The Alpha Crowned the Orphan, So Both His Betas Followed Me Out novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Ford

I took Tobe's wrist in both hands, and this time I meant it.

The Buffalo ran gray and slow below us in the first light, with mist standing on the water.

The ford lay just downstream, where the gravel shelved into the current.

Tobe knelt on the quilt in front of me with his shirt off and his breath smoking.

A fire cracked on the gravel bar behind us, and Jubal knelt by it with the leather band already in his hand.

"I chose you," I said.

I said it before either of them could speak.

Tobe's whole face stopped.

"Not the fever," I said. "Not a girl half drowned. Me. Awake. On purpose."

I set my mouth on the old half-moon scar and bit down.

I felt the marks open under my teeth, each tooth finding its own small pit.

I bit harder, until he drew a hard breath through his nose.

The taste was river water and salt and old copper, and this time it did not hit me from behind.

It rose up to meet me.

The bond woke in my chest all at once, and I felt his pulse in my own mouth, slow and enormous and going faster.

I felt his hands, and I felt the wanting in them, and under that eight years of something so patient it ached.

"Tobe," I said, against the wound. "Mine."

His big hand closed on the back of my head, gently, and his chin dropped to the top of it.

I heard him say my name once, in a voice I had never heard out of him.

When I let go there were small red crescents on his skin, and his eyes were wet.

"I thought," he said, thickly. "I thought you'd want it gone."

"I want it kept."

I turned on my knees.

Jubal had come over from the fire, and he stood waiting with his sleeves rolled to the elbow, which I had never seen.

He held out his left wrist, bare, with the scar white against his freckled skin.

"You said," he said, and his voice trembled. "I told you I would."

"I chose you," I said. "I chose you too, Jubal. I'd have chosen you at the market, with the apple man."

"Say it again."

"I chose you."

He laughed, and it broke in the middle.

I bit his wrist.

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