Rule Breaker(96)

            She doubted very seriously that anything about Rule Breaker needed any work. But she let him draw her to the dance floor and assured herself that the continued ache in her chest had nothing to do with the earlier conversation or the implications of it.

            ...

            “Well?” Diane demanded as the couple moved far enough away from them that there wasn’t a chance Rule could hear their conversation.

            Lawe liked that about her. She understood he wasn’t just hers, that he was Rule’s brother, Jonas’s friend. That he was an enforcer as well as a role model to the newly freed Breeds. There was never any jealousy in her as he’d often scented from the wives of the human males he’d met over the years.

            She encouraged his friendships, pushed him to have hobbies and often chided him for not resting enough.

            And he was delaying answering her and he knew it.

            “I’ll be damned if it makes sense.” He shook his head, careful to keep his voice low as he spoke.

            “What doesn’t make sense?” she asked, frowning back at Rule and Gypsy. “At first thought, there’s not a chance they would suit each other. A good-time party girl? Who knew she was such an excellent social image developer?”

            “She’s not his mate,” Lawe stated softly, sadly even.

            Diane stilled, then turned back to him in shock. “Are you certain?”

            Lawe continued to watch his brother and the woman resting in his arms as they swayed to the music.

            “She carries his scent,” he frowned, trying to make sense of it. “But it could be because they’re lovers, nothing more. There are no similar scents of lust. With mates, there’s a scent they share, whether its lust, love or some other emotion that develops into love. They don’t share it.”

            Diane turned back and watched the couple as well. “If she’s not in love with him, then she’s falling.”

            Was she? There was definitely something there, but Lawe couldn’t make sense of what it was.

            He’d drawn their scents in countless times, and each time he’d done so he’d sworn he’d sensed Rule’s senses drawing further away from him. As though the animal part of him were hiding.

            But why do that? What would it serve Rule or his senses to weaken themselves in such a way? What could be so important that the animal felt the need to hide it?

            A sudden suspicion slipped into his mind, causing his eyes to widen.

            “What?” His lovely mate turned back to him, frowning as she stared up at him. “You’ve thought of something?”

            He shook his head slowly. Son of a bitch, why hadn’t he figured it out sooner? “I know my brother.”

            “Meaning?”

            She knew him, his lovely mate, and she knew how it bothered him when he’d felt Rule drawing so far away from him when they’d first arrived in Window Rock, and then especially so when Rule had offered to trade mates with him, when there was no mating scent on him.

            “She has a very subtle, barely there, unique scent that I can’t place. Rule’s senses are suddenly shuttered, as though the animal part of his genetics is hiding from me. Or perhaps from any Breed senses, period.”

            “I’m getting impatient, Lawe.” She sighed and he had to grin. She was dying to know if Gypsy McQuade was Rule’s mate.

            “She’s his mate, but he’s not mating her,” he explained, wanting to laugh at the chances that Rule’s animal could actually act in a manner so separate from the man it inhabited.