To be fair, many humans were revolted by it, too.
She fell silent as they reached the road that circled the meeting field, a grassy swathe that anchored the little village at Clanhome’s heart. The center was about two miles away, on the southeast corner of the meeting field; Isen’s house was at the northern end, banked up against the mountains.
It was a typical fall day for their corner of the county—sunny and warm, the sky blue enough to raise an ache in the heart, spotted here and there with puffs of white. A breeze tugged at Benedict’s shirt sleeves and tangled itself up in the riot of Arjenie’s hair. She’d left it down today, and it shone in the sun like molten copper.
The wind smelled of cholla and pine, rabbit and dirt … of home.
It was good to be walking here on this hard-packed dirt road, smelling home and feeling the sun’s warmth. Good to be alive to feel these things. Even after the overmastering pain had subsided, it had taken him years to be able to feel that simple joy, untainted by guilt. How, he had wondered, could he exult in life, when Claire would never feel these things again?
He’d finally understood that his grief and guilt added nothing to the short span of Claire’s life. He’d had the question backward. The real question was: How could he not?
He was glad now that he’d lived. Life wasn’t a burden taken up because his Rho insisted he was needed, and it hadn’t been for a long time. Life was what it was. Short or long, bitter or sweet, life simply was.
As Claire had reminded him tartly last night. Quit feeling sorry for yourself, she’d said. Good God. What’s so special about pain? About fear? You know fear. Even back when we were together—and you know, you really weren’t that bright about some things back then—you understood fear better than me. I went crashing around, smashing into everything so I wouldn’t have to face my fear. You told me then I had to face it, accept it.
She’d snorted. It had sounded just like her, too. Some reason you want to make my mistakes instead of finding one of your own?
Smart Claire.
Maybe it really had been her he spoke with in the dream, not just the promptings of some buried, wiser self. Maybe not. Benedict knew there was something beyond death. He didn’t know if that something allowed a woman who’d been dead for forty-two years to drop in on him in his sleep. It seemed possible. And impossible to know for sure.
And it didn’t matter. Benedict drew a deep breath, looking around at so much that he loved … none of which was guaranteed to last until tomorrow. He’d lay down his life to make it last, if necessary, but even then he didn’t get any guarantees.
Fear could be helpful, if you learned the right things from it. Or it could make you helpless. He was tired of being helpless. “You’re quiet,” he said to the woman walking beside him. Walking, not limping.
“Every now and then,” she agreed. “It doesn’t happen often, but now and then I stop talking. I was wondering … you said you were a father.”
“Yes.” He might as well tell her. She would be learning a great many of their secrets. “What did you wonder?”
“Pretty much everything. Do you have a son or a daughter? Will we see him or her at the center, or is your child older, or not living nearby? What about the mother? Do you have custody, or … you’re laughing at me.”
Yes. Yes, he was. That felt good, too. “You’ve kept a lot of questions pent up.”
“I was waiting for you to finish that thinking you were doing. It seemed to be making you feel better. Lighter.”
He cocked his head, curious. Most people couldn’t read him at all. Especially humans, who couldn’t use scent as a guide. “It did. I have one child, a daughter. Nettie Two Horses.”
For some reason, that delighted her. “The doctor who treated me is your daughter?”
He nodded. “You may be surprised by her appearance when you meet her.”
“She doesn’t look like you?”
“Around the eyes she does. She’s got her mother’s chin and jaw, and her mouth is a feminine version of Isen’s. But that wasn’t what I meant.” He paused. “She’s fifty-two.”
She blinked. “Oh. Oh! I was right! You don’t age the way humans do.”
He stopped, staring. “You know?”
“I didn’t know until you said that, but I guessed. I mean, it’s logical, isn’t it? If you heal damage almost perfectly, you’d heal free radical damage, too, so you’d age more slowly. Oh! Is that why you don’t use your original surname? Because it might give away your real age?”
Urgently he said, “Does the government—”
“No, no.” She patted his arm reassuringly. “That isn’t in any of the files I have access to. And I access Restricted and Confidential information routinely, and am cleared for Secret if I jump through the right hoops, and even Top Secret with specific authorization. Generally, if I run across a pertinent reference that involves Top Secret material—some of the Secret files are heavily redacted Top Secret material—I simply annotate it to that effect, and the agent making the inquiry can either request the complete file or not. But I’ve read pretty much everything the Bureau knows about your people. That information isn’t in the files.”
He wasn’t reassured. “Who have you told?”
“No one. Like I said, I was just guessing, and I understand the need to keep some things secret. Even basically nice people might start envying lupi your longevity, and envy can be extremely toxic. Though I don’t think you’ll be able to keep it secret forever.”
“Probably not,” he said, his voice very dry. “If you can make that connection, others can, and will.” They’d known the day was coming. From the moment Rule went public, it had been inevitable. Eventually people would notice that “the werewolf prince” looked the same in his recent photos as he had five years ago. Or ten.
“So how old are you?” She flushed. “I guess that’s rude, but I’d really like to know.”
“Seventy.”
“Wow. That’s just … wow. You were really young when Nettie was born.”
“Young and foolish. No more so than most at that age, I suppose. I had a lot of help raising Nettie, both in her mother’s tribe and here. I needed it.”
“Nettie. That’s such a pretty name. Old-fashioned. It comes from the German nette, I think, which means clean or nice.”
His eyebrows climbed. “You know German?”
“I read it. I don’t speak it very well. I can read a lot of languages I can’t speak.”
“How many?”
“Um … twelve?” She wrinkled her nose as if dissatisfied with her own answer. “More or less, and not fluently, except for the Latin languages. Just enough to see if a text has what I’m looking for, mostly. And it has to be a language using the Roman alphabet. Well, except for Greek, which I can wade through slowly, and I’ve got a teensy bit of Russian, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet. But I don’t know hanzi or kanji at all.”
His eyebrows climbed. “You’re apologizing for only being able to read in three alphabets?”
She flushed. “I’m a little self-conscious about it. People think, wow, you know all those languages? You must be a brain and a half! But I’m not, as my grades in calculus proved. I just have a really good memory, especially for things I read. Not a photographic memory, which some experts think is strictly a savant ability, though I read this article that said … never mind. That’s not pertinent. My point is, being able to remember things can be handy, but it isn’t the same as being able to synthesize or draw accurate conclusions or come up with new ideas.”