I Don't Need No Alpha Brothers novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The Mark

Keir didn't move for a second.

Then the corner of his mouth went up, slow.

"Took you long enough," he said.

"It's been a month."

"Longest month of my life."

Behind me, somebody on the benches laughed, surprised, and then a few more did.

It wasn't the laugh from the Choosing.

It was the sound a room makes when it remembers it's allowed to be happy.

"I'm not choosing you as your Luna," I said.

"I know."

"I'm choosing you as mine."

His eyes went dark, just around the edges.

"Say it again," he said.

"You heard me."

"I want two hundred Brodie wolves to hear you."

"Keir Scanlon," I said, louder, "you're mine."

He put both hands on my face, the way he had in his kitchen the first night.

Then he kissed me in the doorway of the Larch Ridge hall, in front of everybody, and I let him.

Out in the road, eighty Black Fork wolves started to howl.

Gran was the loudest, a seventy-eight-year-old woman in rubber boots with her head thrown back.

When I could breathe again, she was standing next to us with Lorne by the hood of her loud truck.

"This one's sleeping at my house," she said, pointing at Lorne. "Nobody's sleeping in that burned loft tonight."

"I could sleep in the burned loft," Lorne said.

"Nobody," Gran said, "is sleeping in that loft tonight, beanpole."

Lorne looked at me, then at Keir.

He turned bright red.

"Oh," he said. "Oh. Yeah. Gran's house."

"Get in the truck."

He got in the truck.

The fork was dark when we got there.

Half a house against the stars.

The front room was still standing, the woodstove, my parents' table with its short leg, the doorframe with my marks.

The blue door stood at the back, scorched black around the edges.

Keir built the fire.

I watched him crouch in front of the woodstove, feeding it split larch, the light coming up on his face.

He'd washed the blood off in the creek on the way.

I hadn't.

I didn't care.

"You gave it up," I said.

He didn't turn around.

"Gave what up?"

"The fork. In front of three Alphas. Forever."

"It's not mine to give. You said so in front of three Alphas."

"Your father died wanting it."

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