My Mate Was Buried at Christmas, So His Three Brothers Claimed Me novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Sugar
We were married in the sugar shack on a Saturday in April.
The last run of sap boiled in the pan, and the doors stood propped open to the sun.
There were five of us.
Memere sat at the head of the maple table in her wheelchair, in black lace older than my mother, with a blanket across her knees.
The three of them stood in a row in clean white shirts, with their hair wet-combed.
Remy's hands shook.
Alexis kept grinning and trying to stop.
Hugo had written something on a card and held it against his chest in both hands.
I wore a green sweater, the one from the pack school, because Hugo had written it down.
"Be quiet, all of you," Memere said. "I am ninety-one. I will not wait for you to cry."
Nobody laughed, and everybody did.
She raised one thin hand.
"The old Claim," she said, "says a widow goes to her mate's brothers, and they keep her."
Her eyes passed over the four of us.
"Today the brothers go to the widow. This is the older way, from before the Claim was made a custom."
She looked at each of the three in turn.
"I say it in the old words, and in French, so that no man can forget."
She said the old words.
They were slow and strange, a language that was nearly French and nearly something far older.
Then she said them plainly.
"Remy. Alexis. Hugo. Do you come to her of your own will?"
"I do," said Remy.
"I do," Alexis said, and his voice cracked.
"I do," whispered Hugo.
"Mireille Desrosiers. Do you take them?"
"I take them," I said. "All three. And I keep my name."
"You keep your name," said Memere. "A woman who holds three is named for none of them. Give them your hands."
Alexis had carved the rings from maple, three of them, oiled and dark.
Each of them slid one onto my finger in turn, and I slid a ring onto theirs, and the wood was warm.
Hugo read his card out loud, in a voice that shook.
It said that he had written me down for six years.
It said he would write me down for sixty more, and he would never again stand in a hall.
Remy choked up, unable to say another word.
Alexis said that the bench was wider, and Memere told him to sit down.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Mate Was Buried at Christmas, So His Three Brothers Claimed Me are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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