Page 31 of Rejected Exile

"Maybe." Doubt creeps into me. "But that raises the question again: who put the chip there, and why?"

"We may never know." Cat squeezes my hand. "You can't dwell on it."

"It's all I can think about," I tell her miserably. "What else is there for me to fill my days with?"

She raises a sharp eyebrow, and I can already sense the lecture forming. "There's an entire house to repair, for one thing. And the fact that you have no reason to sit around feeling sorry for yourself—not now. There's a whole future in front of you, and I think it's time that you start looking in that direction."

"Yes, Mom." I smile a little at her, feeling some of my moroseness vanish in the face of her strength and fierceness. "How will I ever survive without you?"

"Poorly." Her timer dings, and Cat rises quickly to her feet, sliding the warm quiche out of the oven. "This has to rest for a bit until it sets. Meanwhile, explain to me why you haven't fixed that window above the door yet."

"It's called a transom," I inform her, ignoring the brow she raises in my direction. "And I'm going to get it fixed. Just as soon as my hardware order is delivered. I've been doing more than just moping around and drinking, Cat—I promise."

"Good. The girl I finished raising wasn't a louse who laid about doing nothing with her days." She gives me a soft smile to go with her hard words, and stretches up to kiss me on the cheek. "Now, let's talk aboutwhatin theworldwe're going to do with those bathrooms."

* * *

After a few more cups of coffee and two slices of Cat's freshly made quiche, I start to feel a little more like myself. The heartache and rage of last night is wiped away by thoughts of the future. Suddenly I have more paths in front of me than I ever thought I'd get, and the choices unfurl like petals of a blooming rose.

Of course, Cat's presence helps immensely. Her bright spirit helps pull me to the present. Together we focus on each room in the house, one at a time, and create plans for making over everything. She takes her tablet out and pulls up a program she uses when she wants to remodel her businesses, and helps me see what this old place could look like.

"The question is, who is the buyer we envision for this house?" Standing in the middle of the living room, Cat flips between two different designs for the space. "Are we hoping to sell to a family, or... are there other plans?"

"I have to talk to Niall about it. The deed is mine, but if the new alpha wants the house after the Summit, they'll get first dibs—though obviously, I'll be paid if they buy it." Taking a look at Cat's plans, I muse, "The neutral color palette would probably be the better choice."

She eyes me over her glasses, which she wears for any kind of reading on a screen. "So we're not making over the house for you to live in it?"

I glance away, biting my lower lip. "I don't know..."

"You don't have to answer right away. First, we need to make this place livable—the rest of it, like paint colors and wallpaper choices, is all just a cherry on top of the sundae. But if you're going to remove that chip from your neck, I imagine that involves sticking around on pack territory for a while, and all that entails."

Discovering my wolf. Petitioning to find a mate. Becoming a member of the pack that once turned its back on me.

And possibly dying of an ancient curse, if everything I've learned in the past few days is to be believed.

"I might have to find a different pack," I tell Cat, though for some reason that makes my heart twist. There's so much history here—and my parents are both buried on this land. "I may bear the Glass name, but if the curse isn't fixed pretty quickly by the new alpha, then there's no reason to stick around here."

"So we'll focus on getting the basics done and you can decide on the rest once you've figured out what you want to do with the house. Neutral color palette it is. Now—help me move this bookcase."

As we grab onto the edges of the bookcase in the living room, prepared to move it away from the corner and towards the center of the wall, it wobbles a bit. So Cat steps back and motions for me to help her clear the breakable items off its shelves. As she does so, her hands pause in front of a small framed photo, and she holds it up to the light with a smile on her face.

"You're so young here. I had no idea you were ever this short. And are these the friends you had growing up?"

She turns the photograph towards me, and my heart does a mini tap dance routine. It's a picture of me when I was maybe nine or ten years old, my cheeks reddened by the sun, the peaks of a mountain range behind me. I'm holding up a rabbit I caught in a snare, leaning up against Kieran, who stands to my right, while at my left Roarke frowns into the camera, keeping several inches of space between him and me.

The boys I see in the photograph are more like the ones I remember than the men I ran into in town yesterday: skinny little Roarke, a beanpole of a boy, and young handsome Kieran, whose cheeks were full, his eyes sunny and bright. It's hard to reconcile this image of them—and all the memories I have—with what the past several years have changed.

"That's Kieran and his best friend Roarke," I tell Cat, and she winces. "Don't worry, it's fine—I don't mind remembering. This was one of the days we went out hunting in the summer. My dad probably took the photograph... he insisted that we all learn how to use snares and rifles to hunt. Said we shouldn't rely on our wolf forms to do all the dirty work, especially since sometimes even pack members have to hunt on human territory."

"It sounds like he was a pretty involved parent."

"He was," I admit. "Until the day it all changed."

She sets the photograph aside, then stares thoughtfully at the shelf. "I see a lot of pictures of you as a child here, and a few of your father—this man?"

"Yeah, that's him."

"But there are none of your mother." Her eyes find mine, a question in them. "I thought she died when you were five. So you wouldn't remember her, but surely, she took photos with you while she was alive."

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