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Lenny, thankfully, only smirked at her. “Cookie was someone in my tribe. He was trying to protect our horses from something that had been eating them, and one night, he got bit by a wolf. My family found him the next morning. He had froth at his mouth, and his eyes were rolled back in his head. They brought him into our home and ran to find the…what do you call him? Doctor? Only before he could get there, Cookie disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” she asked.
“He turned into a wolf. I was frozen, couldn’t move. So scared. I remember my sister screaming for me to run.” Lenny shook her head. “I didn’t know how to move my legs anymore. Cookie was known by another name.”
“What name?”
“Son of the Wolf.”
Chills rippled up Eliza’s arms. “Was his father called the Wolf?”
“No. No one knew why his mother named him that. Not until I saw him as the wolf. I knew. It was his destiny to walk in two skins. And when he bit me, I knew it would be my destiny too.”
“How old were you?” she asked, mortified.
Lenny shrugged. “I don’t know. You celebrate birthdays. We do not. It was maybe ten years ago.”
Eliza stared at her, horrified. “You were just a girl.”
“A girl with a protector.”
“Cookie?” she guessed.
Lenny nodded once. “My family didn’t know what to do, and the tribe was talking about skinwalkers. After my first Change, no one knew what to do with us. There was talk of putting us down so we didn’t bring shame and bad luck to our people. Cookie took me in the night.”
“He…took you?”
“He had packed provisions for both of us, and he swore to spend every breath keeping me safe as repayment for what he’d done to me. I knew it wasn’t his fault, but my head was so wild in the early days. I couldn’t control the animal. I didn’t want to bite my sisters on accident, like Cookie had done to me. I could see his guilt. I didn’t want that at all, so I went with him. We lived in the woods for many moons, until one night he woke me up and told me of a vision he had.”
“What vision?” Eliza asked, enthralled with her story.
“He said I would settle with a white man.”
Eliza’s eyes went wide. “What?” she whispered.
“I was angry at him for talking like that, but he believed it. He’s never stopped believing it. Said the man I settle with will support the last great chief, because of his time with me.”
Chills, chills, chills.
“You speak very highly of Garret,” Eliza murmured, testing. “Did you ever think he was the one you were supposed to choose?”
Lenny gawked at her like she had sprouted antlers. “No. Garret is too moody. Too broken. I’ll let you deal with him. I want a happy man.” Her voice took on a dreamy quality. “One who smiles a lot.”
“Like Burke?” One glance at the shock on Lenny’s face, and she was sure she’d guessed right. “Burke? But he is such a scoundrel!”
Lenny laughed and nodded in agreement. “And he needs a shave, and he sees me as one of the men.”
“I daresay he would be a fetching man without the beard,” she conceded. His kind, wolf-bright eyes were handsomely shaped, and his happy disposition did make his smile all the more appealing. “And I’m sure he doesn’t see you as one of the men. From a distance, yes, your pants could throw one off, but up close you couldn’t ever be mistaken for a man. Your face is much too fair,” she said with a nod.
“Garret.”
“What?” Eliza asked, confused.
Lenny tilted her head toward the barely-visible house in the distance. Garret was headed their way on foot.
“Oh. Right. Garret.”
When Garret reached them, he took Buck’s reins and pulled him to a stop. He nodded at Lenny, and she rode ahead.
