Page 40 of Mated Exile

"She's an old acquaintance."

"She's practicallydroolingat you."

A snort leaves his nose. "Have you had your eyes checked lately, Dollface? Because it's not me she's looking at."

It isn't, I realize with a start as I glance back at her. Those eyes of hers are landing squarely at me. Shocked for a moment, I stare too long—and she shoots me a wink.

Leaning in close, Finn murmurs in my ear, "Tabitha is an art collector at the local gallery. Your father saved her from a sticky situation she got into in Manhattan. Another one of his strays, and no threat to either one of us. But not a member of the pack. Almost none of the women here are werewolves because of the curse."

He's right, I realize with a start. I should be paying attention to the men in the bar, not fending off townies who are noticing Finn. Dropping my hand from his elbow, I move through the crowd towards the bar with him at my side. People part to make space for Finn, maybe because of his height or his commanding presence, and soon we've found a set of stools near the tropically themed bar counter. A cocktail waitress hands me a menu, and I stare at the bright laminated letters with a funny feeling in my stomach.

This isn't a date, but it feels like one. I would know; I've done enough dating in the human world to tire of it. All the small talk and repetitive questions always bored me. But as I glance over at Finn, who barely even looks at his menu, I realize I know very little about him.

"You're a member of the pack," I point out, drawing an amused smile from him. "Tell me about yourself."

"I thought we'd already gotten well-acquainted," he says, in a sensual tone of voice that makes heat pool in my belly. "Ask away, Dollface. I'm an open book."

"I know you weren't born in the pack," I tell him. "We never met as kids—I'd remember." Reaching over, I take his right hand and turn his wrist up, revealing the single runic tattoo that marks him a member of Glass Pack. "But you don't have a second tattoo, like Lance has from his former pack. So where are you from? Were you a townie and we just never met or something?"

"I didn't grow up in Juniper. Mind if I order us drinks for this?"

"Go ahead."

Clearing his throat, he catches the eye of the bartender, then glances over at me with a speculative look. In a clear voice, he says, "I'll have a vodka tonic, and for the lady... a rosemary gimlet."

Surprise ripples through me. Gimlets are one of my favorite drinks; a simple, classic cocktail that not many bars bother to serve anymore. The gin, sweet simple syrup, and lime juice combined are like a balm to my nerves. Add in a little rosemary or another herb to punch up the gin's floral notes, and you have a winner on your hands.

The bartender, despite wearing a floral print uniform and standing in front of a fake tiki torch, nods sharply and takes the drink order without fuss.

"You're right that I wasn't born in the pack. I wasn't born in Juniper at all, actually—or on any pack territory. My father is in the army, and my parents were stationed in Iowa when I was born, but I grew up all over—Korea, Florida, France, Germany, and Singapore, where my parents still live."

The bartender slides over our drinks, and I pause to thank her, then glance over at Finn curiously. "I've almost never heard of werewolves serving in the federal military."

"And you still won't. My father isn't a werewolf," he says smoothly, taking a sip of his vodka tonic. "Neither is my mother. As far as I know, I'm the only one of my family who inherited the shift. My brothers and sister never turned. Only me."

I take in a sharp breath, studying him as my mind fills in the blanks. "So one day you just woke up and..."

"Yep." He raises a brow at me, taking another long sip of his drink. "I was fifteen. My father was stationed in Germany. My mother was back home in Korea visiting her family—that's where she's from. A story came on the news about a flight from Incheon crashing over the Atlantic, and I thought it was her. Freaked out in the middle of school and suddenly I was on four feet."

"Shit." I shake my head, sympathizing with him so much that my hand instinctively moves to squeeze his arm. "That can't have been easy."

"Oh, it was a real ball. We were lucky my father hadn't transferred yet—he was due to go to Russia next, and I would've gotten tagged and tracked if I'd wolfed out there. It was a big headache, figuring out what to do with me. That's where William stepped in, and the rest is history."

There are gaps in his story, bits and pieces he's leaving out. He makes it sound so simple: one day he shifts, the next day he's in Juniper. But it can't have been easy.

"What about your family? What did they think?"

Finn taps the side of his glass, glancing down at the counter. There's a wry twist to his lips, but his tone is serious. "My father did a lot of ancestry research to figure it out. Apparently there's a line of werewolves in his blood—he's Black, but light skin, and his family is from Louisiana. A few French plantation owners slipped in the gene pool, and along comes me, the one-in-a-million mixed race kid to get enough of the Creole blood to turn."

I'd guessed fairly easily that Finn is mixed race from the very beginning, but I know better than to say foolish things likewhere are you fromto anyone who doesn't look like me, and it didn't seem like any of my business, anyway. Werewolves have popped up all over the world, despite most of our lineage tracing back to lines that started among the Celtic and Gallic tribes. Every modern country, from the First Nations to Ghana, has werewolves among their people, and each government handles them in different ways.

One of the countries he mentions doesn't allow werewolves to travel within their borders at all, and denies its people citizenship if they're born with the shift.

"If your parents live in Singapore, then..."

"I can't visit them." He sighs, melancholic for only a moment before he shakes it off. "But that's why video calls exist. And they fly in from time to time, when they're able to. Who knows—maybe my dad will be stationed in Oregon next, and I can get sick of seeing my family all the time."

"I had no idea that you were born in the human world," I confess, feeling a little embarrassed about just how little Idoknow about him. "I guess I've been wrapped up in my own world."

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