Read Online Blood Challenge by Eileen Wilks - Free Book Online

That’s progress.”
    His breath gusted out in something less than a laugh. “I suppose it is. It’s not enough, but it’s progress.”
    “The, uh … what you carry doesn’t help with the way you feel about Leidolf?”
    “It creates a tie, but … this is almost impossible to discuss here.”
    She unfastened her seat belt, pushed up the armrest, and snuggled up against him.
    Automatically he put an arm around her, but he frowned. Lily was seldom willing to cuddle in public. “If you’re trying to relax me—”
    “I’m trying to get you to talk. Whisper in my ear.”
    “Hmm.” He nuzzled her hair, breathing in the apple scent of her shampoo … and beneath that, Lily. Just Lily. The lingering sense of being trapped eased. “You’re a smart woman,” he murmured.
    “True.” Her voice was barely above a breath—easy for him to hear when she was this close, impossible for anyone else. “Also a curious one. Tell me why the mantle doesn’t help you feel loyal to Leidolf.”
    “It’s not a matter of loyalty, but of a bond, one based on experience. I lack that experience.” He knew she worried about the effect the Leidolf mantle had on him. He tried again to reassure her. “My thoughts and feelings are my own. My decisions are my own.”
    “So you’ve told me. I guess your Lady wouldn’t have infected you with—”
    “Infected?” Rule’s eyebrows rose.
    “Maybe injected is a better word. She wouldn’t inject her Rhos with something that wanted to take over. That could make more problems than it solved. But it does affect you, even if not in a takeover way.”
    “ Affect isn’t the word I’d choose.” He lowered his voice even more, to a whisper no human other than Lily could hear. “You know that each clan’s mantle is different from the others.”
    She nodded, her head moving against his shoulder in a pleasant way. “Because they’ve been carried by different people, right? The mantles are affected by the Rhos who carry them. You said that, though you couldn’t tell me how, exactly.”
    “You might think of it as an imprint. The mantle doesn’t change its essence, but it accepts the imprints of all adult clan.”
    “Is that what happens at the gens compleo ? The mantle accepts the imprint of the newly adult clan member?”
    “More or less. But the imprints of most clan are, ah … important, yet insubstantial. The Rho’s imprint is more significant.” He frowned, hunting words. “In the months since Frey died, there’s been a change in some elements of—no, that’s the wrong word. Scent comes closer. It suggests a subtle and complex mix that may vary with the situation, yet has an underlying integrity.”
    “That’s not clearing things up for me.”
    He smiled. “You always smell like Lily, even when you change shampoos. Leidolf still smells like Leidolf, regardless of who’s Rho.”
    “But you’re the new shampoo.”
    He grinned. “Yes. Herbal scented, perhaps. The thing is, there remains that which is Leidolf, unaffected by me or any other Rho. My own suspicion—this isn’t in the stories, so it’s just a guess—is that the differences exist because each mantle was ineradicably stamped by its first holder.”
    “The first Rho of each clan.”
    “Yes. And according to the stories, the first Leidolf Rho was high dominant.”
    She heaved a frustrated sigh. “How come there’s still so much stuff I don’t know? Okay, I’ll bite. What’s a high dominant?”
    “All Rhos are dominants, of course, but high dominants are different—and rare, fortunately. In my lifetime, I’ve only known two. A high dominant is incapable of submitting. Circumstances don’t matter. He will die rather than submit to another’s authority.” Even with a mantle enforcing that authority.
    “Victor Frey,” Lily said flatly.
    His eyebrows lifted. “Good guess. Yes, he was a high dominant, but he’s an extreme example of an extreme condition. The other one I knew—Finnen Ap