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Ali doesn't need to ask who I mean. She grasps my hand, brown eyes warm with understanding. "Oh Rina, of course. We owe so much to her."
I nod slowly, comforted by my friend's steadfast faith. Fern gave everything so that others wouldn't suffer the way she and other omegas did. I have to believe she's at peace now, her spirit living on through us.
A commotion draws my gaze back to the gathering. Laughter and lively music fill the air again as Lucian pulls Thale into an impromptu jig, to the delight of our packmates. My earth god's hard face splits into a grin as he gives in and dances with wild abandon.
Adar sweeps a laughing young witch into his arms next, spinning her so fast her feet leave the ground. The joyful chaos is infectious. Soon the whole glade is up and dancing again beneath the moonlight.
I exchange an exuberant smile with Ali. As one, we run to join our family, letting the music and love carry us into the small hours. Tomorrow there will be time enough for talking. Tonight, we celebrate all we've survived and everything yet to come.
Here, surrounded by kin, with my mates and children close, I am home.
Excerpt: Rejected Exile
Feeling sorry for myself, I put enough bottles of liquor into my cart to eat away half a paycheck. The bar cabinet in the dining room is empty, I tell myself. People will want to come by to have drinks and reminisce about the dead alpha. I'll need to have something on hand. Truthfully, I'm just aimlessly searching for something here that will make me forget what happened to me.
As I stray near a section in the back with strange, small bottles of clear liquor, a voice startles me. "Yuja is the best chamisul flavor. Some people like the plum, but I think it's too sweet."
Whirling around, I blink up into cool brown eyes that light up a face curved with a wicked smile. A tall man with honey brown skin stands in front of me, his fashionably-cut black hair shiny and sleek as it curves behind his ears. He has slightly delicate features and a strong jaw, his monolid eyes topped with thick black brows.
Plus he's absolutely fucking gorgeous. A stunning lovechild of Jesse Williams and Henry Golding. He looks like he should be wearing a suit and posing on the red carpet, not standing in a liquor store in the middle of Juniper. In fact, the seemingly casual outfit he's wearing, of dark-washed blue jeans and a black button-up, somehow screams style in its simplicity. I get the sense that he knows the difference between a single and double-breasted suit jacket.
I can't seem to find words to say to him. Especially when I realize I'm standing here with seven—no, eight, for fuck's sake—handles of liquor in my cart.
"This isn't all for me," I blurt out, like some kind of goddamned idiot. For some reason this makes the man grin so widely I nearly fall over in stunned attraction to him. "I'm, uh, having a party. Well, more like a wake. A—a respectful wake! Err, or, well, a drunk one..."
Stop now, Delilah. He's never going to want to see you naked. Hell, he probably didn't before you opened your mouth. The man is just being nice to you—he knows you're having a mental breakdown in a liquor store.
Or if he didn't before, he does now.
"Don't worry about it. I never judge how much a lady is purchasing in alcohol sales." Turning to the shelf, the man draws his finger across several bottles covered in writing I don't recognize, and stops at one with a painting of a blueberry and brush script on it. "If you're looking for something that'll get you fucked up without you even noticing you're drinking alcohol, this is the stuff. Just be warned—it's not that alcoholic seltzer they sell around here. It's far more potent."
"What... is it?"
"Soju. A Korean rice wine." He grabs two of the small bottles and places them in my cart, where they clink against all the other bottles. I cringe and wish for a trap door to open up in the ground beneath me. "That should get your respectful wake going quite nicely."
"Uh—thanks." Lamely, I admit, "I'm not really having a wake. Well, I probably will—whether I want to or not—I'm just kind of prepared for it to happen one way or another."
"Gotcha." He rocks back on his heels, watching me idly, until I start to wonder if there's something on my face. "Sorry for your loss? Or congratulations, if it's your mortal nemesis whose wake you're holding."
I burst into laughter at his joke. Loud, embarrassing laughter that's way more enthusiastic than the joke called for. Mortified, I slap my hands over my mouth and wish again for that trap door in the ground.
"It's complicated," I tell him, my blush spreading even as his eyes dance with mirth and his grin widens. "Everything about this is complicated."
"Well, if you need some help planning a few mortality-themed complicated cocktails, I'm your man." He winks at me, and somehow it comes across as charming instead of slimy. Probably because of the handsomeness. "I'm Finn Barber, by the way—you are?"
"Delilah." I wince at the sound of my own name, and at the flash of recognition that slides across his face in response to it. "Yep,thatDelilah. And the wake is for—"
"Your father. Oh shit." He pushes his hair back from his face, though it still slides forward to flop in his forehead, a tiny flaw in his exquisitely handsome exterior. "I'm so—wait. I won't say that. Since you said it's complicated."
Relief fills me. "Thank you."
"No problem."
"It's just—I never know how to respond when people say that." Staring into the cart, I admit, "I probably got too many bottles. It'll take forever to put them back. I hate just leaving them anywhere—when I worked retail, customers like that drove me crazy."
"No worries. I'll just—ah, yes, that one." Reaching into the cart, he nabs the big bottle of cheap vodka I threw in on a whim, and gives me a winsome smile that makes me feel like a teenage girl again. "That's just what I was looking for, anyway. No need to put it back on the shelf."
I smile back at him, feeling a little less like a crazy lady, and even more like I should get the hell out of Juniper before I lose my panties in some kind of panties-melting hot-werewolf-men related accident.
