Page 67 of Rejected Exile

"Some important golfer signed that in the nineties, you know," I tell him. "Can't remember who. I'm sure it's worth something online."

"You should sell it, then. It's not doing any good up here."

Looking up into his face, I ask, "What'cha thinking?"

Finn glances away from me, a frown settling on his mouth. Then he jerks his eyes to my face, brings his head close to me, and murmurs in a low voice, "He's going to get you killed, you know."

I know who he's talking about, though I still ask, "Who?"

"Kieran." He narrows his eyes in the wolf's direction. "Out of respect for you and Cat, I've decided not to eviscerate him inside your house, since the mess would be unpleasant. But I wish I had the guts to be rude."

"You don't mean that."

"I do."

"I thought the two of you were friends—at least a little. Once upon a time.”

"Maybe." He grunts. "For a while. But that was before I could see what a coward he can be."

Looking up into his eyes, I ask him, "Do you really think it's the mate bond that kills the females? Not the pack bond, or shifting on the land, or anything else?"

"It's not something I can definitively prove. But it's the only thing they all had in common, other than the shift. And if those two female wolves died far from the land without any bond to the pack, what else could it be?"

"Maybe the curse already had them before they left town. Or... maybe it only affects bonds that are finalized in the Mating Circle."

"Some of the early werewolves who died joined the pack already part of a couple. One of the females was bonded accidentally while out on a hunting trip. Something about having a mate bond and being part of the pack does them in, some sooner rather than later, some faster or slower, but they all die." His eyes roam my face. Quietly, he asks, "Can you really say thatheis worth all that risk?"

He isn't. I know that. And before I saw him again with my wolf's blood thrumming through me, I wouldn't have evenimaginedwe'd wind up nearly screwing up against the wall of my father's house.

Some part of me still wants him, though. It's like there's a wound in me that only he can help heal. Even though he made the wound in the first place—he's the knife and the healer all at once.

Still. As I tell Finn, "I'm not going to die just to get laid. It just... happened. I blame the wolf, if that's something I can get away with doing."

"You can." Finn shoots me a jaunty smirk. "I blame my horniest moments on the wolf all the time."

"Good. So just... forget you ever saw me... doing that... with him."

He raises a brow. "Oh, I plan on forgetting alright. I was also hoping to makeyouforget too—though it looks like that'll have to wait, considering the pressing question at hand."

Glancing over at Lance, I ask Finn, "Do you think he'll be able to figure it out?"

"That guy? For sure. There's nothing he's not able to absolutely crush if he puts his mind to it."

"I hope you're right. We should probably help him, though. You take the big book on plants, I'll take the one on fungi?"

"Do we have to?"

"I think we do. My father wrote notes in the margins of both, and if he figured something out, I want to know. Especially since it's life or death for me now."

"Of course. I just don't pretend to understand half of this stuff."

"Me either. Good thing we're not the only ones figuring it out."

We grab our respective reading assignments off the pile Lance has stacked up on the desk, and find places on the carpeted floor to settle down and read them. There's technically only one chair in the room, my father's old desk chair, but it's beat up and in bad shape; no one sits on the daybed, probably because it's the kind of thing that sinks and grabs you in its embrace.

Peeling open the book on fungi, I flip through until I find some of my dad's notes in the margins. Most of the scribblings are nonsensical.Spores involved? Maybe a growth agent. This one looks promising.Bit by bit I scan through them, wishing I knew which notes he wrote years ago, and which are more recent. For all any of us know, he figured out long ago which information is useless.

I'm halfway through a chapter on Black Witches' Butter, a type of mushroom that seems to have nothing to do with actual witches, when Roarke speaks up. "Lance. Did you take these files? There's half a drawer missing."

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