Page 54 of Wolf Hunted (Rejected Moons 1)

I shake my head. “I haven’t got one,” I say. “And Annie—we just met. We don’t know each other. I don’t know who she belongs to—if anyone.”

“It’s not your baby, then?”

“No,” I say. “She was in labor when I found her. I just…had to help. I had to make sure she survives.” I swallow. I don’t want to say the rest of what I’m thinking—that so many women have died like this. That pregnancy, and childbirth, have become deadly. I couldn’t let it happen to another woman. Not if there was a chance I could help.

I can’t say that out loud. Not while Annie is going through what she is.

“The baby?” Emlyn asks.

I can’t say that out loud either. I just shake my head.

She closes her eyes briefly. I see her process the news—the macabre nature of what we’re doing here.

Then she nods. “Okay,” she says quietly, and I watch as her hand finds Annie’s. “Let’s get this done, then.”

Emlyn’s man is still standing a few yards away. “Um,” he says. “Do you want me to…do something?”

“Can you just stand guard, Nate?” Emlyn asks. “If we heard her, other people could hear her, and we don’t want anyone else coming up on us. We need to be able to focus.”

“Okay,” Nate says. He sounds a little displeased, but he’s agreeing to help, so I can’t be mad.

Emlyn looks at me. “I don’t know your name,” she says.

“I’m Milo,” I tell her. “She’s Annie.”

“Hi, Annie,” Emlyn says. “It’s good to meet you. I wish it was under different circumstances.”

“Thank you.” Annie’s eyes are filled with tears. “I know you didn’t have to help.”

“We all have to help each other,” Emlyn says. “It’s the only way we’re going to survive.”

“My mate died,” she says. “My pack—my pack fell apart—I’m on my own—”

“Push, Annie,” I say. I don’t want her getting too distracted from what she needs to be focusing on right now. “It’s almost done.”

If this were a live baby, would I have saidit’s almosthere? Would I have found a way to prepare Annie for the beauty of holding her child in her arms?

I don’t know. This is my third delivery, but I’ve never managed to deliver a live baby before.

At least this time the mother is probably going to survive.

I close my eyes and draw on the core of magical energy within me, helping her muscles to do the work they need to do. She and I are connected right now, and she’s feeding on my strength, though she doesn’t know it. I think that if she realized the person kneeling in front of her was part Moon Caster, she’d be even more freaked out than she already is.

The baby emerges. I catch it in my shirt and bundle it up before Annie has to see what she gave birth to because it doesn’t look alive. I’ll take it away and bury it later, give it some respect, but she shouldn’t have to face it.

Then Emlyn’s man is next to me. He holds out his arms. “I’ll take it,” he murmurs.

“It’s—it didn’t make it,” I tell him. I don’t want him to have the wrong idea here.

“I know,” he says. “It’s all right. Let me take it.”

I look at Emlyn. She nods reassuringly, and I release the baby into his arms. He hurries away.

“My baby,” Annie whispers.

Tears are streaking down her face, and Emlyn’s crying quietly too. Even I’m feeling a little shaky. Knowing that we’re losing our ability to produce a new generation, that we might all be dying out—that’s one thing. Seeing it in action is something else. It’s frightening.

And this is the third time.

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