Chapter 7: The Crowe Hall

By noon the whole Crowe pack was in the great hall.

They had come from the sawmill and the farms on the ridge.

They stood three deep along the walls.

I sat in a chair beside Mathias's at the head of the room.

I wore a clean sweater of his that came to my knees.

I had slept for two hours.

"She's a Redfern," said the man standing in front of us.

He was Mathias's beta, broad and grey at the temples, and he had not looked at me once.

"Say it plainly," Mathias said.

"Last night you marked a girl we've never seen."

"She came across the river with Jasper Redfern's trucks behind her."

"The Redferns have wanted our stone for forty years. Now their sick cousin walks in, and our alpha bites her in front of the whole border."

"She's my mate."

"She's a plant."

A murmur ran along the wall.

I stood up.

My legs were still weak.

I had stood up in front of fifty families before, in my own lodge, in my own skin.

"I'm not a plant," I said.

"Then what are you?"

"Valerie Redfern, in Odette Fossum's body."

"My brother and my fiancé swapped us for their own reasons."

"That's a story."

"It is," I said. "I'd like to show you the proof."

The beta folded his arms.

"Odette Fossum can't shift," I said. "She never could."

"Anyone who hunted the border knows the Redfern cousin was a human-born girl who stayed at the house."

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