Page 2 of Rejected Wolf's Secret Baby (Rejected Moons 4)

“Don’t be upset. I’m just glad you’re home.”

“You know I’m not staying, Dad.”

“I never understood why you left. I found you a perfectly good mate.”

“I remember.” Brandon. The bad boy of the pack. I haven’t thought much about him in all these years, and I don’t want to start now. “I didn’t want him, Dad. That was part of the reason I left.”

“You could have rejected him and stayed. You didn’t need to leave the whole pack.”

“You know I never got along with Deidre. You now she was cruel to me,” I remind him.

“I know you didn’t. And I’m sorry I didn’t see the cruelty part, she was good at hiding things,” he says. “Your sisters didn’t get along with her either. But they stayed.”

“Pat was older. She was off on her own sooner. And Kay…”

“People respond to things differently, Dad,” Kay says. “Alicia likes her human life. That’s okay.”

“We should be in touch more,” I tell him, wanting to give him something. “You should get a cell phone, Dad. I can help set you up. Then we could talk every day.”

Dad nods, and a smile crosses his face. “I’d like that,” he admits.

“Great. We’ll do that while I’m here. Does the truck still work?”

“Oh, it works.”

“Then we’ll go into town tomorrow and pick you out a phone, and I’ll teach you how to use it,” I promise him.

Dad reaches across the table and rests his hand on top of mine. “I’ve missed you, Alicia. I’m glad you’re back.”

It felt good to feel his touch again. I had always loved and missed my father, butI’m not back.

2

ALICIA

“So,anymeninyour life lately?” Kayla asks me later at the bar.

I laugh. She’s as predictable as the sunrise. Kay always wants to talk about men. Who we’re dating, who we’re fucking, who we’re admiring from afar—she’s been like this since we were teenagers.

“Human men aren’t much to write home about,” I tell her.

“So you’ve said,” she says. “What happened with that one you were seeing? What was his name?”

“You mean Pete?”

“Sure. Probably.”

“I dumped him,” I say.

“Oh no.” She makes a sympathetic face. “What was wrong with him?”

“Oh, nothing. He was justboring. He was the sex-on-Saturday-night type.”

“What’s wrong with Saturday night?”

I realize the misunderstanding and laugh. Pack life really is different from life in the human world. “I meantonlySaturday night.”

“What? That’s insane.”

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