Page 28 of Mated Exile

"A reason why he didn't want her to shift." Roarke glances over at me and frowns, worry etched into his clear blue eyes. "So what will happen now that she has her wolf?"

"The same thing that happened to the wolf-witch hybrid who was shunned by her pack and exiled all those years ago." Niall sets the leather journal down on the table and pushes it across to me. "These journal entries detail much of that history, at least according to the alpha who discovered more about it. I have to warn you, though, he wasn't very kind about the woman in question. You may not like what you learn."

I put my fingers on the journal's leather cover, but Niall doesn't move his hand away from it immediately. Our eyes meet, and I glare at him. "I've been kept in the dark for too long. Surely you can see that Ihaveto know more about myself, for better or for worse."

"I can't keep you from it." Niall withdraws his fingers, giving the journal over to me fully. "I just hope you understand that your father wanted to protect you as much as anything. He was afraidforyou in addition to... everything else he was afraid of."

Finn's eyes cut over to Niall, and they narrow slightly. "Are you saying that William Glass was afraid of his own daughter?"

The look in Niall's eyes is answer enough. I feel sick to my stomach. Pulling the slim journal into my lap, I hear my own soft, quiet voice tremble in the air as I ask, "But why?"

Cat reaches across the space between us to drop a soft hand on my shoulder, and her comforting warmth strengthens me, keeping me from unraveling completely.

Niall says simply, "You'll discover it in the journal soon enough. Wolf-witch hybrids aren't just witches who can shift into wolves, or werewolves who can cast magic. A wolf-witch hybrid's source of power comes from the pack and the land, much like many werewolves draw physical strengthen from the bonds. But they're also capable of things no alpha can do—like controlling the land and bending it to their will, instead of just nurturing it in exchange for protection. And they can..."

His voice trails off for a moment before he clears his throat and continues. "And they can often sense the emotions and thoughts of the pack. It's like a true mate bond, from what I understand, only more spread out and less intense. Some of them, like the one who set the curse, can apparently also sometimes... control other werewolves. Even the whole pack all at once."

I inhale sharply. Bastian goes still, his eyes flying to my face, and I know he's thinking of the same thing I am: that moment in the arena when I dug my claws into his wolf form and forced him to shift back into a human. I also can't stop the thought of that strange wind from coming to my mind, and I have to swallow inappropriate laughter. I should've realized then and there that I was the one doing that, just like I was the one who brought the lake up from its depths and used it to remove the vampires from pack territory.

On top of all that, I could be capable of doing something no alpha can do. Turning the pack to my will is an impossible concept to grasp, and it sickens me so much I find I can't look at the others, because I know they must be staring at me in horror.

No wonder the land pushed me out and kept me there. It was only protecting the pack, after all.

"Delilah." Lance's voice is soft and comforting, but I still can't quite look into his eyes as I drag my gaze up, so I stare resolutely at his chin. "This doesn't change anything. You don't even know what powers you might have."

"Neither do you," I challenge him, bringing my eyes up to meet his. They're soft and warm, but I can only imagine how that gaze might change if I stole his free will from him. "I didn't even know what I was doing when I—when I called on the land's magic, or... other times, when things have happened since I had the chip removed. What if it's the same with controlling other wolves?"

"I can't believe that it will be." Lance looks over at Niall. "There have been other wolf and witch unions. Surely not all of them result in a powerful hybrid who's exiled from her own pack."

"They don't. Most children of wolves and witches are born with one power or the other. Sometimes even neither." Niall glances up at me. "I'm not sure that William believed it until Delilah was old enough to grow into her strength, but when her mother brought her to his doorstop, she told him she was a powerful hybrid who would need to be protected."

Kieran asks sharply, "Protected from whom?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. William came to believe that she needed to be protected from the pack." Niall's voice remains calm, even as everyone at the table stirs up emotionally at his words. "He was certain that she'd be exiled or, worse, killed. Especially once he read how the wolf-witch hybrid who cursed the pack used her powers to control the alpha, and was only ever discovered and defeated when one of her mates turned on her."

The story he lays out is a tragic and awful one. Grabbing the leather journal close to my chest, I can't help but wonder which sordid details he's leaving out. If the hybrid's story truly is tragic, it's no wonder she cursed the pack—though I can't see how the tragic deaths of hundreds of women would satisfy her thirst for vengeance. The sorrow in this room alone from just a few years living under the curse is too much for me to bear.

"Wait. Did you use the plural just then?" Finn's voice drags me out of my thoughts, and I blink over at him. "I could've sworn you saidmateswith an S at the end."

Niall actually colors a little at this, like he's a blushing schoolgirl and not a second-in-command of a werewolf pack where eighteen-year-olds publicly consummate their bond. The sex happens under the cover of darkness and after their family has skipped out following the less juicy bits, but still, the man should be blush-immune by now.

In a low voice he quickly says, "Apparently the hybrid had multiple mates. I don't know how many, or why, or even if it's a given, but I suppose with her special powers, she was able to nurture the mating threads well enough to take more than one long-term mate."

I very pointedly do not look over at Cat.

Though I don't really have to.

I can feel her fingers press against my shoulder. If I look at her right now, she's going to launch into a story about swinging in the nineties or the virtues of having a back-up boyfriend when the first one gets lazy in bed.

As a businesswoman who owns restaurants in multiple cities, she certainly has her reasons for not settling down, but I have no doubt the main one is the fact that she has a lover in every metropolitan location she travels to, all of whom know about each other and are somehow okay with it. Yeah, that's my mom—the late forties woman in the hotel lobby, pushing her black card across the bar to buy drinks for a hot twenty-five-year-old male model. It's a wonder my dating life thus far has been so boring.

Kieran's voice, filled with anger, cuts through my thoughts. "So William sent his one and only child away from the pack, to be exiled forever, because he was scared she'd turn out like some random woman who livedcenturiesago? Is that what you're telling me?"

"He was afraid of how easily the pack might turn on her." Niall sighs, and his voice is full of a bone-deep weariness he never had when I was young. The years and the death of his mate have wrung vitality out of him. "To be honest, I was never sure how much William was afraidforDelilah and how much he was afraidofher. Queenie and I tried to convince him that he could have the chip put in you," he addresses me now, "and tell you all about your heritage, then let you live out your life here among the pack as a shiftless werewolf. But he was afraid that just being on the land would change you somehow, though I was never clear how."

"He thought its magic would call to me." My heart does a flip at the memory of standing in the middle of the battlefield, helplessly watching the guys fight vampires as a knife was held to my throat, only to reach out and somehowfeelthe land around me. "The vampires who kidnapped me seemed to have been looking for something similar when they threw me into the arena with Bastian. It was like there was some part of me that they expected to wake up."

A part of me that might still rear its ugly head.

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