"I don't accept you" — he shouted it in front of everyone novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Border Strip

"Eight," Celia said.

Nobody in the mill moved.

I looked at Jasper's gray face, and the cap against his lips, and I knew exactly what she wanted.

She wanted me to fold.

She wanted me to stand up at noon and call myself a liar, so the lot and the Hall and every wolf who had watched me say the words would learn she had been right all along.

"No," I said.

Celia's mouth tightened.

"Seven."

"If you pour it, every person here watches you do it," I said. "Clover has the whole mill on her phone."

"Phones go in the river."

"Then you'll have to put it there in front of the Seer's witness."

The older witness stood against the wall with his hands open and said nothing.

He did not have to.

He was the Seer's eyes, and Celia knew it.

"Imogen." My father's voice came out low and rough. "Say it."

"No."

"Say it, and this stops. I will see you home. I will see you unharmed."

"You slapped me in the lot," I said. "I'm not going home."

"Six," said Celia.

Her hand shook.

It was only the smallest tremor, but I saw it.

Ezra stepped forward.

He did not look at me.

He looked at my father.

"Dunstan," he said. "The east bank."

My father's head came around.

"What?"

"The river strip. Every deed Black Fork holds on the east bank, from the ford to the old bridge. Your fathers have asked mine for it for forty years, and you have asked me for it for ten."

"Ezra," I said.

"It's yours," Ezra said. "Signed here, on the mill floor, in front of the Seer's witness. If Jasper Penhallow walks out of this building alive."

The mill was very quiet.

I saw my father's eyes change.

It was a small shift, a flicker.

Greed.

I had seen it a hundred times at the dinner table when the Beta talked about land.

"There is no marriage in it," Ezra said. "No treaty. No promise from Imogen. She owes Black Fork nothing, and she owes me less."

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