Lover Beware

steak!” Her hands flew up in exasperation.
    “What he thinks he’s going to do with it, I don’t know. He doesn’t have enough duodenum left to wrap around my thumb. I would have preferred to keep him in sleep another day, but you know him.”
    Lily stiffened. The duodenum—wasn’t that part of the intestines? And he was here, at home, not in a hospital?
    Rules glanced down at her. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. He’s regrowing the parts that are damaged, and Nettie Two Horses is a doctor. Nettie, this is Detective Lily Yu.”
    “Oh.” The older woman looked her over thoroughly, then smiled. “I don’t imagine I look the way you think a doctor should, but I assure you I am a real doctor. Trained in conventional medicine at Boston, shamanic practices with my uncle. Chalk the outfit up to too much time spent around these heathens.” Her fond glance took in Rule and his son. “Lupi are the worst patients in the world. They think that because they can heal almost anything, they don’t have to listen to me. Or take care of themselves.”
    Rule grinned. “Guilty as charged. But I’ll have a talk with your worst patient. He knows very well he can’t have steak yet. Paul, why don’t you and Aunt Nettie see if Louvel has any coffeecake while I take Lily to meet your grandfather?”
    Aunt Nettie? As Lily and Rule started down the short hall the older woman had emerged from, she asked quietly, “Is ‘aunt’ a courtesy title? Nettie looks Native American, and your clan is of European extraction, isn’t it?”
    “Yes. Nettie is Navajo. She’s married to my uncle, which of course makes her Paul’s great-aunt.”
    Married? But lupi didn’t…only, apparently one had.
    He paused just outside a heavy wood door. “I should have warned you earlier. My father’s injuries…lupi heal better when our wounds are left open to the air, and infection isn’t normally a problem. He’s not pretty to look at right now, and he won’t be wearing much in the way of clothing. Probably nothing.”
    “Ah…” She gathered her scrambled wits enough to ask,
    “Is there any ceremony or greeting ritual I should know?”
    He smiled wryly. “If he were in better shape, he’d insist on kissing your hand. But no, there’s no greeting ritual that applies.” He opened the door.
    The bedroom was large, airy, and masculine, decorated in earth tones and forest green. The furniture looked as if it had been shifted; the king-size bed was empty and shoved against a bureau. The man she’d come to see was in a hospital bed with the head raised and an IV attached to his far arm. And yes, he was quite naked, except for the patch over one eye.
    He was a lot hairier than Rule. He was also a bloody mess.
    The wound running from his cheek up under the eyepatch was broad and bumpy with a heavy scab. New pink skin had formed at its edges, trailing into what was left of a grizzled, rust-colored beard. The gouges along his chest and belly had been stitched, but the abdomen dipped in oddly, as though not all of the usual pieces were under the skin. Lily thought of the missing duodenum and managed not to wince. His legs and genitals seemed undamaged, and she couldn’t see his left arm. His right hand had only two fingers. The rest were marked by tiny, pinkish-white nubs, and part of the palm was gone.
    Rule moved into the room and bent to kiss his father’s cheek. “Paul told me you were doing better. I’m glad to see he was right.”
    Better? If this was what he looked like after four days of a lupus’s rapid healing, what had he looked like right after the attack?
    “Apparently you considered me well enough for company.” The Lupois’s voice was ten fathoms deep, a rumble from the bottom of that barrel chest. He gave his son a searching look.
    “You were right, then?”
    “Yes.” There was satisfaction in Rule’s voice, and something Lily couldn’t identify. He stood aside. “I’ve brought Lily to meet you. Lily, this is my father, Isen Turner.”
    “Come closer, Lily.” The uncovered eye studied her as she approached the bed, and the chuckle his grandson had mentioned rumbled up. “Rule. We have embarrassed your lady. She isn’t accustomed to our ways.” He reached out casually with the two-fingered hand and draped a corner of the sheet across his loins. “As you see, Lily, I have not postponed the pleasure of meeting you without reason.”
    “Yes, sir.” If there was a protocol for meeting naked semiroyalty,