My Mate Cut My Brand Off, So the Outcast Wolf Claimed Me novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Hot Water

Marit's POV

The hot spring lay in a pocket of willows below the Reimer bench, with a rock rim his grandfather had laid by hand.

Steam rose off it into the first real snow of the year.

Rod had carried a lantern and two blankets down the path and hung the lantern from a willow branch.

The flakes fell through its light, slow and fat, and melted on the black water.

I stood on the flat stone at the edge in my wool coat with my braid over one shoulder.

I had never in my life been so warm and so cold at once.

"Nobody comes here," he said.

"Not even you?" I said.

"I came here to think, as a boy. I haven't been in it since my father died."

"Then we'll be the first."

I took off the coat.

I took off everything else, one piece at a time.

I laid it on a rock under the lantern while the snow landed on my bare shoulders.

He watched, and did not hurry me.

He undressed beside me and we went down the slick stone steps into the water together.

It was hot enough to make me gasp.

It came up my shins, my knees, my hips, and I sank to my neck with a groan I could not stop.

He sank beside me, and the two of us breathed the steam.

"You said something in the yard," I said.

"I said a lot of things," he said.

"You said 'God help me, I've held since your father's funeral.'"

"I did."

"I want to say the rest of it properly," I said. "Just us. Before anyone else gets to say it for us."

He turned in the water to face me.

I took his left hand, palm up, and held it between mine.

The silver crescent shone under the lantern.

"I hold you, Roderick Reimer," I said. "Not off a page. Not by an iron. By my own say, and I'll say it again every morning."

My voice was steady, and I was shaking.

"Nothing's owed," I said. "I'm paying anyway."

His eyes were wet.

He took my left wrist in his big hand and kissed the old cut.

He kissed the mark under it, and the bites he had left there.

"I hold you, Marit Halvorsen," he said. "I stood for you a year and a day, and I'll stand for you the rest.

"I'll fight your water and feed your cows and keep your father's chair at the head of the table.

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