Page 23 of Rejected Exile

Then the door opens wide, and a tall figure gets out, slowly and cautiously. He sways on his feet a little, grabbing the car door for support with a grimace on his lips.

I feel my heart drop into my stomach, and nausea roll through me. Taking a step back, I can't stop the name that drops from my lips in a quiet squeak, "Kieran."

It feels like uttering a curse aloud. As soon as I say his name, I regret it—but I can't exactly turn around and run away now. I've got his attention, and the driver's too. So I square my shoulders and make myself face forward to stare my horrible past in the face.

Kieran Salt always had auburn brown hair that curled when it got a little too long, but it's even thicker and shaggier now that he's an adult. His broad chest once held the deep, warm laugh that I loved to tickle out of him, but now that same chest is thinner and bony at the shoulders, no fat stretching over his lithe muscles. Honey brown eyes that would stare at me for hours sport dark circles beneath them, and his once-tanned skin is now pale and lifeless.

As soon as I see his face I feel that draw. The undeniable tug towards him. One I stamp down and refuse to give into because Iknowit doesn't make any sense. During our ceremony there were no mating threads between us; we were never fated mates or true mates.

AndthisKieran isn't the boy I desperately wanted fate to push me towards.

I don't understand. He was going to be alpha—we all knew it. The man who stands before me, straightening slowly with a deep grimace on his face, is still undeniably handsome. But he looks like he should be doing a line of coke in the bathroom between hard rock gigs, not tearing predators apart with his bare hands and leading the pack with strength.

"Delilah," he says. My heart drops further at the deep tone of his voice, and my spirit crumbles. This isn't the boy who I left behind; this is a man. "I'd heard you were back in town."

"I thought you were Finn," I say stupidly, glancing to the license plate and back. All I want is to turn tail and leave, but I refuse to let him see how weak he makes me feel. "I guess we were bound to run into each other eventually. It's a small town."

"It is."

My eyes go to the driver, desperate to find some kind of conversation to have that doesn't make me want to fall to the ground crying and screaming with grief and rage. "You're not Finn either. But obviously this is his car."

"Obviously. He lets me borrow it from time to time—mine was out of gas."

Taking off his sunglasses, the driver stares at me with summer-blue eyes that make every bit of breath leave my body all at once. He leans against the car and gives me a familiar grin, even as his gaze flicks briefly to Kieran and back, worry in his expression.

He says, "It's good to see you, Delilah. Been a while."

"Right. It has," I tell him, with no idea who this absolute snack of a man is.

As he reaches up to push thick blond strands back from his forehead, he stretches enough that a strip of skin is revealed at the edge of his shirt, and my mouth waters. Even just that little peek is enough to show the dip by his hips and the flare at his abdomen—I'm sure beneath the cotton of his simple white tee he's got a carved six-pack of abs. Certainly, the thickness of his arm muscles, the stretch of his biceps against cotton, shows he's no slouch.

I'm sure I should know who he was. Even though I only ever had eyes for Kieran when we were young, I saw the other boys. But the one standing in front of me is as unfamiliar as a stranger.

"So." I glance back and forth between them. "What brings you into town?"

"Well, we were—"

"You don't belong here." Kieran's acidic tone cuts across the friendly small talk, throwing a bucket of ice water on me. I cringe back at the sudden hostility in his normally warm honey eyes. "You should leave Juniper right away, Delilah. This isn't a place for those likeyou."

I don't know what to say. My mouth dries up, and I flinch back, instinctively curling away from him. After so many years, and so much time putting myself back together, he still has the power to reach inside me, grab my heart, and rip it out like it's nothing at all.

"Kieran." The handsome stranger rebukes him with a frown, his hand resting on the roof of the car, muscles tensing with displeasure. "Get yourself together and stop being rude to the alpha's daughter."

"You know I'm right, Roarke. She should stay the hell out of Glass Pack territory. She's not one of us anymore."

I freeze at the name Kieran used, eyes darting over to give thestrangera second look. It's nearly impossible to map the tall, bulky, muscular blond with a striking tan onto the Roarke that I knew. Little Roarke Bell was a trickster, a jokester, with skinny legs and perpetual braces on his teeth. He once pantsed Kieran in front of the entire class. When the other boys threatened to beat him to death, Kieran stood up for him, and somehow he and Roarke became friends.

That beanpole had no resemblance to the muscular and gorgeous man in front of me. But there's something about those dancing blue eyes that seems familiar. Even the tension in his jaw as he stares at Kieran brings me back to those halcyon days. Out of all the young males in the pack, only Roarke ever dared stand up to his friend. He was perfectly willing to tell him to go kick rocks even though Kieran was often the only thing standing between him and certain destruction.

Now, it seems, everything has changed. But certain things stay the same—and the best friend of the man who destroyed me is no one I want to spend much time around.

"I wasn't planning on staying anyway," I tell Kieran, drawing his attention back to me. "I have a life, you know. A job and a condo. The last thing I want is to slum it with the likes of you."

Kieran rears back as if slapped at this, but his eyes still hold that same anger. "Good. The sooner you leave, the better."

I snort a little, and give him a long look up and down. Inside, a part of me wants to be concerned—the Kieran I knew would never be this frail and shadowed—but I push that Delilah away. Instead, I give him a scornful, dismissive look, and enjoy the way it makes him grimace.

"You're doing well for yourself," I taunt him sarcastically. "Some of your packmates are looking for the source of the curse. I don't know why they bother—it's clearly standing right in front of me. You look like shit, and you smell worse. The vampires probably follow your stench straight into town.”

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