Page 12 of Rejected Exile

Lance licks his lips. My eyes follow the motion, and a sinful part of me wonders what that mouth would feel like between my thighs. Unfortunately for me, a male like him would never mate with a female like me.

God, I've got to get out of Juniper as soon as possible. This place is going to make me wild over the things I can't have.

"Your father was... more interested in the curse than you might think, Delilah." Lance leans his broad arms on the tabletop. I put all the scrambled eggs into my mouth, trying to counteract the alcohol now hitting my veins. "It was an obsession of his, you might say. The only thing he talked about in the months leading up to his death was the curse. And the only thing he did was research it. I got the feeling he was concerned that if he never fixed it, he had nothing else to live for. Is it possible he was looking for a cure so he could bring you home?"

I cough a little, and swallow the eggs with difficulty. To cover up all the thoughts and emotionsthatbrings up in me, I grab my empty glass and step into the kitchen to fill it with water, then dart back in, drinking quickly and clearing my throat.

"You weren't here when I was exiled," I tell Lance. "So you may not know all the details."

He frowns. "I know some of them, at least I think I do. Like I said, it isn't something no one has discussed."

"You'll forgive me for doubting that." I shoot him a wry smile. "If you knew all the details, I don't think you'd believe for one second that my father was doinganythingto bring me back to the pack."

"What do you mean?"

"He was the one who exiled me."

Lance frowns a little, brows drawn together. "I don't understand. I heard that your mate rejected you—that he refused you during the ceremony, and the pack threw you out. Your father had no choice. The people wouldn't accept you."

"No. He had a choice." I shake my head slowly, the pain like a fist around my chest. "After I was rejected, his mate and his second told him to give me another chance. To pair me with a different intended—let me find a mate who might work."

"The ceremony hadn't started?"

My throat aches. "It couldn't start because I wasn't able to shift."

Five

Lance

"Because I wasn't able to shift."

Those words make me reel back in shock so hard that the legs of my chair come up off the ground slightly, only to fall back when I lean towards the woman sitting across from me.

A woman with soft, glowing skin and thick hair swept up in a ponytail that grazes her curved neck. Whose forest green eyes have a brown chip in the right iris, just at the bottom. With a mouth that curves in a wry smile at the moment—a smile that does nothing to hide her pain.

Just being in the same room makes me feel something. As if there's a slight shift in the axis of the world, tilting the ground beneath us.

Mentally, I go over everything I know about the alpha's daughter. Her mate rejected her—a horrifying, taboo thing to do, though not unheard of. The pack exiled her, which the pack seems to see as tragic but necessary. Pack health depends on healthy bonds with willing mates; a lone wolf, without any kind of family or mate, is like a fly in the ointment.

I should know. Ever since my mate died, I've felt unmoored, like a ship adrift at sea. And that was a shallow, arranged relationship neither of us ever had the chance to settle into. I can only imagine how those who lost their true mates feel—seeing it in their eyes, I feel as if I've never truly known sorrow.

But no one ever told me that the late alpha, William Glass, had a daughter who couldn't shift. Somehow that part of the story always got left out. I thought she was exiled because she was rejected, and that she went to another pack. The shiftless don't get to find a new pack.

Maybe the wolves who told me felt it was too shameful to ever speak of.

"I'm sorry," I tell Delilah, unable to stop myself from awkwardly rubbing the back of my neck, an old habit my mother used to fuss at me about. "I keep putting my foot in my mouth around you, and now it's happened again."

"It's okay."

"I didn't ask to reopen old wounds," I insist, wincing a little at the fact that I did exactly that, intentionally or not. "I shouldn't have talked about your father at all. I had no idea what a fraught relationship it was—he always spoke of you like he thought you'd come home one day."

Delilah reels back like she's been slapped, and I wince inwardly yet again. She recovers quickly, smoothing the emotion down and burying it, which must cost her dearly.

In a bitter voice she mutters, "That's news to me."

"Some things are just hard for people to express aloud," I say hastily, wishing they made bulldozers that could shovel up all the shit that's fallen from my mouth this morning. "I know he cared about you. I guess I just thought—well. He was a man possessed. The curse was the only thing he talked about or thought about, long after most of us had given up ever curing it. I assumed the only reason why he'd be that single-minded was because of love."

"Let's not talk about my father anymore," she says, which is a relief to me, the guy who can't seem to stop picking at things I should leave alone. Her hand briefly goes up to her neck to scratch at a small bump there before she jerks it away suddenly. "I want to talk about the Summit. When is it happening? Who is—who is a contender?"

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