Einar watched the girl, pleased and proud of her strength. She'd be a fine wolf, someday. If this didn't break her. But he didn't think it would.
Thinking for a moment, he decided on a story for her. One of a young woman who'd fallen while she walked in the woods, her leg broken far from home. Of how she'd struggled, crawling through the underbrush to get back to her people, only to find they'd moved on to their summer range, thinking her dead when she hadn't returned and the searchers hadn't found her.
Of how she'd stayed in their abandoned village, setting her own leg and never giving up, never giving in to the pain or the loneliness. Living off the land, getting thinner and thinner but also more determined to find the people.
And then, one day, a wolf had come out of the woods, braver than most, and stood at the edge of the cleared land, meeting her eyes for a long moment before he howled, once, a long lonely howl filled with an agony that mirrored her own, a soul-deep longing for his pack.
She had felt a tingle down her spine, and retreated into the hut, shivering, but the wolf hadn't gone away.
That night had been the Full, and with the Full, he'd come to her.
Lonely after the month spent alone in the village that had always been noisy with the laughter of children, she'd gone to him as though in a trance.
Einar glanced at the child, carefully editing it for her age, although not too much. She was on the cusp of womanhood, and not sheltered from the realities of adult relationships.
"Perhaps it was her loneliness. Or perhaps it was fate. She never knew, as she didn't remember it, or how it happened. It's equally likely that Luna gave him a human form. But however it happened, they mated, and she became pregnant, her belly swelling with his cubs.
"But these cubs were special, born to a woman, they had human form, but the Mark of the Beast was on them and when they grew into adulthood, the changed, going in search of their father. And thus, the first of our kind came to be," he said with a smile. "Or so the stories go. But her suffering was a test, set by the Mother and the Crone, to see if she was ready for the mantle she had to bear. Perhaps, Dani, this is your test, and there are great things in store for you, as well."