The Body-Swapped Heiress Returns as the Alpha's Mate novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Border Stone

Jasper and Darren cross the border to take her home; she says yes to the Crowe alpha in front of both packs and he marks her.

They came down the north road in two trucks with their headlights on full.

Mathias had not called anyone, but by the time the engines stopped, twenty Crowe wolves stood in the trees behind me.

They did not make a sound.

I could feel them there at my back.

Jasper got out of the first truck and came to the border stone with his hands open and his easy smile in place.

Darren was a step behind him with a blanket over his arm.

Six Redfern wolves in human shape spread out along the verge.

"Val," Darren said, and his voice cracked on my name. "Thank God. Come here, love. You're freezing."

He held the blanket out.

I looked at the dimple in his cheek, the one I had kissed on the day he proposed.

"Don't call me that," I said.

"You're confused." He said it kindly, and he said it to the Crowe wolves as much as to me. "Odette has been running a fever for two days. It makes her say things. She thinks she's my fiancée."

The Crowe wolves shifted behind me.

"I'm Valerie," I said, loudly enough for all of them to hear. "I'm in Odette's body. Darren knows it, and Jasper knows it, and I stood outside the study tonight and heard them say the swap can't be undone."

Jasper laughed.

It was a warm, tired, brotherly sound.

"You see?" he said to Mathias. "She's been like this since yesterday. We've had the doctor. She walks in her sleep and she talks about a witch. Please, Alpha. She's a sick girl and she's my cousin. Give her back to us."

"You said you'd keep me off the scent," I said to Darren. "You said the pack would see Valerie Redfern at the altar and nobody would question it."

Darren's eyes did not change.

"Sweetheart," he said, "I haven't said anything like that."

I wanted to hit him.

Odette's arms were too thin for it. I knew it, and so did he.

"Darren," I said. "The day you proposed, you gave me a ring that was your mother's. You told me you'd cut your hand on the garden gate. You hid it from your father for a week."

For one breath his smile slipped.

Then he turned to Jasper and shook his head in sorrow.

"She could have heard that from anyone," he said. "Odette was in the house."

"Of course she was," Jasper said. "Look at her, Darren. Look at her wrist."

I looked down.

The silver mark glowed under my sleeve, and Jasper was staring at it.

He did not look surprised.

He seemed prepared for it, only irritated by the timing.

I noticed it, and I was too angry and too tired to ask myself why.

"That's a rash," Jasper said, with his eyes still on my wrist. "She's feverish. Take her home, Darren."

Darren stepped forward and took hold of my arm.

His hand was warm.

I had once thought it was the safest hand in the world.

"Let go of her," Mathias said.

He had not raised his voice.

Darren let go, because every Crowe wolf in the trees had taken one step out of the dark at the same time.

Mathias came and stood beside me.

He did not touch me.

"Mate-claim," he said, to Jasper, in front of both packs. "She carries my mark. Under pack law, a mate-claim outranks a kin-claim, and you know it."

"A mark can be forged," Jasper said. "And she's engaged to another man."

"Then let her say so."

He turned to me.

His eyes were steady, and I thought about the long road back, and the study door, and the soft voice that had said, any excuse will do.

"Valerie," Mathias said. "Do you want to go home with them?"

I had been the heiress of the Redfern pack for twenty-four years.

I looked at my brother, and at the man I had been going to marry, and I thought of my own body sitting at the dinner table with its feet on a chair.

"No," I said.

"Then tell me what you want."

I could hear my own heartbeat in Odette's weak chest.

"I want protection," I said. "I want a witness. And I want them to know I said yes."

"Say it."

"Yes," I said. "I claim the Crowe alpha as my mate, in front of both packs."

A low sound went through the trees as the Crowe wolves answered.

Mathias took my face in both his hands.

He kissed me.

His mouth was hot and hard, and it tasted of snow and smoke.

I grabbed his wrists, and I did not push him away.

The silver line in my arm blazed.

Then his lips moved from my mouth to the side of my throat, and down to the curve of my shoulder where the coat had slipped.

"This will hurt," he said against my skin.

"Do it."

His teeth closed.

The pain was bright, and then it was not pain.

It was warmth that ran down my arm and into my chest and settled somewhere under my ribs.

When he lifted his head, my knees would not hold me, and his arm was already around my waist.

All around us, the Crowe wolves began to howl.

Jasper stood very still in the headlights.

"Then the wedding will be witnessed by your pack, Alpha," he said, smiling. "Moonrise, on the full moon, at the Redfern lodge. Come and watch Valerie Redfern marry."

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