Page 6 of Rejected Exile

So I head left, past the living room, and into the small guest bedroom. Thankfully it's still as I remembered, though mustier than it was before. I throw my bag on the ground, grab my toiletries, and do my best to clean up in the small attached bathroom. My pajamas are a welcome softness after a long trip. As I slip into bed and put my head on the pillow, I try not to hear it.

The whistle of wind through the hole in the stained-glass window.

A stark warning that the Juniper I left isn't the one I've returned to.

And a reminder that the father who exiled me will never call for my return—because he's nothing but ash and sorrow by now, as dead as whatever love he once had for me.

Three

Delilah

Mateless wolves don't get to stay on pack territory, and shiftless wolves aren't wolves at all. You're banished, Dee. Niall—get her out of here.

I wake in the morning covered in sweat despite the cool air outside and the wind whistling through the old house. My dreams have turned to nightmares, and it's only taken one night back in Juniper to do it.

Wandering into the guest bathroom, I turn on the shower—and jump back as rusty water spills out of the faucet. Once it's clear, I switch the water flow to the shower head, but what sputters out wouldn't clean a Chihuahua. It's enough to wash the sweat from my skin and little else, so I rinse my face in the sink, throw my dyed maroon hair up in a ponytail, and get dressed for the day with the scent of last night's tossing and turning still clinging to me.

I glance in the mirror. My eyes look tired and worn down; if I cared enough, I’d put some concealer on, but I can’t find the energy to grab my makeup bag out of my suitcase. Green eyes stare back at me, a chip of brown in my right eye like a freckle on a cheek. I’ve had mousy brown hair all my life, streaks of blonde showing up in the summer sun. These days I slap dark maroon pigment on it every few weeks so it looks shiny and gloss instead of dull.

There are tasks to take care of out in the town, people I need to talk to—Niall among them—but first I want to take stock of everything in the house. It feels strange to wander its empty halls alone. Every door I open, every room I peer into, I feel like my father must be just over my shoulder, looking on in dismay.

I wonder what he'd think of his errant shiftless daughter returning home just to sell his things and skip town again.

It's hard to imagine that he left this place to me on purpose. It seems more likely he just didn't change his will. Seven years is a long time, but he was young, especially for a werewolf. Surely, he didn't think he would die and leave it to me.

If he did, he could've cleaned up the place. I find a dead mouse in a trap on the stairs, and dust covers the dining room table. There are black kitchen trash bags under the sink; grabbing one, I open the fridge and dump nearly everything inside, wrinkling my nose at the mold and mildew coating plastic leftover containers.

Much of this predates his death.

What kind of life was he living? What happened that he let the house get this way?

There are no answers for me here. So I turn on some alt rock and shove my earbuds in my ears. The sounds of voices raised in defiant singing helps get me through the cleaning.

It takes a whole roll of paper towels to clean up the kitchen. A broom and dustpan only make it through some dirt on the hardwood floors. I have to grab the mop then get down on my hands and knees to get them clean. Sorting through the stack of mail on the console table in the hallway, I discover unpaid gas bills, which explains the fog of my breath in the air. And all three of the downstairs bathrooms have rust in the pipes that takes ages to clear. One of the bathrooms is nearly unusable because of a leak in the toilet tank.

The downstairs room that I leave for last is mine. Standing in the bathroom across the hall, which I used when I grew up, I stare at the closed door. There's a finality to the way it blocks off access to the room on the other side.

Fear shoots through me as I place my fingers on the doorknob. I keep thinking I'm going to get in trouble for being here. As Cat reminded me, though, I'm not the fourteen-year-old girl who was thrown from this place, or the girl she found out on the streets without food or running water. Seven years have passed. The Delilah Glass who stands here is an adult, with a full-time job and a condo. There's no reason forthisDelilah to be scared of whatever her dad and stepmom turned her old room into.

Taking a deep breath, I turn the knob and step in, prepared for anything. A home gym. A sewing room. Maybe just a storage area full of junk and old boxes. Whatever it is, it'll probably be covered in dust, just like the rest of the house.

Instead, I step into a pristine room that hasn't changed a bit since the day I left it. There are still the same boy band posters on the wall, and the brightly colored journals on the painted white desk. A bookshelf is full of young adult adventures: through distant lands, searching for prophecy, and falling in love. Even the bedspread on the full-sized mattress is the same, albeit a little faded where the sun shines in through the window.

Breath catching, I step into the room and back through time. My fingers trail across the bookshelf—not a speck of dust. The journal on the desk is closed, but when I open it, I find the last entry I ever penned. Unable to read it without emotions clawing at me, I close the journal and move to the closet, certain I'll find it's being used for storage or... something.

But no. Behind the white door of the closet is everything I remember: my shorts and jeans, frilly blouses and graphic T-shirts, a box on the shelf full of memorabilia, and faded tennis shoes on the ground. Crouching, I move my hands across the packed-up tent I used for camping with my friends, and a box full of mementos from time in the woods and up in the hills beneath the mountains.

"I don't understand." The music has faded in my ears, so I hear my own voice, full of wonder and disbelief. "Why would you keep it all? You didn't keep me."

No one is alive to answer. I'm not sure what my father would say, but I can imagine what he might have felt when he left this room the way it was. Maybe he hoped I would return one day, with a wolf inside me and a mate at my side. Or maybe he couldn't bear to get rid of the things here–because they represented the hope he once had in me, before I ruined it all by being defective.

The scar in my neck itches, and I scratch it absentmindedly. More than once I've worried at it so hard that blood has trickled from the scar tissue. When Cat catches me in the nervous habit, she slaps my hand away.

There are no answers for me in this old room, so I decide to leave it as it was when I got here: sealed behind a closed door where no one can see. Grabbing the full trash bags, I lug them out back and throw them in the garbage bin, then head back in for the last and most difficult task.

Standing at the foot of the stairs, I grab the banister and try to prepare myself. It's early in the morning, or I'd grab a glass of wine for this next task. My father's room was a hallowed place I wasn't allowed to enter without permission—and knocking after he went to bed was verboten. The thought of going in and looking through his things is impossible.

So maybe I'll go to his office first, which is opposite the bedroom suite. It was never completely off-limits to me, and besides, it's more likely to have the things I'm looking for, like financial records and information on the house. There are no stories his empty room can tell me besides what I already know, which is that he wasn't planning on dying the moment death came for him.

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