Page 26 of Mated Exile

"The better to charm you with, Kitty Cat."

My foster mother actuallygigglesat this. I stare at her open-mouthed as she takes the seat next to me, and she just shrugs, the shameless flirt. As Lance sits down as well, she even gives him a wide grin and reaches over to pinch his cheek, which just makes him grin at her all goofy.

I haven't even been gone forty-eight hours and she's already bewitched every single one of them.

Give her another day or two and she'll be convincing them to bend over and pick stuff up so she can stare at their asses. It's like she's made of wickedness.

"Now that we're all here," Niall says, "I guess I should begin."

"Wait." I hear movement in the back hallway, and lean over in my chair, peering into the darkness. "Bastian, you can come in. Whatever it is, I don't mind if you know—maybe it'll help shed some light as to why the vampires took me, and you can fill in some gaps."

Niall looks unhappy at this. "Really, Lilah, a stranger?"

I shoot him a scathing look. "You didn't mind trusting me with strangers when you left me on the side of the road, so shut it."

"We gave you plenty of cash," he grumbles. "The humans love taking in strays, and you had money for years with you."

"The money was stolen from me in minutes," I snap back. Ignoring his shocked look, I turn back to the hallway. "Bastian? Come on out."

He does a moment later, and the sight of him steals my breath away.

The scarred, lithe, muscular werewolf is suddenly tall and imposing in a borrowed set of dark blue jeans and a tight white shirt that stretches across his fighter's frame. He's washed his hair, combed it back from his head, and tied it in a low ponytail that slips across his shoulder as he steps carefully into the room. Every inch of his broad frame presses against the seams of his clothing, and when he's not stooped over to speak to me, or chained up, he's so incredibly tall, gorgeous, and fit that I swear Cat starts to vibrate with excitement.

She whistles at him, shameless. "You clean up good."

"Thank you," Bastian murmurs, twitching a little. "I can go. There's no reason why I have to stay here. If you have directions, I can find the cabin my family used to live in, and I won't be in your hair for much longer. I don't want to be a burden."

Niall blinks over at him, brows drawn together. Instead of apologizing, he asks, "Don't you have a pack to go back to? Even if the alpha is new, we can find them. Show me your runic tattoo."

Bastian flips his right wrist out, which is the first time I really get a good look at it, without the manacles. There's no tattoo at all. In a low voice he says, "My family never had a pack. We just had each other. Now they're gone, so it's just me."

My heart hurts for him. Motioning towards the free chair, I tell him, "Sit down and have dinner. You don't have to worry about what you overhear, I promise." I glare at Niall. "I'm sure there's nothing about my family drama that's dangerous for you to know, and maybe it'll help us understand why the vampires called me—what was that word—amagkos."

Finn quips, "Sounds like a Pokemon."

Niall has gone strangely still, his eyes boring into me, an unhappy frown on his face. He leans back in his chair, laces his hands together, and sighs with all the weariness of a man twice his age.

"It's another word for what you are," he says in an unhappy voice, as my stomach twists and a lump forms in my throat. "I hate to be the one to tell you this, Delilah, but Laura Glass, William's mate, was never your mother at all."

Twelve

Delilah

My father's right-hand-man tells me a story.

* * *

Years ago, your father went away on a hunt that was meant to be like any other. In his wolf form, he led the pack towards the scent of an injured stag, hoping to bring back enough meat to feed families for ages. The scent of the blood drove him on, and before he knew it he'd lost himself in the caves at the foot of the old mountains.

Caves where covens once practiced their dark magic in secret, and men still fear to travel.

Winter was on the air, and he sensed snowfall coming. So he went into one of the cave entrances, started a fire, and nestled in for the night. Before he went to sleep he called out to the pack to let them know that he was safe—and not to follow where he'd gone. I was there, and I led the hunters back to Juniper with what we'd managed to track down without him.

When William woke in the morning, the cave he'd been sleeping in was blocked off. Snow had fallen to cover the entrance, several feet deep. The sun rose to melt the snow, then the air froze again, enough to make an ice sheet several inches thick that blocked his exit.

But the caves went deep into the mountains, and the den he'd slept in went deeper. So he turned his back to the frost and traveled further in.

He's told me some of what he found buried in the mountain range: ancient runes that sparked at his touch, strange creatures that glowed in the darkness, snowy white animals with keen intelligence, then further in, deeper, he found a pit of pure darkness that he feared to walk near.

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