Page 42 of Mated Exile

"Teenagers." Finn shakes his head, eyes moving through the crowd before landing back on me. "Should we circulate?"

"I don't know." I glance restlessly at the bar. "Maybe one more shot?"

"I think you're ready," he says gently. "Any more liquid courage will just turn into liquid foolishness."

"You're right. I just don't know what to say. If it's not about my father, I have nothing to talk about. And that's a real conversation ender right there."

"Do you trust me?"

Looking up into his warm brown eyes, I'm struck by the fact that despite how recently we met, I do. I can't get the sight of his broken leg out of my mind, and the echo of his soft smiles and charming smirks chases me to bed each night. "I do."

"Then let me lead the way. You'll figure it out."

It turns out, of course, that he's right. With Finn's help, I reacquaint myself with an old high school classmate, who only briefly gives me his condolences before Finn has moved him into other territory. Speaking to the new owners of the shop down the street, now a small gardening center, I promise to drop by and pick up some succulents for the house.

I feel a strange, buoyant warmth inside me as we flit through the crowd and catch bits of conversation, almost as if the mood of the bar is infectious, the emotions around me seeping into my pores.

A woman at one booth turns out to be a reporter from out-of-town; she's on a small beat covering the pack territories, and is interested to followup on the death of the alpha, as well as the curse. We promise to talk to her sometime when we're sober.

Finn finds a friend of his from the gym, and I grow distracted as they start discussing their latest pickup game. My eyes wander. A few booths down, there's a man who I recognize as my history teacher's husband, a baker who used to bring pastries to our classes. I greet him warmly—only to be struck by the sadness in his eyes.

It hits me as we lock gazes, and I murmur, "I'm sorry for your loss."

"And I for yours." He grips his beer in his hand, and adds, "Mine was a year and a half ago now. Yours is more recent."

"Still, that doesn't change the fact it's fresh for you every day. And I just found out."

Glancing down and away, he shrugs, though the motion is stiff. "So many have died since Sara. It's hard to hold my grief close at hand when I know it's just one of many. We've all lost someone now."

I'm struck by the sad bitterness of that. Though the alcohol has moved into my bloodstream and loosened some of my nerves, I still feel awkward and out-of-place. Suddenly I wish Finn were by my side, to say something empathetic and yet charming, and effortlessly move the conversation on to a better topic.

"I wish I could do something about it," I tell him lamely, even knowing that there's a chance I can, once I understand my witch side better. My father, at least, seemed to think that I could break the curse. "If only we could somehow reverse time, and make it so the curse never happened."

His eyes go hard, staring up at me, and I'm suddenly rooted to the spot. It strikes me that I don't know his name, or anything about him. Unease flickers through me, and I taste something bitter at the back of my throat, something that I know instinctively is an emotion: anger.

Not my own.

"You sound like you feelpersonallyresponsible," the man says, his voice suddenly low and threatening. "Almost as if you had something to do with the curse."

"I—" Stepping back, I glance towards Finn, but he's engrossed in his conversation. My hands tremble as I look back at the man, and I feel an overwhelming rage from him, so taut and violent it frightens me. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't play coy. You're William's daughter." His lip curls. "He exiled you for a reason. There was something wrong with you, somethingpoisonous.Laura saw it. She used to talk about your wrongness before she died."

That hurts more than it should. I thought the pain of my mother's death was behind me, far smaller and more distant than my rejection and exile, but discovering she was never my mother has brought it back fresh and new. I may have been five when she died, but I still remember her cool hands, and the tremulous sound of her voice as she sang lullabies to me. Even though our relationship was chilly and strange, she was still mymother, and she loved me in her own way.

"There's nothing wrong with me," I whisper to the man, my voice too quiet for him to even hear it. "I'm just a member of the pack like you."

"Speak up,shiftless." He sneers. "Or are you too afraid to admit that the bad luck of your birth killed hundreds of women?"

Shaking my head, I back up, turn around—and bump straight into a tall, warm body. Relieved, I look up, but it's not Finn's brown eyes I meet.

It's another hard gaze, this time from an unfamiliar older man with a scar over one eye. He stares down at me, a frown twisting his face. "Move."

I do, pressing off of him, feeling a dizzying wave of irritation as I do so, the emotion barely recognizable as foreign and not my own. Stumbling through the crowd, I brush up against a young woman with hard eyes and feel unbearable sadness and rage from her. My eyes jerk to her face, then down to a spot on her neck where a scar I recognize rests, and I realize with a start that she has a chip in her neck.

She must have gotten it voluntarily to suppress her wolf.

Which explains how she's standing here among the Glass Pack, her eyes glossy, expression strained, skin lifeless and cheeks hollow. Shuddering, I move back from her, an apology dropping from my lips, but she doesn't react. My awareness instinctively ripples out from her, and I feel the incredible pain that she lives with every day, barely managing to make it through. The rawness of it scrapes against me so hard that I flinch and try to draw my awareness back in.

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