“Is an unusually good memory a sidhe characteristic?”
“Not as far as I know. I think it’s just me.”
He smiled suddenly. “I guess you remember the first words you said to me, then.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, you’re going to tease me.”
“Nice doggie?”
“I was shook up,” she said with dignity.
“You knew I wasn’t a dog.”
“I may not be a genius, but I’m not stupid.”
And yet it was common for a lupus in wolf form to pass for one of their domesticated cousins. People saw what they expected to see. “What are the visible differences between a dog and a wolf?”
She snorted softly. “Aside from sheer size? You’re a very large wolf, Benedict. But okay, I’ll play. On the whole, wolves have longer legs, longer muzzles, and larger feet. The legs are a particular giveaway. Malamutes—who look more like wolves than most dogs—have curly tails, while wolves’ tails are straight. There’s a difference with the teeth, too, but I didn’t see yours, so that doesn’t count.”
He smiled at having his guess confirmed. “You also knew I wasn’t only a wolf.”
“You didn’t act like a wolf. You weren’t upset by my nearness—and wolves aren’t comfortable being around people, you know. Plus I was fairly close to your Clanhome, so that made it more likely you were a lupus. I’m ninety-five percent sure there aren’t any wild wolves in the area.”
“Ninety-five?”
“None have been sighted in recent years. I suspect other wolves avoid your territory. But while a lack of sightings might be highly suggestive, it isn’t proof, so I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure.”
She’d figured out all that while crippled from a fall and scared half out of her mind. With armed militia in the area and an extremely large wolf watching her, she’d sorted through her prodigious memory and come up with logical possibilities. Benedict smiled. “You’re wrong about your intelligence. You don’t simply remember things. You apply what you know to your situation, even under strong stress.”
She turned pink with pleasure or embarrassment. “I think I take more comfort from facts than a lot of people do, so when I’m under stress, my mind naturally zooms in that direction.”
For whatever reason, she didn’t like thinking of herself as unusually bright, though she clearly was. Maybe she already felt a little too different from everyone else, given her heritage. He held out his hand.
She blinked, then smiled shyly and took it.
That, too, felt good. Incredibly damned good. He wanted to … but he wouldn’t. Not now. For now, it was enough to hold her hand, learn about her, walk with her. His Chosen. “Let’s go look at the babies.”
Arjenie liked the baby room, and she liked the babies. She knew how to hold them, too, how to make funny faces and tickle. One of her cousins, she said, had been a late-life baby, so she’d gotten some practice there, plus she used to babysit in high school. Benedict learned the name of that much-younger cousin, and of several others. He learned the names of her uncles and aunts, too—five uncles named Delacroix, one of them married to her mother’s sister.
None of her uncles were related to her by blood. Most of her cousins weren’t, either.
Arjenie came from a large and loving family, but only her aunt Robin and her aunt’s children were family by blood. It didn’t seem to matter to her. She claimed them and they claimed her. It was like clan, Benedict thought. Blood mattered, but the claiming mattered more.
They visited the toddlers, then headed to the barracks for lunch. Benedict made sure his people ate well; lunch was chili and cornbread today. She ate a big bowl and two pieces of cornbread, and chatted easily with men who’d helped capture her two nights ago. Then they checked out the new nursery, where Samuel was growing native plants to sell to local garden centers. She asked Samuel a lot of questions, no doubt sorting the new information away tidily in the encyclopedia in her head.
As Benedict stored away the sight, sound, and scent of her in his head. Each moment was clear and precious. He’d told her he was taking time off. That was true, as far as his duties were concerned. His second was handling drill and routine security. That wasn’t unusual. Benedict left Pete in charge when he was up at his cabin or taking a new batch of youngsters into the wilderness for combat training.
But this wasn’t a normal time. His Rho believed their ancient enemy was active in their world once more and moving against them.
That was seriously bad news, yet on a personal level, it was a relief. A huge relief. The Lady hadn’t gifted Benedict with a second Chosen because of anything about him. It wasn’t personal at all. She’d done it because, for whatever reasons, the clans needed Arjenie. The Lady needed Arjenie. This meant that by protecting Arjenie, Benedict acted on the Lady’s side and for the good of his people.
He was free to protect her. Whatever it took.
Rule had called Benedict three times today. The first was to let him know that he and Lily would be returning today. They should arrive around supper, and would be staying at Clanhome for a while. The other two involved selecting the specific location for the heirs’ circle. With the venue changed so abruptly, that was a scramble. Rule had to present the other Lu Nuncios with a choice of sites, then all five had to agree on one.
Amazingly, they had. Now it fell to Benedict to assure the security, first, of his own Lu Nuncio—and second, of all the others. He should be at that site now, reacquainting himself with it.
He wasn’t. He was going to have to tell Arjenie about the mate bond, and soon. Everything would change then.
This wasn’t time off. It was time stolen.
“You’re not supposed to just pick people up,” she’d said when he first captured her. She’d offered several variations on that theme. He wasn’t to pick her up without her permission.
“I have a strong sense of privacy,” she’d told him when she learned he’d opened the bathroom door a bit . “I don’t like having that intruded upon.”
She hadn’t liked it when he listened to her voice mail, either. And when Seabourne spotted the binding last night and held her still so he could study it, she’d told him, “I don’t like being grabbed.”
Arjenie did not tolerate being physically forced or intruded upon. Just this morning she’d said it again. “Ask. You have to ask.”
Maybe that was a quality innate to the sidhe; he didn’t know enough about them to say. Maybe it had developed because of multiple operations and long hours in the hospital when she’d had so little control over who touched her, what was done to her. Maybe it was just her, like her prodigious memory. Whatever the reason, Arjenie could not stand to be physically constrained.
At first he’d thought her reaction no more than what anyone would feel. She wasn’t fiery, like Claire. She didn’t scream or lose control. But after enough repetition, even he could get the point, however politely it was made. Arjenie did not want to be touched, held, or helped without permission. You had to ask first.
The Lady hadn’t asked. Arjenie was bound to Benedict for the rest of her life—physically bound—and she’d been given no choice in the matter.
But “for the rest of her life” wasn’t entirely accurate, was it?
It had always been within Benedict’s power to release Claire from the mate bond. He’d hadn’t once seriously considered it. And in truth, Nettie had been only nine, so he couldn’t have offered that particular solution if he’d wanted to.
He hadn’t wanted to. Back then, he’d never tasted real failure. Oh, he’d worked for success, not waited for it to fall in his lap. He might have been arrogant as hell, but he hadn’t been an idiot. That had only served to convince him he deserved success. By the time he met Clare at the age of twenty-seven, he’d been spoken of by some as the top warrior of his generation—and by a few as the greatest warrior of the century. He had a daughter, his smart and shining Nettie, whom he’d sired when he was only eighteen, and she spent the school year with him, the summers with her mother. That had been a rare arrangement back then.