Page 18 of Rejected Exile

"Your father. Oh shit." He pushes his hair back from his face, though it still slides forward to flop in his forehead, a tiny flaw in his exquisitely handsome exterior. "I'm so—wait. I won't say that. Since you said it's complicated."

Relief fills me. "Thank you."

"No problem."

"It's just—I never know how to respond when people say that." Staring into the cart, I admit, "I probably got too many bottles. It'll take forever to put them back. I hate just leaving them anywhere—when I worked retail, customers like that drove me crazy."

"No worries. I'll just—ah, yes, that one." Reaching into the cart, he nabs the big bottle of cheap vodka I threw in on a whim, and gives me a winsome smile that makes me feel like a teenage girl again. "That's just what I was looking for, anyway. No need to put it back on the shelf."

I smile back at him, feeling a little less like a crazy lady, and even more like I should get the hell out of Juniper before I lose my panties in some kind of panties-melting hot-werewolf-men related accident.

"I should probably go," I tell Finn.

"Of course."

"See you around?"

I don't mean to word it like a question, but it comes out like one.

"Oh, I'll be seeing you again for sure, Delilah." The look in his eyes should scorch metal; it nearly melts me. "That much I know."

I'm so unbelievably flustered by his words that I nearly dart out of the store without paying. Thankfully by the time I'm through the register, he's somewhere on the other side of one of the aisles. Because I get the sense that if he looks at me for one more second, talking to me in that voice, I'll explode into a thousand pieces.

All that'll be left is a scorch mark on the ground.

Here lies Delilah. She got so turned on it straight-up killed her.

Seven

Kieran

Floating smearing reds and yellow. Little bits of green and white. The world is a rush of colors, out of focus and blurred at the edges.

I laugh and fall down, tripping on my feet. The ground rushes at me. Or I rush at it.

Earth. Dirt and grass and little weeds. It’s cold beneath my cheeks, but my body isn't cold.

I'm warm. So warm. Full of light. No hunger, no darkness, just...happiness.

"This one has too high a tolerance," says a scornful voice just above my head, somewhere in the reds and yellows. "I nearly had to kill him to get him blood drunk. Pretty soon it won't even be possible."

"Pretty soon he'll be dead."

The voice doesn't care that I'll be dead. Neither do I. Sweet, sweet embrace of earth. Sweet embrace of death...

"Look at him." Kneeling, the owner of second voice looks at me with distaste on her face. Pale, pale, bloodless face. "I swear I think they feel it more than the humans do."

"Of course they do," says the first voice, wiping my blood from his mouth, his fangs retreated, retracted, no more. "They're not weak like the humans. They feel everything—anger, hatred, regret, and they remember it all."

"So they need us to forget. To get high."

"Not all of them. Just the ones who are fucked in the head. Like this one."

"You'd think they'd appreciate it more."

"You'd think. But the fools care more about the bunnies and the squirrels than having a little fun with life."

I hear their words distantly, but don't feel them. Don't feel anything. It's all somewhere else, and I'm somewhere else. I'm up in the dark cloudless sky with the blues and greens. I'm against the little living things in the earth. I'm everywhere and nowhere, and I don't have to hurt anymore.

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