Chapter 24: The Mark

"It fits," I said, and Finlay grinned and threw himself at my middle so hard that I sat down in the dirt.

Hamish put his hand over his mouth.

I saw his shoulders shake, and I did not look at him, because I would have gone to pieces.

Two weeks later, on the night of the full moon, I stood in the cedar ring above the pack house in a plain white dress.

The pack stood around us, two hundred strong, with their sleeves pushed up.

Dot stood among them in a black jacket with a crab embroidered on the back, and Linnea stood beside her with a lit candle.

Finlay sat on the eldest elder's knee in the front row, in a bow tie he had insisted on.

Hamish waited in the center of the ring, bare to the waist.

The black letters of my name stood out across his chest in the moonlight.

I walked across the grass to him.

"Say what you came to say," the eldest elder called.

"I came to choose him," I said. "In the open, with my eyes on him. Nobody gave me to him, and nobody made me come."

"Then take what's yours."

I put my hand on Hamish's chest, on the name.

"Look at me," I said.

He looked.

"I'm not forgiving you tonight," I said, loud enough for the ring to hear.

"I've been forgiving you a little at a time since March, and I'm not done."

"I know."

"I'm choosing you anyway. Every day, if I have to."

I turned to the ring of faces.