Page 61 of Wolf Hunted (Rejected Moons 1)

“Idon’tunderstand,”Isay to Milo.

“Don’t understand what?”

“How can you hate the covens but still be open to using magic?” I ask. “Are you for the Moon Casters or are you against them?”

“It’s not that simple,” he says.

“Really?” Nate asks. “Seems pretty simple to me.” He tears away a chunk of the rabbit we caught for dinner with his teeth. “They’re monsters. They’re no better than Ravagers.”

“They’re entirely different from Ravagers,” Milo says coolly. “And you’d be making a terrible mistake not to recognize that fact. Moon Casters havelogicon their side. They’re evil, yes, but they’re capable of reason.”

“So we’re supposed to hate them less because they’re rational?” Nate asks.

“Did I say that?” Milo asks. “I hate them as much as you do, I promise. They killed my mother. I’d kill every last one of them if I could.”

“But you still use moon magic,” he says.

“Well,” Milo says, “youdon’t belong to a wolf pack.”

“I don’t belong to anybody,” Nate says, his lip curling back to expose his teeth. I’m pretty sure that was involuntary. I’m also pretty sure Milo should watch his step. I don’t want these two to start fighting.

“Exactly,” Milo says. “You left your pack, why? Because you didn’t want to be a part of them? Maybe because you didn’t want to be subject to an alpha telling you what to do?”

Nate doesn’t answer. I know him well enough to know that he’s disconcerted that Milo figured him out so quickly.

“You hate what you come from as much as I do,” Milo says. “But I bet that hatred doesn’t stop you from using your own wolf form when it benefits you. I bet you’re willing to shift when it’s advantageous.”

Nate doesn’t answer.

“He is,” I say. “We both do.”

“It’s not the same,” Nate says.

“I think it is,” I say. “Nate, it’s not just your own pack that you think badly of. You know that. You hateallpacks. You hate mine.”

“They tried to kill you, Emlyn! You don’t think I should hate them for that?”

“I’m just saying, you’re able to differentiate between hating a group of people and hating the power that unifies them. You don’t hate the ability to shift. You don’t hatewolves. You hate being ruled by an alpha. Maybe it’s the same with the covens. Maybe moon magic itself is just a tool, like you said, and it’s just the covens who are bad.”

Milo looks at him. “You said that?”

“I was just guessing.”

“But that’s exactly how I think of it,” Milo says. “The magic—it’s born in me. Did you know that? It’s part of Moon Caster ritual that when a woman is expecting a child, she takes part in a ceremony to pass her magic along to him. It’s been going on for generations, so magic has become part of our genes now.”

“But your mother was a wolf,” I say. “How could she have passed it on?”

“That’s the thing,” Milo says. “No one knows. For a long time, they thought I wouldn’t have any magic at all because my mother wasn’t a Moon Caster.”

“But you do.”

He nods. “My mother told me, before she died, that she insisted on having the ceremony performed on her,” he says. “My father refused to do it—of course, he wouldn’t want to share magic with anyone he didn’t feel was worthy of it. This is what I mean about the covens.” He spits on the ground. “But one of the women of the coven took pity on my mother. My mother told me that she was pregnant too, and that the two of them were friends with one another during their pregnancies. Of course, the friendship dissolved once the children were born. My mother was just a wolf prisoner. She wasn’t worthy of real friendship.”

“You must have hated growing up there,” I say quietly.

“I would have left sooner than I did if it hadn’t been for my mother,” Milo says. “I would never have left her. But the moment she was dead, there was no reason for me to stay.”

“I wonder how I came to have the magic?” I muse. “My mother was a wolf. Everyone around her was a wolf.”

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