Chapter 23: Marked

The river wolves gave the Mark by the fire on the bank, the way they had for a thousand years.

They lit it at dusk, in a ring of river stones, and ninety wolves stood around it in the cold.

Rory slept in a basket on a bench beside the flames, wrapped to his nose in wool.

The healer sat next to him with her knitting and pretended to be bored.

Bram stood in front of me.

He wore no jacket, and the firelight ran over his shoulders and the long white scar.

"Morven Colquhoun," he said.

His voice was steady, but his hands weren't.

"The river gave you to me.

I didn't take you from it.

I'm asking you now, in front of my pack.

Will you be my mate?"

"Yes," I said.

The word went through the crowd.

Somebody whooped.

Somebody else started to laugh.

I took his face in my hands and kissed him in front of all of them.

He kissed me back with his whole body.

When we broke apart, the healer was dabbing her eyes with a ball of yarn.

"Take your son," I said to her, "and go to bed."

"I wasn't crying."

"I know."

She picked up Rory's basket and walked toward the cottage, humming.

The pack drifted off in pairs and threes.

In ten minutes we were alone in the lodge, with the fire banked low in the front room.

Bram stood in the middle of the floor and looked at me.

"I don't know how to do this," he said. "I've never done it."

"Then we'll learn it together."

I walked to him and slid my hands up his chest.

I pulled him down onto the rug in front of the hearth.

The fire threw gold across his skin, and I stripped the shirt from him.

He undressed me in the firelight with trembling hands, slowly.

When I lay on the rug, bare to the warmth, he stopped and just looked.

"Mine," he said, hoarse.

"Yours."

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