Page 64 of Wolf Hunted (Rejected Moons 1)

“You asked my permission?”

“Not permission. I just asked her what would happen if we went ahead with it. She said you wouldn’t care.”

I shrug. “Yeah, I don’t.”

“She’s not your mate?”

“We just met a few days ago. We hardly know each other, really.”

“You seem so close,” he says. “It’s hard to believe that you haven’t known each other for a long time.”

“Believe it,” I say.

“Are you planning to stick with her for the long haul? I know you’ve both left your packs behind.”

I hesitate. This is a hard one to answer because that’s not what I’ve been planning to do with Emlyn. I had completely different plans for her.

But maybe I’m going to have to revise those plans. Because every hour—everyminute—in her presence is convincing me more and more that I don’t want to take her back to her wolf pack. I can’t be responsible for her death. And if I take her to them, they are definitely going to kill her. There’s no doubt in my mind about that.

To Milo, I just say, “I don’t know. I’m starting to think I might.”

“You said you didn’t like having a pack,” he says. “But…I’ve always kind of wanted one.”

“You didn’t go to your mother’s pack, though,” I remember.

“No, they wouldn’t take me,” Milo says. “I did try to go to them as a kid, but they wanted nothing to do with me. I was lucky they let me live, really. I think they liked my mother, and they were reluctant to kill her son. Didn’t mean they were going to do me any favors, though.”

“What do you want to live in a pack for?” I ask.

“I’ve been alone all my life,” he says. “You don’t know what that’s like.”

“Being alone is better than being subject to someone else’s authority,” I say.

“But it’s not like that here, with the three of us,” Milo says. “No one is in charge. There’s no alpha. What if the three of us were a pack?”

“You’re crazy,” I say, spitting out a bone.

“No, I’m not,” Milo said. “We’re three wolves without a home, aren’t we? Three wolves from different packs. This is how new packs form. Rogues get together.”

“And how do covens form?” I ask him, glancing meaningfully at Emlyn.

He’s quiet. “Did you really need to go there?” he asks.

I feel guilty, but only a little bit. I know I have a point, and if he has any sense, he does too. Bringing multiple Moon Casters together—even hybrids, even when it’s only two of them—that’s a dangerous idea.

But at the same time, I like Emlyn. I like Milo.

I wouldn’t mind having them around.

I’m not going to turn her in.

I’ve known for some time that I wasn’t going to. It’s time I just admit it to myself. As great as that bounty would be, I couldn’t do it to her. I can’t just let them kill her.

The whole time we were running from her pack, I wasn’t thinking about what was in it for me at all. I was just thinking about getting usbothto safety.

The knowledge that I’m not going to turn her in after all, that I don’t need to worry about making that decision anymore, is such a load off my mind that I actually laugh out loud.

“What?” Milo says. “What’s funny?”

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