed. “You have a son.”
“A blessing. A miracle, perhaps. But I’m fifty-four years old, and Toby is my only child. Perhaps ‘all but sterile’ is more accurate.”
His face was closed up, not letting her see what it had cost him to tell her. “But… you can’t be sure. Unless you’ve been tested—”
“You aren’t thinking. Laboratory tests don’t yield useful results for one of the Blood.”
Of course. Of course she knew that. “Still, you’ve been with a lot of women, and not always hung around long enough to know if… you can’t be sure.”
“It’s given to us to know the moment our seed quickens.”
They knew? Lupi always knew if a woman got pregnant? Rule would know if she… Lily rubbed her chest. There didn’t seem to be enough air in her lungs.
She used birth control, of course. She’d started taking the pill as soon as she got her period, years before her first lover. Her mother had understood. Without, for once, the need for explanations or long discussion, her mother had known why Lily needed that protection.
She’d been eight when it happened, not yet fertile. She’d been abducted. Stuffed in a trunk and stolen… she and her best friend, Sarah. They’d played hookie and gone to the beach, where a nice, grandfatherly man grabbed them. Lily hadn’t been raped because the police found her in time.
In time for her. Not for Sarah. So Lily knew in her blood, bones, and sinew that a woman’s choices could be stolen, and she’d always made sure that choice—the decision to bear a child—rested with her.
Only now it didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“No.” She took a deep breath, shoving confusion aside for now. “Don’t apologize for what you can’t help. I can see…” She could see him again with his son, swinging Toby in the air, filled with a clear, unfettered joy. Little though she would have believed it a month ago, Rule was a man made for fatherhood. “I’m sorry for your loss.” The words she’d spoken to the families of victims seemed to fit.
“I’ve had time to grow accustomed. This is a blow for you. I don’t know how you feel about having children.”
She didn’t, either. “There wasn’t anyone on the horizon, so…” She gave a one-shoulder shrug. “I’ve put off thinking about it.” Now she didn’t know what to feel.
“You can still have children, if you choose.”
Her mouth tightened. “By someone else, you mean.”
“I understand that your upbringing tells you that would be wrong. My upbringing tells me it would be wrong to deprive you of such a fundamental joy as children out of a disinclination to share.”
“It’s more than upbringing.” She didn’t know how to explain to him why fidelity mattered, not when he saw it so differently. And… oh, God. She stiffened.
It falls within the Rhej’s province. That’s what he’d said about his secret. But what he’d told her wasn’t a lupi secret… not unless what was true of him was true of other lupi, too.
They weren’t completely sterile. That was obvious. But maybe the magic that healed them so very well messed with their fertility. Maybe that’s why lupi had raised sex and seduction to a fine art, why they considered jealousy immoral. They’d die out if they didn’t take every chance they could to try to make a baby.
Rule’s face didn’t tell her anything. And for once she wasn’t going to ask. He’d broken some kind of law or custom by telling her as much as he had. She could wait to hear the rest.
Somehow. It helped that she was falling-down tired. She sat down on her side. “I guess Cullen did his little spell.”
“Yes. The effect should wear off in about ten hours, or when the front door is opened.”
“Weird.”
He handed her a pillow and didn’t comment on the fact that she wasn’t sleeping naked as she usually did. That decision wasn’t about him. Maybe the bad guys wouldn’t be ready for a second assault this quickly. Maybe Cullen’s spell would work like a dream, and maybe the demon had gone back to hell or Dis or whatever she was supposed to call the place.
And maybe not. If she had to fight bad guys, human or otherwise, she didn’t want to do it naked. She turned off the light and lay down… and heard his sigh as his arms came around her.
A sigh of relief. He hadn’t been sure she’d want to sleep with him, even if sleeping was all she could manage tonight.
It hadn’t occurred to her to do otherwise. And what that meant she had no idea and was too tied to care. Gravity pressed down, squeezing out thoughts and worries, leaving her blessedly limp.
She yawned hugely. Rule tugged the covers up as he settled on his side, curling around her. Automatically she snuggled closer… and it felt good, it felt right, in spite of everything she’d learned tonight.
And all she hadn’t learned. So many questions…
A heavy weight landed at the foot of the bed, then curled up against one of her feet. She could feel Harry purring, an inaudible rasp as soothing in its way as the male arm draped over her waist. Her eyes drifted closed as another yawn hit.
All unplanned, a question slipped out. “What kind of music did you listen to as a kid?”
“Hmm?” He sounded sleepy.
“When you were a kid, what music did you listen to?”
“Oh. Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky. Anything with strings. Jazz.”
Lord. He couldn’t be normal or predictable about anything, could he? Lily gave up and let sleep have her.
NINE
Every now and then the crowd roared, a many-throated beast always muttering, muttering, when it wasn’t screaming at itself. Far below, the ballplayers stood out vivid and tiny in their white uniforms against the light-flooded green.
It all looked so tidy down there. Safe. But she was up here, in the midst of the crowd-beast. And she wasn’t safe.
Lily’s heart pounded and pounded. She darted between the tall adult figures, looking for the way back. She’d gotten lost from her mother and sisters when she went looking for Grandmother.
Mother was going to be so angry. Lily’s stomach clenched unhappily. Don’t wander off, she always said. Don’t talk to strangers, don’t whine, sit still and be a good girl, and don’t wander off.
Being a good girl was very, very boring. But maybe better than being lost.
The crowd beast roared again, many of its parts leaping to their feet. Popcorn spewed, fists waved, and loudspeakers pumped music into the tinny air. Lily gulped and tried to get around a really fat man who smelled bad, like bourbon. Lily hated the smell of bourbon. It made her think of when Uncle Chen got mean and started yelling. Mostly he yelled at his sons, not her, but she still didn’t like it.