Page 65 of Mated Exile

"Okay." Roarke studies me, and I can tell he's starting to believe what I say. "If you change your mind, you can always tell me."

"I absolutely won't." Turning towards our cars, I give him a sideways, knowing look. "Just promise that you won't let her stomp all over your heart, okay?"

He chokes a little. "Usually people say that the other way around."

"I know you, idiot." I grin at him. "You're in so much trouble this time."

After a long moment, he softly says, "Yeah. I really am."

As I get into my pickup truck, and Roarke gets into his car, I let myself relax a little. Turning the engine on, I stare out towards the house through the passenger side window, and let the dark agony in my chest loose for a moment.

I didn't lie to Roarke. Idowant him to be happy. No matter what it costs me.

But I don't think I can give Delilah up, even though I know I may not ever deserve her. If she picks him over me—if she pickseveryonebut me—I don't know what I'll do.

Because as I turn my truck down the road and drive away from her, I feel the darkness bloom within me. Its hunger and darkness is stronger than anything, even the cravings of addiction that no longer rise in my chest.

The black pit that was born years ago has festered and grown.

And it's going to consume all of me, body and soul, unless I find a way to banish it completely.

Too bad for me that the only thing it wants isher.

Twenty-Eight

Delilah

"Ijust don't know how to login." Frail old Gertrude Brook cranes her neck towards the computer screen, her bifocals perched at the end of her nose. "Little Willy used to do this, bless his soul. He was always such a kind young man."

The Willy, or William, she's talking about was neither little nor young. My father was in his fifties when he passed and over six feet tall. I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing, but somehow Finn keeps a straight face.

"I'll take care of it for you, Gerty." Reaching out, he tugs the post-it note off the edge of her computer monitor and motions towards the keyboard. "If you will?"

Gertrude gets out of the chair with a surprising spryness and watches Finn take a seat at her desk. Her eyes flit over to me, a frown tugging the corners of her mouth down, and she tilts her nose up to scent the air.

"You're a bit old to be unmated." I catch more than a tad bit of judgment in her tone. "And with quite a randy wolf, by my senses. Be careful young woman, or you'll wind up pregnant and untethered to the pack."

Finn's shoulders shake, and he brings a hand up to his mouth, coughing to cover up the laugh bubbling within him. I cut my eyes at him before turning back to tell Gertrude, "I'm waiting for the curse to be lifted before I go into the Mating Circle."

"Oh, bothers." She waves her hand in the air. "I kept telling Willy not to worry about that old thing. Happened back when I was a little girl, too, but it was easy enough to get past. We just waited for Lilliana George to be mated to that strapping young Rivers Pack boy, and it all went away."

Curious, I study her, scenting the air in front of her as she did to me. "Are you mated yourself, Gerty? If you don't mind my asking."

"Of course I was. To Sal, bless his soul." She sighs, fingers tracing the pack rune on the inside of her right forearm. "He passed some seven years ago of a faulty ticker. A few other males our age sniffed around, but there was no replacing him—Sal and I were meant to be."

Her age, combined with the previous bond, and the fact that she survived the curse seventy-seven years ago, must have spared Gertrude this go round. That or the fact that her mate died before the curse was reborn. I'm curious about the last cycle, so I open my mouth to ask her why she was so certain one girl's mating ceremony fixed it, but Finn speaks up first.

"I've logged in and got your bills straightened out, Gerty." Holding the post-it note in the air, he tells her, "This had all the information I needed. Looks like it logs you in to all your important accounts."

"Willy wrote that for me," she says fondly, using her nickname for my father yet again. "After Sal passed, I had no idea how to keep the checkbook straight, and I nearly lost the house because of the overdue bills. He put it all in one place, set up an investment account for me, and let me know I'd be set until I'm a hundred and two. After that, I suppose I'll just have to sell my body."

This time I do laugh, and Gertrude gives me a smug smile, clearly pleased with her own joke. Once I've stopped laughing, and Finn has set the post-it right—after taking a photo of it for his own records—I remember my earlier curiosity.

"Gerty, how did you know that the curse would pass with a certain female's mating ceremony? As far as I was aware, no one really knew why the curse cropped up, or how to stop it."

"No one but thealphasknew," she clarifies. "But my father was close friends with Peter Glass, and Peter told him not to worry, because Daddy was certain my older sister would die like the others. He said he'd figured out which female was most likely to survive the curse—and as soon as she was mated, it would all be right again."

My heart squeezes a little. Peter Glass would've been my great-grandfather, if he'd survived long enough. But like my father, and his before him, he died young. I only knew my grandfather when I was a toddler, and I have no memories of him, or the grandmother who passed when I was four.

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