My Mate Cut My Brand Off, So the Outcast Wolf Claimed Me novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Kitchen Wall

Roderick's POV

Einar Reinholt got out of his truck and shook out his shoulders in the sun.

He had his good hat on and both thumbs hooked in his belt, and he was smiling.

I had been smiled at by Einar for fifteen years and had never once felt warmer for it.

I came down out of the barn first with hay in my hair.

Marit came after me, buttoned to the throat, with her sleeves down and her chin up.

Two board men got out behind Einar and stayed by the fender.

Cade stayed in the truck bed with his boots hanging over the tailgate.

"Roderick," Einar said. "Friend. Hell of a morning."

"Einar," I said.

"Just come to see that the stand is honest. It's the Association's duty. Nothing personal."

"Nothing ever is."

He laughed, big and warm, and the board men laughed with him.

"Miss Halvorsen. You look well."

"I'm fine," Marit said.

"Good. Let's see the wrist."

She did not move.

"The law says a cut wolf is stood for," she said. "It says nothing about showing her wrist."

"The law says the Association may satisfy itself the stand is honest."

"Then satisfy yourself that I'm here," she said. "I'm here."

I stood next to her and said nothing.

I knew what the board would find if her sleeve came up, and I could feel the warmth of it from three feet away.

I could smell her.

I could not remember how a woman's scent had ever been plain to me before this week.

Einar's eyes went over her slowly and then moved to me.

He took a long breath through his nose.

I watched the smile stay where it was and the eyes behind it change.

"She smells of you," he said.

"She's under my roof."

"That's one way of saying it."

The younger board man shifted his feet and looked away.

"Einar," the older one said. "She's covered. It's a cut wrist. Leave it."

Einar considered that for a moment.

Then he took off his hat, wiped his forehead and put it back on, and the smile came back as smooth as before.

"All right. I won't be a nuisance. There's a business matter, Roderick, between you and me."

"Say it."

"The Drift goes up the second Thursday in June.

"The cut wolf's cows go with the Halvorsen string under the Reinholt range boss, as the permit says. She'll ride under him."

"No," I said.

"That's the permit," Einar said.

"Then the permit says she rides her own cows," I said. "Under nobody. I'll ride beside her."

"You aren't on the roll to ride."

"My cows are on the permit. Mine go up. So do hers. I ride my own string and she rides beside me."

Einar looked at me for a time.

"Let me say something to you man to man," he said, softly.

"You're thirty-five. You've been alone on that bench half your life.

"Nobody blames you for liking the look of her."

I said nothing.

"There's a seat on the hay buyers' group that your father lost in 2010. I could see it back.

"There's a place at the Association table, and the water talk we've put off for fifteen years."

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