Still, it meant a lot to her that he'd done it. And she'd offer it back, but if his people were like hers, that would be the ultimate insult. When a gift was made, it was from the heart. To return it was a rejection.
And this man had been rejected enough.
"Thank you, Ren."
He inclined his head to her, then returned to cutting a path for them through the woods.
"Ren? Can I ask you something?"
He paused to look back at her. "Have you not been doing that since we met?"
"Yeah, but this is personal."
"More personal than asking about my gift or age? Or if I was a demon? I shudder with dread over the possibilities."
She smiled at his sarcasm. "Fine. Does the name Makah'Alay mean anything to you?"
He hissed as his grip on his club slipped and he narrowly missed hitting himself with it. "Where did you hear that name?"
Kateri hesitated. Talk about personal. Admitting she'd seen him in her dreams for years was kind of creepy. Could that be considered a form of stalking? She hadn't done it intentionally. Still ...
Oh c'mon, Teri. Every friggin' thing about this is creepy. He was creepy.
Might he have the power to walk in her dreams? He was old ... and he was as paranormal as anything could be. It was possible that he'd been the one to make her dream those things.
Hoping for the best, she opted for the truth. "I've seen visions of you, but in them you're always called Makah'Alay."
Ren couldn't breathe as he heard that. Why would she dream of him? Dreams had great power. They were the key to all creation.
To all life.
If he saw visions of her and she saw them of him, then that meant they were tied together.
Intimately.
Was she the tool the Grizzly would use in this time and place to destroy him? It was the only thing that made sense. It would explain how she knew his name and why he'd been warned about her.
Whatever he did, he couldn't let his guard down where she was concerned. She was his assassin.
"And in these visions ... what does Makah'Alay do?"
She didn't flinch or hesitate with her response. "Usually, he kills me."
"Have no fear, ta'hu'la. I would never kill you. It's forbidden."
"Forbidden by whom?"
"The one who owns me. I came back to this life to protect humans, not harm them. So long as you're with me, I will give my life for yours. As for Makah'Alay, he died a long time ago."
That seemed to placate her. "So what does ta'hu'la mean?"
"Little one."
Kateri felt heat rush over her face at his endearment. She wasn't the kind of woman who normally brought that out in a man. And definitely not in one who looked like Ren. Heck, her own lab assistant, who wasn't that much younger than her, couldn't even call her by her nickname. Wanting to cover her embarrassment, she returned to their former conversation. "I interrupted your story. You were telling me about the Pleiades. I take it Merope rallied her troops?"
"Sterope," he corrected. "Merope is actually her sister, who married Sisyphus."
"And people wondered why I had a C average in the one Classical Studies class I took in college. Who can keep all these names straight?"
"There are many who would argue that the Greek is easier to pronounce and remember than our names."
"Yeah, well, those are people who weren't raised with our writing system ... which is different than yours, isn't it?"
"It is. Ours was more like the Maya. Glyph based."
Kateri's mind reeled at that. "Wait ... the stone that was sent to me." The one that was fourteen thousand years old. "It had strange writing on it with something that appeared to be Greek."
"Not Greek. And not Mayan. Keetoowah. But you're getting ahead of the story."
"Sorry. Back to the Greek confusion. I take it our ... Ope woman rallied her troops to help the Keetoowah fight off their attackers."
He wiped the sweat off his forehead with his arm. "Not until after she made a bargain with the chief's son."
Ooo, this was getting good. "Which was?"