Page 8 of Rejected Exile

I frown, hand on the doorknob to the office. Lance takes the last step up to the second story. His movements are relaxed and easy, but there's a tension line running across his forehead.

This close, I realize with a start that his white hair is natural—it grows that way out of his head—and not some kind of bleach job. His brows are salt and pepper too, even though he doesn't look more than a year or two older than me.

"What curse?" I ask, searching his face like it might have answers. "Also, by the way, you never mentioned—you are a member of the pack, right? The Glass Pack. My father's people."

"I am a pack member." He holds out his right arm, pulls up the sleeve, and reveals the rune tattoo on his inner wrist. It sits just below another rune tattoo, older and closer to his palm, that must belong to the pack he was born in. "Your father took me in after there was a fire down in Arizona pack territory. I was only seventeen—my intended died, so he found a new mate for me."

A new mate for me.Not unheard of in werewolf culture, though hardly the outcome most hope for. My heart thumps hard against my rib cage, and I force my mind back to the subject at hand before I can conjure up an image of Kieran's face.

Lance continues, "As for the second question—the curse."

I blink at him, frustrated. "Again: what curse?"

A frown turns down his mouth. "When did you leave Glass Pack, anyway?"

"I was exiled." The words are bitter ash in my mouth, but I force myself to say them anyway. It doesn't help to pretend like it didn't happen. That's one thing I had to learn the hard way. "It's been seven years. And a few weeks."

"Seven years." Lance studies me for a long, hard moment. "So you left before the curse started. That makes sense, I guess—we would've met otherwise."

"Again, what curse?"

"We should just go inside your father's office," he says instead of answering my question, pulling down his sleeve and straightening it. "It'll be easier to answer the question if I have his research in front of me."

"He wasn't a researcher," I tell Lance, though I do open up the door to the office, curious despite myself. "He was smart, sure, but mostly about mechanical things. I don't know what you're looking for in here, but I doubt you'll find it."

"We'll see."

The office, at least, isn't in the same state of disrepair as the kitchen or the outside of the house. My father must have spent much of his time in here—there's even a pillow and a blanket on the loveseat beneath the windows, like he grew so tired staying up late reading and writing that he lost the energy to even make it across the hallway.

Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves take up the far wall, and a desk sits opposite the loveseat. There's a brick fireplace near the door, cold and ashen, though it looks recently lit. At its foot is a thick black rug that lays beneath two leather armchairs. There are papers across the desk, and three filing cabinets next to the sofa, which Lance makes a beeline for.

Several of the books have been pulled down from the shelves, and the filing cabinets have papers sticking out of a few drawers, stuffed to the brim like they're in use. Watching Lance stand in front of the cabinets and run his fingers across their tops, I walk over to the desk and stare down at the papers, expecting to see printed out chili recipes or some kind of article about fly-fishing.

Instead, I find papers that cover topics my father wouldneverbe interested in. Half of them are research articles, printed in peer-reviewed journals that you have to pay to get into, their margins scribbled in and citations highlighted.

One is about werewolf mating habits, a popular research item for human grad students who journey into pack territory to poke and prod at parts of our culture they'd like to dissect. Two concern some kind of mushroom; my dad has written and crossed out the words"possible reversal for blood rot."

Another paper, half-crumpled as if in anger, has to be smoothed out. Its title is mostly gibberish to me, but I recognize the word "vampire" as well as a few mentions of blood drunkenness and its thought cause. Three other, less scribbled on papers are about werewolf Mating Circles, their supposed origin, and the ways in which the mate bond fortifies our land and helps protect us from intruders.

It's all things my father should know about, the way all werewolves do, taught as oral history from the time we're little. Even I know most of it, and I was exiled the day I was meant to be mated. There's no reason for him to be reading up on his own people’s biology and culture—especially from the point of view of human outsiders.

"The curse," Lance says, his voice making me whirl around, my attention suddenly on his broad back as he opens up the top drawer on the filing cabinet to the very left, "started about four years ago, give or take, though there were a few signs before then.

"First it was Anastasia Lansing, who'd just turned nineteen and been fully mated for a year. She'd just shifted for a hunt and was headed in for the night when she started bleeding. The doctors were called; a midwife called it a miscarriage, and made her mate promise to be more careful with her. But she kept bleeding and bleeding, until they took her to the hospital, where the bleeding started in her nose, and her eyes, and her ears. She didn't make it after that.

"Then there were others. Old. Young. All female. Always shortly after a shift. It started like a heavy period or a miscarriage—that's what I've been told. But the bleeding didn't stop. Medicine couldn't stop it, human or werewolf. Shifting back helped, sometimes, but not for long. The curse just kept taking and taking."

My head feels light, my chest empty. I approach Lance, lean up against the filing cabinet, and stare into his face. "By curse, do you mean...?"

"Witch-born, yes." His deft fingers flip through the files in the cabinet. A frustrated expression knits his brow, and he closes the top drawer, moving on to the one beneath it. "Old, probably—the witches aren't powerful enough to do something like this anymore, something that spreads to everyone."

"Everyone?"

"Everyone." He shakes his head at the second drawer, then moves on to the one beneath it. "It took out every single female werewolf in Glass Pack Territory, one by one, until there were none left."

"No."

"Yes."

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