Chapter 21: The Week He Promised

Bram's POV

I carried her up the ridge in the dark with her face against my neck.

She said she could walk.

I told her to be quiet.

Behind us, the hall was still full of her mother's voice.

I ask the Alpha's judgment on myself.

"At dawn," the Alpha had said, and Rosalind had said nothing about it since.

"She'll be judged, and I have to stand there," she said into my collar.

"Not tonight," I said.

The house was cold, and I lit nothing.

I put her down on the edge of my bed and knelt.

I took her chin in my hand and turned her face to the window.

Linnet's claws had cut three lines down her left cheek, and they were already closing.

"It'll scar," I said.

"Good."

"Rosalind."

"I want it. I want to look in a mirror and see that she's gone and I'm still here."

I put my mouth on the first line, very lightly.

She shivered.

All night my hands had shaken.

Now they were steady.

I had watched her kill a man with a knife.

I had watched her take a blade out of the air with her bare hands.

I was so proud of her my chest hurt.

I was also afraid, in a plain, ugly way, that I would never be enough for what she was.

"Stop thinking," she said.

"I'm not."

"You are. I can feel it through the mark." She took my wrist and pulled my hand down between her legs, over her jeans.

"Think about this."

I stopped thinking.

I undid her jeans with one hand and got them down to her knees, and she kicked them off.

She was already soaked through her underwear.

"Fuck," I said, and my voice came out rough.

"Yes," she said. "That."

I tore the underwear off and put two fingers inside her, and she gasped and clamped around them.

"You're so wet for me."

"I've been wet for you since the river."

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