Page 5 of Rejected Exile

And close off that line of thought before I let my mind explore it further, because I know. Just like I know he'll be there.

Cat is wrong about one thing, I reflect as I hit the freeway heading north up the coast towards Oregon. I won't be in pack territory for a week or two. I doubt they would let me hang around that long, and I wouldn't want to anyway. As soon as I've buttoned up the last details of my father's life, I'll be gone.

There's nothing there for me, and no one to mourn.

In my heart, I buried the father who loved me long ago.

* * *

The trip up to Oregon takes two days by car, broken up into several hour shifts. I could've taken a flight, but that would've meant hoofing it around the territory—an inadvisable thing to do when you can't shift into a wolf.

Most of Juniper and its surrounding land is spread out. There are buses that travel in shifts for the kids who haven't yet turned fourteen and gotten the gift of the change. Only kids and a few humans ever ride them, and I'd stick out like a sore, shiftless thumb. Showing up is one thing, but showing up without my car would mean public humiliation.

Another blessing of spending two days driving up is the knowledge that my father's body will be ashes by now. It's pack tradition to burn a werewolf within a day of their death; to do otherwise risks angry spirits taking their body and using it for ill will. Federal law ensures that we get our people's bodies back in time to cremate them. Various human coroners have occasionally gotten that law waived, when the investigation is big enough, but there's no way the local Medical Examiner needed to do much except confirm that my father really died of a heart attack.

So as I drive up to the border, teal blue signs declare I'm entering pack territory and leaving US Federal jurisdiction, I try to ease the knot in my stomach by reminding myself that he's gone now. The man who towered over me, who rebuked me, who exiled me, isn't even so much as a body now. He's an urn of ashes, to be placed in the Elder Tombs, where all alphas and honored wolf shifter warriors are enshrined beneath the mountains.

I'll never look at his face again except in memory. Never feel the hot lash of his anger on my skin. Or wonder if he worried about me, once he'd turned me away.

It should fill me with comfort.

Instead, as I turn down the winding dirt road with signs that mark the miles to Juniper, I feel only dismay.

He's gone, he's gone.

I'll never hear him say he's sorry. Or listen as he takes it all back. I won't get an explanation, or—anything.

As it always does when I'm anxious and wound up, the scar on the left side of my neck flares up. Scowling, I take the wheel with one hand and scratch it with the other. There's a hard knot of flesh just beneath the surface of the skin; a bit of a mark from when a thorn buried itself inside me and never really left.

I take a deep breath and remind myself that I don't need my father's explanations or apologies. Cat made me forgive him anyway. Told me to put it in the past, because dwelling makes us weak, and looking forward makes us strong.

Still, I put on a meditation playlist to pass the time until I make it back.

As the sun sets and a half-moon rises, I take the final turn, deep into pack territory. A few eyes watch me from far back off the road. One or two of them shine in the light of my car's headlamps. My stomach twists and turns at the reminder of what I'll never have.

Glass wolves shift. Glass wolves are strong and powerful. If you can't shift, you must not be one of mine.

I turn the meditation tracks up, until they drown out the echo of my father's voice. Soon I spot the familiar old Rocky Mountain juniper tree near the long drive that leads to the home I grew up in. Its branches have grown, its needles flourished, but it hasn't grown unfamiliar in the seven years since I saw it last.

But the house at the end of the drive has turned into something unrecognizable. As I slow the car to a crawl and its headlights wash over the facade, something like dismay goes through me. Flicking on the brights, I park the car and stare through the windshield.

My house—the one I grew up in—was painted a pale cloudy-sky blue that my father refreshed every other year. It had well-tended gutters and a gabled roof. The wraparound porch that went from one end to the other was kept free of rot by his carpenter's hands. When winter came, the windows were always insulated; if a weed grew in the lush green front yard, he pulled it out. There were flowers in the pots arranged on the front banisters, and the stain glass transom above the front door shone with care.

What my headlights reveal isn't what I remember. At first, I think it's just the night lighting, or my memory being off. So, I get out of the car and walk around to get a closer look. The father I knew wouldn't let a house go to such ruin, especially in seven years. He wouldn't be able to stand the grass being dead in the front yard, replaced with weeds that scratch at my ankles and burrow in my shoes. There wouldn't be a missing plank in the front porch, or worn-off finish at its banisters. And there's no way the father I knew, the one who raised me with the lesson that you take care of the things around you, would ever let the hole in the stained-glass window stand like that, with the cold wet air rushing inside.

I walk around the house until I'm confident that my imagination isn't running wild. It really is untended to—like a house thirty years old that's never seen a fresh coat of paint or a single round of insulation. Seven years shouldn't do this to a house, even without a single bit of work, but I'm too tired to figure it out now. I turn off my headlights, grab my bag and car keys, and walk up the front steps.

It's only when I get to the door and jiggle the knob that I remember I don't have a key. Instinctually, I raise my arm to knock—and freeze as I remember that no one lives here anymore.

The people who lived here are dead.

My father is dead.

It's enough to send my mind down dark paths, tumbling through an infinite abyss, so I busy my hands instead. The last thing I want is to call Niall back at that number he called me from and beg him for a key to my own house. When I see him again, I want to be freshly showered, my clothes impeccable and my makeup on right. Not sweaty and musty after two days in a car with jello legs and a hole in my T-shirt.

Thankfully I find a key in one of the dead potted plants, and I'm able to make it inside the house. The light by the front door licks against the kitchen in front of me and the living room to the left; I don't peer into the darkness, knowing my all-too-human eyes will see nothing. Instead, I decide to leave the work of sorting through everything for tomorrow.

Bag in hand, I head towards the hallway—and pause. I have no idea what my old room looks like now. Queenie probably turned it into a sewing room or a gym. And I can't sleep in the main bedroom upstairs. That's my father's room.

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