He Bred My Sister, So I Chose the Man He Fears novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Den

He carried me up the ridge the next morning on snowshoes, in a sled coat, with a pack of furs on his back.

I could have walked.

I did not want to.

I sat in the crook of his arm and watched the lake fall away below us, white and flat in the low sun.

For the first time in my life, nobody on earth was waiting for me to say something true.

The den was a mile up, under the roots of a spruce that had come down in some old storm.

The hollow behind the roots was the size of a small room.

Its walls were packed dirt and woven root, and its floor was deep with furs.

He had lined it years ago, he said.

He had slept there once or twice as a boy, before his father took him north.

"It smells of you," I said.

"It's the oldest place I have."

I put my face in the nearest fur and breathed.

Cold river.

Cedar smoke.

The warm earth of a den in January.

I read it without trying, every layer of it, and I could not stop smiling.

He knelt in the fur beside me and took my face in his hands.

"I'm sorry," he said. "For the nine nights. I'll say it every day if you want."

"Don't say it every day."

"What do you want?"

"Say it once, and then lie down," I said.

He lay down.

I sat on his stomach and took off my coat, my sweater and my shirt.

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