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He looked down at me, solemn almost, nodding. “Yes, you do rub cheeks even in human form. Then you bury your nose in the hair behind the ear.”

“How big is Verne’s pack?” I asked.

“Fifty-two wolves,” Jamil said.

I raised eyebrows at him. “Please tell me that I don’t have to rub faces with every single one of them.”

Jamil smiled, but it left his eyes serious. He was thinking something. I wanted to know what it was. “Not with all of them, just the alphas.”

“How many?”

“Nine,” he said.

“Doable, I guess.” I looked up into his thoughtful face and just asked, “What are you thinking so hard about, Jamil?”

He blinked at me. “What—”

“Don’t tell me it’s nothing. You went all solemn and thoughtful about five minutes ago. What gives?”

He stared down at me. The concentration in his dark eyes was almost touchable. “I’m impressed that you bothered to research natural wolves.”

“That’s the third time you’ve used the term natural wolves. I’ve never heard it before.”

Jason rolled off the bed to his feet. “We are real wolves part of the time. We’re just not natural.”

I looked to Jamil, and he nodded.

“So calling you guys real wolves is an insult?”

“Yes,” Jamil said.

“Anything else to watch for?” I asked.

Jamil looked at Jason. They exchanged a look that made me feel excluded. Like there was some unpleasant surprise coming and no one was telling me.

“What?” I said.

“Let’s just do the greeting,” Jamil said.

“What are you guys hiding from me?”

Jason laughed. “Just tell her.”

A low growl trickled from Jamil’s human throat. The sound alone raised the hair on my arms. “I am Sköll, and you have no name among the lukoi. Your voice is only the wind outside our cave.”

Jason took a few steps closer. “The trees themselves bow before the wind,” he said. It sounded way too formal for Jason.

“Good,” Jamil said, “you do know some lukoi phrases.”

“We were afraid to touch each other,” Jason said, “not to talk to each other.”

Zane pushed away from the wall, moving between them, standing close to me. “The moon is rising. Time is passing.”

I frowned at all of them. “I feel like you’re speaking in code and I don’t know how to crack it.”

“Apparently, we have some phrases in common,” Jamil said, “between the lukoi and the pard.”

“Great, the wolves and the leopards share some common ground. Now what?”

“Greet me,” Jamil said.

“Uh-uh,” I said, “I’m lupa. You’re just the Sköll, the muscle. I outrank you, so you offer me your face and throat first.”

“She is your lupa, and our Nimir-ra, which is an equivalent rank to your Ulfric, she has the right to ask,” Zane said.

Jamil growled at him.

Zane moved behind me, as if using me for a shield. It would have worked better if he hadn’t been nearly ten inches taller than me.

“She refuses you,” Jamil said. “You stand alone before me.”

“No way,” I said. “Zane is mine. You aren’t going to use him for some macho dominant crap.”

Jamil shook his head. “He moved into you, but you didn’t touch him.”

I frowned up at him. “So?”

Jamil sighed. “All your reading has told you nothing about us.”

“Then explain it to me,” I said.

Jason said, “When Zane moved in close to you, he was asking for your protection, but you didn’t touch him. That’s seen as a rejection of his petition for protection.”

Cherry was still sitting very still on the bed, hands clasped in her lap. “It’s one of the rules that works the same for the wolves and for us.”

I glanced behind me at them. “How do the two of you know all this?”

“With Raina and Marcus in charge, we all got to do a lot of petitioning for protection,” Jason said.

“Gabriel spent a lot of time with Raina,” Cherry said. “We, the wereleopards, got to spend a lot of time with the wolves.”

“So when Zane moved up close, what was I supposed to do?”

“Do you want to protect him against me?” Jamil said.

I stared up at that tall, muscular body. Even if he hadn’t been a lycanthrope, he’d have scared me in a fair fight. Of course, nature had made sure