Chapter 22: The Offer

Mathias's POV

She fell asleep in the truck on the way back.

I carried her up the stairs of the Crowe lodge myself, with my shoulder open under the shirt.

Nobody asked if I needed help.

I laid her on the bed in my room.

Then I opened the bottom drawer of the old chest and took out the thing I had kept there for seven years.

It was a length of red wool, worn thin, with a letter R stitched at one end.

The wire had cut a notch in it.

I sat on the bed and held it, and watched her breathe.

She woke before midnight.

"You're bleeding through the bandage," she said.

"It's nothing."

"Take it off."

"Valerie."

"Take it off, Mathias, or I will."

I took off my shirt.

She sat up and looked at the new tears in my shoulder, and said nothing, and put her palm over them.

Warmth went through the skin.

I had never felt the bond do that before.

"Does it hurt?" she said.

"Not anymore."

She looked down.

The scarf lay on the quilt between us.

She went very still.

"You still have it," she said.

"I told you I did."

"You told me you took it in your teeth. You didn't say you kept it."

"It was all I had of you." I picked it up and held it out.

"It's yours. I've wanted to give it back since you walked over my border."

She did not take it.

"What's the offer?" she said.

"What?"

"You're about to ask me for something. I can see it on you."

I laughed, because she was right.

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