Lupi heal some things faster than others. Their bodies eliminate invading agents—poisons, drugs, bacteria—so quickly that the invader never has a chance to do any damage. When there is actual damage—from a knife, a bullet, a kick—healing takes longer. How long depends on the injury and the lupus.
Rule was a fast healer, even for his people. Lily waited to hear just how fast.
Nettie’s eyes opened. “That’s all I can give you right now,” she told him. “If I’m going to help Billy, I have to save some for him. You said he’s at Alvarado?”
Rule smiled, bent, and kissed her cheek. “You’ve eased me considerably, Nettie. Thank you. Yes, I told Myron to take him to Alvarado. It was close, and you’ve spoken favorably of their treatment of spinal injuries. I’ll send Myron’s contact info to your phone so you can call him if you need to.”
“Good. I’m going to wrap you again.” She retrieved the elastic bandage and began winding. “Compression will keep you more comfortable, and you don’t have to worry about pneumonia. Two of your ribs are cracked, not badly. They’ll be eighty percent healed by tonight. The third one was broken and displaced and poking your damn lung.” Her lips tightened as she fastened the binding. Nettie was offended by damage to her people. “No puncture, but it was abrading the surface, which your body kept having to heal. I got the ends lined up and there’s soft callus forming now. By tonight there will probably be some hard callus, but hard callus does not equal healed. That rib will still be fragile. You’ll be careful.”
“As careful as I can.” Rule glanced at his father, who’d headed for the big dining table.
It wasn’t until then that Lily noticed who else sat at the table—which just proved how distracted she’d been. A round, cheerful old woman sat at the table knitting. Her dress was full, fuchsia, and floral, sprouting blooms in a half dozen unlikely colors. Her hair was white. So were her eyes.
Lily didn’t know what had caused the Nokolai Rhej’s blindness. Whatever it was, her lack of vision was more excuse than cause, Lily thought, for the woman’s habit of seldom leaving her cabin. Blindness was a loss for anyone, but less restrictive for her than for others. She was a highly Gifted physical empath, able to sense objects around her.
But how did it let her knit? “Sera,” Lily said, using the title lupi gave her. Lily had been given permission to use her name, but she didn’t understand the rules for when it was and wasn’t okay, so she seldom used it. “I’m surprised to see you here.”
“You’ll be talking about our great enemy,” the Rhej said, her head tilted down as if she were watching the needles busily clicking together. Whatever she was knitting was a much calmer color than she wore, a soft blue gray. “I’m needed for that.” She lifted her head for the world as if she were looking straight at Arjenie, who stood uncertain and alone several feet away. “Arjenie, isn’t it? Come sit by me. You and I will need to talk later.”
NETTIE left—with, much to her disgust, an armed escort. Isen informed her she was potentially a target and she wasn’t going alone. The rest of them—save Benedict—sat down at the long dining table to plan.
When Lily first became Nokolai, she’d thought of Isen as the clan’s CEO, setting general policies and goals, but handing off the implementation to others. The Council of Elders might be considered his board of directors. Rule was CFO; he handled the overall finances and investments. Benedict handled security. In all honesty, she’d thought Isen didn’t work as hard as his two sons. It had taken months for her perspective to shift enough for her to understand what his job really was.
Isen handled the people.
It was a full-time, hands-on job. Kind of like being a stay-at-home mom, she thought, a lot of what he did was invisible, with success measured in absences. Fights that didn’t break out. Arguments that didn’t deepen into enmity. Daughters who weren’t ignored. Sons who didn’t go wild. Men who didn’t stay stuck and angry in jobs they hated. And a lack of Challenges.
Little c challenges were common in the clans. Lupi settled grievances and established status that way. They were fought either two-legged or four-legged, and with varying degrees of formality. Killing was not allowed. If you killed your opponent in a little c challenge, you could be put to death yourself if your Rho determined it was intentional. If the death was clearly an accident, you’d still be in big trouble.
Big C Challenges were fought only in wolf-form. Internal Challenges could be issued to another clan member, to the Lu Nuncio, or to the Rho. There was a complex code for Challenging the Lu Nuncio or the Rho, and such Challenges were rare in most clans, most of the time. If a Challenge was issued between clan members, the Rho had to give consent. There was a good chance he’d lose one of his clan if he allowed it to proceed.
In any Challenge, if a combatant submitted, his life must be spared. But by submitting he acknowledged himself in the wrong and bound himself to fulfill whatever penance or payment the victor decreed.
A clan Challenge was like an internal Challenge that way. But since it was fought to settle differences between clans rather than individuals, if one Lu Nuncio submitted to the other, his entire clan had to accept whatever terms the other Lu Nuncio imposed. If the Rho of the losing clan refused the terms, he had two choices: repudiate his heir and remove him from the clan. Or war.
That’s why Clan Challenges were rare and almost always to the death. Lu Nuncios were lousy at submitting and unlikely to give their enemy a blank check.
Lily had learned some of this from Rule, some from the Rhej, whose job included teaching a new clan member what she needed to know. She wasn’t sure how it changed things when a Rho decided to answer a Challenge personally, but it was bound to raise the stakes.
Rule’s father was over ninety years old. Those were lupi years, of course, but even in lupi years, that put him into middle age. Javier was young, quick, strong, and considered a very good fighter. Isen was rolling dice at an extremely high-stakes game, and the odds were against him.
From what Lily could tell, he was delighted with himself.
Oh, he was brisk enough as he opened by informing them he’d spoken with Manuel, who’d said that he backed his son’s decisions. No one seemed surprised by that. But there was a merry glint in his eyes.
“I asked Cynna if she could confirm Brian’s presence at Friar’s,” Isen said. “She said she could certainly Find a lupus, if one was there. Earth doesn’t block her. Since it seems unlikely Friar is entertaining multiple lupi guests, I thought that would be enough. Given the quality and strength of her Gift, she didn’t think she’d have to get close enough to be in danger, but I sent Paul and Jason with her to be sure.”
Cullen grunted. Clearly he didn’t like having Cynna anywhere near Friar, but he didn’t say so. “I’d like to know how Arjenie could knock out her bonded mate.”
Arjenie looked wan and worried. “I don’t know. I don’t understand this mate bond thing, but I thought … I was told my magic couldn’t affect Benedict. That’s why I waited so long. I had to think it out. I expected to knock out everyone but him and Lily and maybe Cullen. He—Benedict left the ones who’d fallen alone. I was scared he’d go after Lily if she was the only one standing, but I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You did the right thing,” Lily said firmly. “I’ve an idea about why it worked the way it did. When a mate bond is new, it’s really tight. The obvious result is that you can’t be far apart, but with Rule and me, it also meant we got some … call it overlap. Not all the time, but when things were really tense, I got a bit of his hearing and he got a bit of my imperviousness to magic. It didn’t last.” She glanced at Rule, remembering where they’d been when she heard almost like he did. “Maybe when Arjenie knocked herself out, Benedict was tapped into her Gift, so it affected him, too.”