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He pulled her against him hard. “We need to wrangle the cattle. Do you have it in you? They scattered.”
Numbly, she slid her arms around his waist and allowed a relieved sigh when he pressed his lips against the top of her head. “Everyone’s okay?”
“We are. They ain’t. Thanks to you.” He eased her back to arm’s length and stooped slightly to look her right in the eyes. “I take back what I said last night. You would make a hell of a werewolf, Eliza Shaw. I saw that. I saw you. I saw you riding Buck with no hesitation, and you didn’t run. You charged them. That’s two times you’ve helped Lenny out of an impossible spot. You are the reason she’s here.” He angled her shoulders to look at where Lenny was approaching, still buttoning a linen shirt. Her arm showed blood and claw marks under the folded sleeve, but she didn’t look like she cared. Her eyes were full of tears and locked on Eliza.
She didn’t say a word, just yanked her into a back-crushing hug. She murmured something in her language and a sob escaped her, and then she pressed her forehead against Eliza’s. Lenny held her in her lightened wolf gaze for six seconds more, her chest heaving with emotion.
And then she turned and made her way back to Burke, who was standing in the shadows of the trees, eyes somber on all of them as he held a pair of pants in front of him. He was bloodied just like Garret. Just like Lenny. He nodded in respect to Eliza.
Breath trembling in and out of her lungs, she gave the wolf one last glance, then slid her hand into Garret’s offered one. He led her past the other wolves lying on the ground. She allowed a quick glance at the black wolf she’d shot, but in this moment, she couldn’t conjure any pity for the creature.
He had bled Lenny. He’d wanted to kill her, and for what? Because they bought cows that didn’t even belong to the Jenningses? Because they were trying to replenish the cattle that the Jenningses were stealing from them?
She made a clicking sound behind her teeth and went to pet Buck, who was milling nearby. He was prancing side to side, spinning a tight circle, then back to prancing. His eyes were so wide, she could see the whites of them.
“It’s okay, Bucky-Boy,” she crooned as Garret caught his reins. “You did so good for me, big fella,” she murmured as she ran her hand down the sweating side of his neck.
“Rooney’s fuckin’ gone,” Garret ground out.
“I see him,” Burke called from where he was pulling a fresh pair of trousers on. They were all wrinkled, and had probably been in the very bottom of Lenny’s saddlebags. “He’s with my horse. I’ll catch them.”
“Well,” Eliza said lightly, resting her shaking hands on her hips. “That was absolutely traumatizing.”
Burke’s single laugh echoed through the clearing he was walking through.
A soft giggle escaped Lenny, and she wiped her eyes and nodded.
Garret hung his head and laughed. “There’s never a dull moment anymore, it seems. You have blood all over your clothes,” he pointed out.
She looked down at herself, and indeed, she looked like a murder victim. “Don’t worry, it’s all from you and the wolf I…killed.” She looked up. “I dropped my jerky.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“On the inside? No. Not a chance, not even close. Let’s go find the cows before more of Jennings’s Pack shows up, shall we? I would love it if werewolves would stop trying to kill me, or bite me.” She settled her left foot into Buck’s stirrup and hoisted herself onto the saddle. “I feel like I could use a few days of peace.”
Garret was staring up at her with a frown. “I’m concerned. Is this the part where you have a meltdown, or take Buck straight to the train station and flee Texas?”
“No, sir. Don’t be silly. This is the part where I go through shock, and probably burst out crying at random times over the next week as I process what has happened. This life…well…it’s very overwhelming.”
“Maybe you’ll get used to it,” he said, his head canted and his eyes glowing.
“Desensitized to it perhaps, for the three or four days it takes for them to actually kill me.”
“No one is going to kill you!” he called behind her while she started riding Buck toward the cows she could still see. “I won’t let them! Where are you going?”
“I lost your hat.”
“Hang the hat, it’s probably trampled.”
“I will fry in the sunshine, and I am tired of everything hurting, Garret.” Which would’ve sounded much less spoiled and entitled if the Garret she spoke of wasn’t standing there bare-ass naked and bleeding from a dozen claw marks and puncture wounds, with a four-day-old gunshot injury, all of which he’d gotten protecting her.
He heaved a sigh. “We don’t have time to find our hats, Eliza. We need to offload these cattle and get back to the Lazy S. And besides, you see those clouds to the east?”
“The ones way over there,” she asked, pointing.
“Those will be dumping rain on us soon enough.”
“Won’t we need hats to keep the rain out of our faces—”
