Chapter 14: The Mark

The Alpha sent the pack to their lodges with four fighters on every door.

Bram's house stood at the top of the ridge, and it had six.

"Rest," his father told us at the gate. "The ceremony stands for dusk tomorrow. Harlan will come for it, and I want you both on your feet."

He looked at Bram a moment longer.

"Don't leave the house."

"We won't."

The door shut behind us, and the house was dark and warm and smelled of cedar and him.

I stood in the hall with my hands hanging.

I had washed the guard's blood off them at the pump, and they still looked dirty.

"Rosalind."

"I watched a man die," I said. "I knelt there, and I was relieved it wasn't you."

"That's allowed."

"Is it?"

He walked up to me and took my wrists and turned my hands over.

He kissed the inside of the left one.

The pull I had been fighting for two days hit me so hard my knees went.

"Bram."

"I know."

"I don't want to talk."

"Good," he said roughly. "Neither do I."

He picked me up.

I wrapped my legs around his waist, and he carried me up the stairs with my mouth already on his throat.

He kicked his bedroom door shut.

He set me on the edge of the bed and knelt and pulled my boots off, one and then the other, and threw them across the room.

"I've wanted to do this since the night the pack named you my mate," he said. "I waited until you'd chosen."

"I'm choosing."

I dragged his torn shirt off his shoulders.

His chest was scraped raw where the rogue's claws had caught him, and I put my mouth on the scratches, and he swore.

"Take your shirt off."

I did.

He looked at me for one long breath, and then he put his mouth on my breast and sucked hard.

I arched into him and gripped his hair.

"Yes. Like that."

His hand went down my stomach and into my jeans.

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