Page 30 of Rejected Exile

As I drag Cat's suitcase inside and deposit it in the guest bedroom, that dilemma sloshes around inside my empty stomach. It follows me to the kitchen, where she's effortlessly turning the groceries I picked up into some kind of five-star breakfast. Unspoken words gnaw at me as I take a seat at the table and grab the mug of coffee she's already set out.

"Mom..." The word sounds strange in my mouth, though I've grown used to thinking of her that way over the years. I never called her that here before, in this house where my biological mom once lived. "There's something I have to tell you. And I don't know how."

Cat wordlessly slides the quiche she's whipped up into the oven, then turns to face me. Her heart-shaped face is grave, but her eyes are kind and knowing. "I knew the day I saw you that I wouldn't get to keep you."

"What?"

I blink at her, and she comes to sit opposite me at the table. Her small fingers lace together as she sets her hands down on the vintage wood. Setting down my mug, I'm struck by how small she is next to me—making her so much smaller than any one of the male werewolves in the pack that she might as well be a child next to them.

"I took you in expecting it to be temporary," Cat says, sliding her hands across the table and placing them over mine, her small cool palms cupping the backs of my wrists. "At first I thought for sure someone would come to get you. Then I became certain that eventually another pack would step in, or the government would. It was a blessing when you got to stay with me—but even then, I knew my home wasn't yours."

I blink slowly, then force myself to meet her ice blue eyes. "You made me feel welcome. Nothing about your home wasn'tmine,Cat."

Her name is wooden on my tongue. I start to take it back, to call her mom again, but she smoothly interrupts me. "It isn't that I don't love you, or think you don't love me anymore. We'll always be close—closer than anyone can understand. But Lilah, I knew the day would come when I had to give you back so you could become who you were always meant to be."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that I'm not here to fetch you and bring you home." Her fingers move against my hands until I turn them over, and she curls her hands in mine. "I'm here to help you settle into your new adult life as the woman you're about to become—as thewerewolfyou have to be—and to say goodbye."

Eleven

Delilah

Istare at her, tongue-tied. My fingers jerk towards my neck. "I told you about the microchip?"

"You tried, in your own drunken way." She pulls my wrist down before I can start scratching at the scabbed-over spot in my skin. "I'm not sure that you could articulate the wordmicrochipin your inebriated state, but you made it clear what you'd discovered. My knowledge of history helped me put the pieces together."

"I'm so sorry." I duck my head and grab the mug of coffee, holding it in lieu of finding the right words to say. "I had no idea."

"How could you? It was kept from you."

"And I don't know what will happen if I take it out," I confess. "I mean, I assume I'll be able to shift again. That's what happened to the werewolves they used to use inhibitors on—most of them, anyway. A few never... never made it."

The shiftless. A rare anomaly among those born werewolves, but once a more common thing, especially in the 1980s. The US federal government would put microchips into wolves deemed too "dangerous" to be allowed to shift—even if the only danger they posed was simply being born the wrong way. That is, until a law struck the practice down in 1986, and all the chips had to be removed.

Most of the shiftless could find their wolves again and form mate bonds once the chips were out. Some, the ones who had the chips in for a long time, never shifted again.

They had their chips in for six, maybe seven years. Mine has been in my neck for that long, or even longer. There's a chance my wolf is gone forever.

"Why do you think he did it?" I look up at Cat, frustration making me tap the toe of my boot on the floor. "I don't understand. Why wouldn't my father want me to be able to shift?"

"Do you know that he did it? Or do you just know that heknewabout it?"

I retort back, "Who else would've done it?"

"Fair enough."

"I just don't know why." My coffee is growing cold, so I take a long sip of it, trying to beat back the pounding headache last night's gin gave me. "It seems cruel, to exile me for something that wasn't even my fault. If he knew when he threw me out..."

Cat's face turns thoughtful. "When you called last time, you mentioned you'd discovered there was some kind of sickness here. A curse that strikes only female shifters."

"Yes. But that's new—it only developed in the past few years. My father was looking for a cure."

She nods, her eyes going unfocused for a moment before they flick back to my face. "It seems entirely possible to me that if there's a chip in your neck, whoever put it there did so to protect you. And if your father found out—whether he knew when he exiled you or not—he left it there so you wouldn't die."

I inhale sharply. Memories play out in my head. I can't help but say, "If he knew when he exiled me, then he's a better actor than I ever thought possible. The man I knew couldn't lie—not like that."

"So maybe he didn't know then, but he found out later and put the pieces together."

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