Page 4 of Exiled Mate

She stills. “Tell me more, my darling girl.”

I pull back slightly so I’m looking at her face. The little line between her eyes is pinched together, the green in them muted.

I suck in a breath. “I swear I can still feel him sometimes. Like, if I’m out in the woods or doing stuff that we would have done together. I swear that he’s still there.”

“He’s not there, though, my love,” she murmurs.

I screw my eyes shut. I know the pain that’s going to come. It’s familiar to me, but it fucking hurts every single time.

This is the thing. Every time that I think about Rylan, every single moment where I feel like his presence is still whispering at the edges of my consciousness, this awful, hard reality comes up. This is why it doesn’t feel like I’m moving on, or like I’m going through those stages of grief.

Every time I think that he’s there, I have to face the truth again.

I have to realize that the man that I loved most in the world, the one that I had known would be my mate… none of that is going to happen for me. No matter how much I think that he’s there, no matter how often I feel him, it’s all in my head. The hard, ugly truth is something else entirely.

Rylan James is dead.

Chapter 2

Rylan

I’ve spent two years watching Terra cry, knowing that I either caused the tears or can’t fix them, and I can’t do it anymore.

I know that I should be spending my time watching Chet, so that I can figure out a way to show the alpha what he’s up to, but instead, I’m here. Looking at her. Looking from a distance as the people I care about enjoy their lives.

Without me.

Watching the mating ceremony from a distance, I spend most of it relieved that Terra isn’t the one up there with Zander, until I notice that Terra’s approximately five seconds from bursting into tears. When she goes into her apartment, I’m sure that’s what happens.

After that, at her mom’s cabin at the edge of the woods, I can hear her cry when I’m in my wolf form. It makes me want to howl with rage.

All because of fucking Chet Rifkin and his chokehold on the alpha’s trust.

I guess that I have Thorne to thank for the fact that I’ve just been banished from the pack and I’m not actually dead, which would have been Chet’s preferred outcome.

Thorne’s mercy is the only reason that I’m standing here today, but maybe it’s not so merciful after all if I’m stuck watching Terra suffer over and over again.

I guess that, in a month, it won’t matter. I’ll be thirty then, and I won’t be able to shift, much less be included in the pack. I would happily let myself fade into the human world, except recently, I found out that Chet is back to his bullshit again.

The same shit that got me exiled. Shit that I didn’t do. I didn’t know it at the time, though. Money went missing from the pack, and Chet accused me of stealing it. The alpha believed him, and I was exiled.

I didn’t take that money, and I’m sure that he was the one who did all those years ago…

Because he did it again.

Chet, it turns out, is a gambling addict. His old man used to roll with the alpha’s old man, and together, they racked up a ton of debt. Chet made a big show of turning over a new leaf when the old alpha died, but I know that he’s been appropriating pack funds and using them to place bets on fights. Fights that never should happen to begin with.

Shifters do their best to shy away from portraying themselves as beasts in the magical world. The magical community looks down on us as it is, so giving in to our more animalistic tendencies is not good politics for any of us.

So, using pack funds to bet on fights between shifters and other magic users in illegal fight rings? Definitely a big no, especially for an alpha like Thorne, who is trying to rehabilitate his pack and his image.

I need to let him know. I’m hopeful that in the process, I can clear my name, but more than that, I need the alpha to find out in order to keep the pack from going under.

Because Terra loves the pack. No matter how I feel about Thorne believing Chet over me, I know that Terra wants to be with Oakwood.

So, I have to tell Thorne. For Terra.

Now, watching her leave the little greenhouse on her mom’s property, I give myself just a second to take in her beauty.

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