Page 4 of Rejected Exile

"What are you thinking?" Cat asks, her voice a pleasant melody that yanks me back to the here and now. "If it's about forgiving your father, I'm sure with time you've come to understand why he did what he did."

"How could I?" I shoot back. "He abandoned his own daughter, Mom. Left me with nowhere to go. Heknewwhat he was doing."

"If he left you everything, there must have been a reason."

"A good one?"

"No, of course not." She sounds frustrated. "But Lilah—" I prefer her nickname for me to the one the pack gave me, "You had to have known this day would come eventually. We both did."

"What day?"

"The day you had to go home."

I take in a deep breath. Mulish, I insist, "Your homeismy home. The condo is my home. Here—with humans—that'shome."

"You know what I meant."

I do know. And I understand why Cat is being so contrary. She doesn't want me to fill myself up with anger only to run out of fuel before I even make it back to the territory.

I'll need all my defenses to go there. To facehim.To look at my father's empty house and acknowledge all the questions he's left behind.

The letters.I shake off the thought. "I don't know if I can do it, Mom. Going back there to deal with the last bit of my father's affairs is one thing. But seeing everyone..."

"Just because you're going back doesn't mean you'll run into Kieran." She knows who I mean when I sayeveryone."It's a small town, but a big territory. He could be anywhere by now. There's no guarantee he's in Juniper."

Lady Fate wouldn't be that kind. If she's dragging me back to the pack that exiled me, the boy—now a man—who played the starring role in doing the exiling will be there in the center of it all.

"I don't think I can face him. Just thinking about it makes me feel like I'm that scared little girl again."

"But you're not. Just remember that, Lilah. The person you are now isn't the same person they threw out seven years ago, and you don't have to let them define you."

She's right.

One voice echoes in my head.

I don't want you! I reject you—I willneverbe your mate!

I shouldn't let it be the only voice.

I should push it out, stand up and be my own person. Not only that, but I know that's what I want to do. What Cat taught me to do.

That doesn't mean I think I'm strong enough to do what she expects, to face them all with strength instead of weakness. Just the thought of it makes me want to curl up in shame and disappear into darkness.

Being rejected eventually made me strong.

But first, it made me so terribly, horribly weak.

* * *

A few hours later, I'm back on the road again, a hastily packed bag in the trunk of my new (to me) sedan. It's easy enough to pull my destination up on my phone. The Glass Pack Territory has a publicly accessible museum, not to mention a thriving human population.

It's just that there are parts of the town where only wolves roam, near the Mating Circle and its power. That's where my father's house is. Where the house I'll need to go inside, and look at, and sign over, sits.

My jaw tightens thinking of that house sitting empty, without him in it. My stepmother Queenie died a year and a half ago; I got the card in the mail, and that one I opened and read. I didn't go to her funeral. She wouldn't have minded. Queenie was a silly dolt of a woman who married my father when I was twelve and was barely in my life before she was gone again. I was closer to her nephew than I ever was to her.

But Queenie being gone isn't like my father being gone. He was a titan of a man. The all-powerful roaring pack leader who took in strays and watched over the land. There will surely be an emptiness in Juniper where he once stood.

I idly let myself wonder who will take over his position.

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