“What are we expecting?” Lily murmured very low.
“To learn in what manner he acknowledges his Rho.” A Challenge, most likely. There were other ways to formally recognize a new Rho, but Rule accepted that he’d forfeited the more peaceable options when he killed Victor Frey.
From this man, at least. Rule wouldn’t tolerate Challenges from other Leidolf. But Alex had been Frey’s Lu Nuncio, and was entitled to express his outrage, so Rule would accept without using the mantle. Better to allow the man to express his anger honorably . . . though Rule had best win the Challenge.
Alex stopped at the foot of the porch steps. He tilted his head the exact fraction necessary to meet Rule’s eyes. Leidolf’s mantle stirred in Rule’s gut, edgy, wanting to answer the implicit challenge in that steady gaze.
Rule restrained it. Neither man spoke.
Alex broke the silence with four terse words. “I greet my Rho.” Abruptly he dropped to his knees—then lowered himself awkwardly to his stomach. He lay flat, fully prostrated, on the damp grass.
Astonishment gripped Rule so hard it took him a moment to respond. He stepped off the porch, bent, and touched Alex’s nape. “Rise,” he said softly.
Alex rose to his feet more gracefully than he’d lowered himself. His mouth moved the fraction that stood for a smile with this deeply taciturn man. “Your face looks funny.”
“I am . . .” Flabbergasted. “Seldom as wrong as I was about this. You don’t object to my being Rho? Or to the way I assumed the mantle?”
Alex snorted. “Took you long enough.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
EVENING dawdled in the summer in North Carolina. At seven thirty, sunshine still slanted brightly through the banked clouds Lily saw out the bedroom window. Those mounds of bruise-colored clouds suggested the rain wasn’t through with them yet, but for now the air was clear and almost cool.
Lily had looked up from her laptop, appreciating that dramatic sky, when a female voice said, “That doesn’t look like bed rest to me.”
“I’m in bed, aren’t I?” Lily turned her head, pleased by the company. “And Ruben needs my report. Two birds, one stone.”
Cynna Weaver leaned against the doorway frame, arms crossed. She was a tall woman with a butch-crop of blond hair, highly decorated skin, and—at the moment—a sly smile. “I don’t think Nettie would see it that way.”
“She’s not here. She checked me over and didn’t, for once, put me back in sleep, so . . .” Lily’s voice trailed off. She frowned. “Why are you looking so sneaky and smug?”
“Me? You’re imagining things.” Cynna straightened, still looking like she ought to have canary feathers on her face. “Pretty nice work clothes.”
Lily smiled. “Rule’s notion of a bribe. I, uh, got up for a bit earlier, so he shows up with a silk nightgown. I think he thinks I won’t go wandering around if I’m wearing it. So are you joining us for supper?”
“Not you. Cullen and I are taking Toby and his grandmother out for pizza.”
“Oh. Good. It will be good for him to get out of the house.” But that was not what had Cynna smiling that way. Lily couldn’t find a clue to the mystery on her friend’s face, but maybe that was a clue coming up the stairs. “Sounds like Rule and I are eating by ourselves.”
Cynna nodded, trying to keep her face solemn, but whatever secret she was sitting on had her all but wiggling like an excited puppy. She turned her head, grinning. “Hey, Rule,” she said to the man coming up behind her. “My, you do clean up pretty.”
She shoved away from the door. “Guess I’d better be going.” She slid Lily a last wicked grin, waved, and moved aside, letting Lily see that Rule had, indeed, cleaned up. Into a tux.
Every man alive looked better in a tuxedo than just about anything else. Rule in a tux . . . a little curl of lust tightened down low. Sex and danger, Lily thought, sleeked over with a civilized gloss. A really gorgeous civilized gloss. And under that . . . Lily knew the lean body beneath the beautiful clothing. She knew the sharp, clean bones of his face and the drowning black of his eyes when the wolf wanted out. She knew the strength and the taste of him.
She wanted a taste now. Her eyebrows lifted. “You didn’t pack a tuxedo.”
“Rented, I’m afraid.” He cast one perfectly tailored sleeve a disparaging glance.
“I’m feeling underdressed. I guess we aren’t having pizza?”
“Good guess. I hope you’ve saved whatever you were working on, in defiance of orders.”
“Nettie said I should stay in bed, not that—hey!”
He’d set her computer aside and scooped her up in his arms. “Hungry?” he asked softly, nuzzling her ear.
“Getting that way.” She traced the quick arch line of his eyebrow with her finger. He was fond of toting her around. At the moment she was inclined to let him get away with that. There were things to do in a bed that didn’t involve a laptop, things that might not strike some as restful, but she was sure she’d rest much better afterward. Her current position made it easier to argue her point. “Have I mentioned that you have the sexiest eyebrows I’ve ever seen?”
The brow in question lifted slightly. “Ah . . . you like my eyebrows?”
“They’re one of the first things I noticed about you.”
“Pickles and eyebrows,” he said obscurely, but he smiled as if whatever connection he’d made pleased him. He started for the hall. “We’re dining al fresco.”
“Outside? Rule, I’m wearing a nightgown!”
“It’s silk. One can’t be underdressed in silk, and the others have left.” He paused at the top of the stairs, aiming a smile at her. “Indulge me?”
“You’re in a funny mood,” she murmured. But why not? She was sure sick of the bedroom. “Okay. Dining al fresco in my nightgown. I can handle that. So what,” she said as he started down the stairs, “did Alex say when I left you two to your clan talk?”
“Clan secrets,” he said promptly.
“Rule—”
He chuckled. “Most of it involved the logistics of bringing as many Leidolf as possible to their clanhome as soon as possible. We’ll hold the gens subicio next week. Not all will be able to attend, but most will.”
“This gens subicio—it’s when the clan acknowledges you as Rho?”
“The other way around, actually. I hold the mantle. I must recognize them.” He cast her an apologetic glance as he started down the stairs. “I realize you hadn’t arranged to be away for so long. If necessary, we can fly back to San Diego and wait there until the clan is assembled.”
“A week won’t matter. I’ve been put on sick leave.” Lily heard the pout in her voice, but couldn’t seem to get rid of it. “No one listens to me. I’m fine. If Nettie didn’t keep putting me in sleep, I probably wouldn’t even be tired.” She didn’t stay in sleep long, but she stayed sleepy, dammit.
“I listen to Nettie, who says you don’t have to stay in bed after today, but you do need to rest and sleep much more than usual.”
Ruben listened to Nettie, too, dammit. That’s why she was on sick leave. “She also said I’m healing just fine.”
“I wonder . . . could that be because she keeps putting you in sleep and making you rest?”
Lily frowned. “I’m better at sarcasm than you are. Did Alex explain why he was okay with you being Rho?”
“After chiding me for being dense enough to believe he’d disapprove, he pointed out that a live Rho—even one who still smells halfway of Nokolai—is better than an all-but-dead Rho. Especially one who was crazy before he went into coma. He couldn’t indicate that to me before, of course. He’s an honorable man.”