Page 56 of Wolf Hunted (Rejected Moons 1)

I’m surprised Nate didn’t notice anything.

Then again, maybe it takes one to know one.

Milo is quiet for a moment.

“No,” he says at last, glancing at Annie. “You’re not wrong.”

“She doesn’t know?” I guess.

“I don’t want her to,” he says, taking my arm and moving me slightly away. “I don’t want to freak her out. I guess you probably know how wolves are about Moon Casters.”

“Yeah, I know about it,” I say. I bite my lip, unsure about trusting a stranger with this information…but he’s like me. If anyone is ever going to be able to relate to what I’m dealing with, it’s this guy.

“I’m the same,” I tell him.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m part Moon Caster. My father was.”

He stares. “You’re a hybrid?”

I nod.

“I’ve never met another one,” he says wonderingly. “When did you find out? Or did you always know?”

“No, I just learned about it recently,” I say. “Days ago, actually. It’s been…a lot. I left my pack. Is that why you left yours?”

“No,” he says. “I told you, I didn’t grow up in a pack. I grew up in a coven.”

I suck in a breath. “Are you still…I mean, do you belong to a coven now?”

“No.”

“What happened?”

“I always knew what I was,” Milo says. “My mother…my father kept her around as a mistress. The coven captured her, but they didn’t kill her. My father claimed her for his own use.”

I nod. This doesn’t shock me. It’s not so different from the way we kept Moon Casters to be hunted and killed on mating nights. I never imagined it was happening in reverse—but I suppose it does make sense that it was.

“She was a prisoner,” Milo says, “but she never let me see how dire things were for her. The time she and I spent together was always happy. At first, she was allowed a lot of time with me because my father didn’t really know what to do with a hybrid son that he’d never planned on having. But my mother used our time together to teach me how to shift in secret. It wasn’t malicious—you know how it is, young shifters can’t control themselves, and they do need to learn control—but when my father found out, he was enraged. He killed her.”

I feel sick.

I’m used to stories of wolf packs killing Moon Casters, of course—that’s what my life has always been about. And I’ve always thought of Moon Casters as our enemies, as people who didn’t respect life and were willing to kill wolves in return.

But I’ve never heard of a killing on such a personal level. That a man could kill his own mistress—

My pack was going to kill me, though. They still would, if they found me. I belonged to them, and they wouldn’t even flinch at ending my life.

“Here’s the hospital,” Milo says.

I look up at the building he’s indicating. It looks more like a garage to me. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he says. “After my mother was killed, after I ran away from my coven, I went back and found my mother’s pack. I let them know what had happened. They offered to let me join, but I saw the way they looked at me. I knew I would never belong—not there, and not anywhere.”

Damn, but I can relate to that.

“But they told me about this place,” Milo says. “And I have brought a few people in for help over the years. They’ll get Annie back on her feet. Take her inside and hand her off to one of the nurses.”

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