Page 17 of Rejected Exile

The father who raised me had so much affection for every single person in Juniper, down on their luck or otherwise. He went to the ends of the earth and back just to help them up on their feet.

Yet he exiled his own daughter without even considering it. Rebuffed whatever attempts Queenie and Niall weakly made to suggest another solution. And didn't even so much as give me another thought. All I got from him was an envelope of cash that was stolen within hours of second-in-command dumping me on the side of the road.

I wish he'd loved me as much as he clearly loved all these strangers.

As the bitterness fills me, so does my car, full of everything I could need including an icebox stuffed with frozen food. Then I spot the liquor store in the square. I only really have time for one more errand before I have to get home and stuff my groceries in the freezer, and I really should head to the city courthouse to get the public records I need on Dad's place. But I want a big bottle of gin and a case of wine more than I want to stare at more swimming ink.

Mind made up, I turn the wheel and pull into the liquor store parking lot. It's pretty empty this time of day; five o'clock hasn't passed yet, so the townies are mostly at their jobs, not picking up booze.

Heading inside, I'm relieved to find an unfamiliar face behind the counter. No one assaults me with a tear-jerking story as I head down the aisles with a shopping cart and grab things at random. Finally, I'm alone with my thoughts, and my growing, bitter anger.

Justified bitter anger.

Cat would say that I shouldn't hold it inside me. That I should let my feelings out—probably by journaling them—and reallyfeelthe anger. She claims that's the best way to let it go, so it doesn't eat at you.

Well, I've tried feeling all that anger I hold for my father. More than once I've stewed in it hoping it would go away. While it's faded, it's never really died. Being back here, without him around to yell at or cry in front of oranythingworsens it.

As I grab an aged tequila bottle off the top shelf, tears sting my eyes.

"It isn't fair," I mutter beneath my breath. "He lovedeveryonebut me."

This is the part where the little girl inside me who was rocked to sleep by her father and held while she cried insists there must be a reason. A deeply buried, well-hidden reason. That little girl wants to believe that Lance is right, and my father was trying to cure the blood rot and reverse the curse, so I could come home. But I was exiled years before this curse ever took hold, if what he says is true, so the two can't be connected.

I was exiled because I couldn't shift. Because I don't have that essential part inside me. And while my father can love humans who don't shift—would even probably help out a werewolf who's shiftless—he couldn't bring himself to love adaughtermissing that essential piece.

Feeling sorry for myself, I put enough bottles of liquor into my cart to eat away half a paycheck. The bar cabinet in the dining room is empty, I tell myself. People will want to come by to have drinks and reminisce about the dead alpha. I'll need to have something on hand. Truthfully, I'm just aimlessly searching for something here that will make me forget what happened to me.

As I stray near a section in the back with strange, small bottles of clear liquor, a voice startles me. "Yuja is the best chamisul flavor. Some people like the plum, but I think it's too sweet."

Whirling around, I blink up into cool brown eyes that light up a face curved with a wicked smile. A tall man with honey brown skin stands in front of me, his fashionably cut black hair shiny and sleek as it curves behind his ears. He has slightly delicate features and a strong jaw, his monolid eyes topped with thick black brows.

Plus he's absolutely fucking gorgeous. A stunning lovechild of Jesse Williams and Henry Golding. He looks like he should be wearing a suit and posing on the red carpet, not standing in a liquor store in the middle of Juniper. In fact, the seemingly casual outfit he's wearing, of dark-washed blue jeans and a black button-up, somehow screams style in its simplicity. I get the sense that he knows the difference between a single and double-breasted suit jacket.

I can't seem to find words to say to him. Especially when I realize I'm standing here with seven—no, eight, for fuck's sake—handles of liquor in my cart.

"This isn't all for me," I blurt out, like some kind of goddamned idiot. For some reason this makes the man grin so widely I nearly fall over in stunned attraction to him. "I'm, uh, having a party. Well, more like a wake. A—a respectful wake! Err, or, well, a drunk one..."

Stop now, Delilah. He's never going to want to see you naked. Hell, he probably didn't before you opened your mouth. The man is just being nice to you—he knows you're having a mental breakdown in a liquor store.

Or if he didn't before, he does now.

"Don't worry about it. I never judge how much a lady is purchasing in alcohol sales." Turning to the shelf, the man draws his finger across several bottles covered in writing I don't recognize, and stops at one with a painting of a blueberry and brush script on it. "If you're looking for something that'll get you fucked up without you even noticing you're drinking alcohol, this is the stuff. Just be warned—it's not that alcoholic seltzer they sell around here. It's far more potent."

"What... is it?"

"Soju. A Korean rice wine." He grabs two of the small bottles and places them in my cart, where they clink against all the other bottles. I cringe and wish for a trap door to open up in the ground beneath me. "That should get your respectful wake going quite nicely."

"Uh—thanks." Lamely, I admit, "I'm not really having a wake. Well, I probably will—whether I want to or not—I'm just kind of prepared for it to happen one way or another."

"Gotcha." He rocks back on his heels, watching me idly, until I start to wonder if there's something on my face. "Sorry for your loss? Or congratulations, if it's your mortal nemesis whose wake you're holding."

I burst into laughter at his joke. Loud, embarrassing laughter that's way more enthusiastic than the joke called for. Mortified, I slap my hands over my mouth and wish again for that trap door in the ground.

"It's complicated," I tell him, my blush spreading even as his eyes dance with mirth and his grin widens. "Everything about this is complicated."

"Well, if you need some help planning a few mortality-themed complicated cocktails, I'm your man." He winks at me, and somehow it comes across as charming instead of slimy. Probably because of the handsomeness. "I'm Finn Barber, by the way—you are?"

"Delilah." I wince at the sound of my own name, and at the flash of recognition that slides across his face in response to it. "Yep,thatDelilah. And the wake is for—"

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