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“No, in college. I was engaged, thought it was true love.”

“What happened?”

“His mom found out my mother was Mexican, and she didn’t want her little blond-haired, blue-eyed, family tree getting contaminated.”

“You were engaged before they’d met your family?”

“They’d met my father and his second wife, but they are both good little Aryans, very nordic. My stepmother didn’t like pictures of my mother being out, so they were all in my room. I wasn’t hiding it, but that’s how my almost mother-in-law took it. Funny thing, her son knew. I’d told him the whole story. It hadn’t mattered until his mom threatened to cut him off from the family money.”

“Now I’m sorry.”

“Your story is more pitiful.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” he said, smiling.

I smiled back, but neither of us really looked happy. “Ain’t love grand?” I said.

“You can answer your own question after you see Richard and Micah in the lupanar together.”

I shook my head. “I don’t love Micah, not really, not yet.”

“But,” he said.

I sighed. “But I almost wish I did. It would make seeing Richard less painful. I don’t know how I’m going to feel seeing him tonight and knowing that he’s not mine anymore.”

“Probably about the same way he’ll feel when he sees you.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“No, it’s just the truth. Remember that cutting you out of his life was forced on him. He loves you, Anita, for better or worse.”

“I love him, but I won’t let him kill Gregory. And I won’t let him cost Sylvie her life. I won’t let him take the pack down to wrack and ruin because of some idealistic set of rules that only he is paying attention to.”

“If you kill Jacob and his followers without Richard’s permission, then he may send the pack after you and your leopards. If you are not lukoi, not lupa, then to let their deaths go unpunished would make him appear so weak you might as well let Jacob kill him.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know.”

Merle stuck his head in the car. “We’ve got wolves out here. Your rats are holding them back, but they’re getting impatient.”

“We’re coming,” Rafael said. He looked across the seat at me. “Shall we?”

I nodded. “I guess it’d be silly not to get out of the car.”

He slid out to the edge of the seat, then hesitated, holding his arm out for me. Normally, I wouldn’t have taken it, but tonight we were trying for a show of solidarity and style. So I stepped out of the car on the rat king’s arm, like a trophy wife—except for the wrist sheaths and the two folding knives hidden in my clothing. Somehow I think trophy wives wear more makeup and less cutlery. But, hey, I haven’t ever met a trophy wife, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they know what I know, that the true way to a man’s heart is six inches of metal between his ribs. Sometimes four inches will do the job, but to be really sure, I like to have six. Funny how phallic objects are always more useful the bigger they are. Anyone who tells you size doesn’t matter has been seeing too many small knives.

22

THE CLEARING WAS huge, but not huge enough. The cars, trucks, and vans filled most of the available ground; some parked so far under the trees that the paint jobs had to have gotten scratched all to hell. There wasn’t room for all the wererats to park, and the cars filled the gravel drive, until it was just another parking lot. Some people ended up parked beside the road, or so they said, as they drifted up through the trees. Rafael had brought all his rats—about two hundred of them. The treaty between the rats and wolves dictated that their numbers had to top at two hundred. Rafael had agreed to that on the understanding that the much larger werewolf pack—six hundred or so—would come to his aid if needed. No questions asked. Your enemies are my enemies sort of thing. He’d explained that in the last few minutes, and it meant that he was risking a great deal tonight. Made me feel guilty. Made me wish I’d found a way to sneak a gun into the lupanar. Truthfully, I hadn’t even tried. Was I growing soft, overconfident,