Page 18 of Wolf Bonded (Rejected Moons 2)

“Tell them,” Wilder says at last. “Go on. They need to know.”

“Telling people has never worked before,” Regine says.

“But they’re different,” Wilder says. “That’s what I’m telling you. She’s a hybrid.” He gestures to me. “We fought Moon Drinkers together. And we also fought wolves together. She’s not on the shifters’ side. She’s not on anybody’s side.”

“What’s a Moon Drinker?” I ask, echoing Nate.

Regine sighs. “The Moon Drinkers are the ones who are responsible for the Lunar Reversal,” she says.

“Moon Casters did that,” Nate says. “It was all of you. It was the reckless way you use your moon magic. You overdrew from the moon and changed its orbit. You caused all the natural disasters that ended so many lives on Earth and caused the humans who remained to mutate into Ravagers. You’re not trying to tell us it was—what, some specialsectof Moon Casters?”

“That’s exactly what it was,” Regine says. “About twenty-five years ago, a young man came to power. Lord Enorio, he called himself.”

“Lord?” Nate snickers.

Regine gives him a stern look. “It isn’t funny,” she says. “Moon Casters—decent ones—have always been cautious about how much power we use. As with any other resource, we take what we need and no more.”

“I didn’t know that was important,” I say. “I haven’t always been careful.”

There’s actually sympathy in her eyes as she looks at me. “There’s no way one person—especially one untrained person—could access enough magic to do any damage,” she says, and her tone is almost gentle. “You couldn’t have done anything wrong.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she says. “There’s no need to worry about that.”

“But this Lord Enorio person—”

“He started to gather followers,” Regine says. “A cult of sorts. They grouped around him because they were attracted to the idea of more power. Of trying things that Moon Caster covens wouldn’t let them try. They called themselves Moon Drinkers.”

“And did they carve the shape of a goblet on their faces?” I ask, making the connection.

Regine nods. “That’s their sigil. They mark it everywhere they go, everywhere they do particularly large spells. Sometimes in blood.”

I remember the first time I saw the sigil, and the other two that went along with it. They must have been a part of some Moon Drinker spell. Moon Drinkers must have used the very building Nate and I were in that day as a base of operations, at least for a little while.

“So the Lunar Reversal,” I say. “It wasthem?”

“Yes,” Regine says. “As far as we can tell, they did it on purpose. Our working theory is that Lord Enorio was making a play for world domination. The pitch he made when he tried to get Moon Casters to join his cult was always that we were the superior race, and that we deserved to be in power. He knew that, by doing what he did to the moon, he would directly threaten all his competitors. He knew what it would do to humanity—maybe not that it would give rise to the Ravagers, but certainly that their species wouldn’t survive. He knew the shifters would be at risk too.”

“He probably knew that the shifters would blame Moon Casters as a whole for what had happened, too,” Wilder chimes in. “And he knew that if we tried to explain the truth, the shifters wouldn’t believe us. He knew he was creating a war between shifters and Moon Casters that might go on for years.”

“Because the shifters started trying to exterminate us,” Regina says harshly.

“Because they thought we had tried to exterminatethem,” Wilder says.

I kind of can’t believe what I’m hearing. It changes everything I’ve always thought about the world. “So you never wanted to fight shifters.”

“We wanted to defend ourselves against shifters,” Regine says. “We wanted you to stop coming after us. But no. We wouldn’t have wanted to fight shifters if you had ever just left us alone.”

It’s a lot to process. All my life, I’ve been trained to think of Moon Casters as violent enemies. I’ve been trained in how to hunt them and kill them, and I’ve looked forward to the day I would be able to prove myself to the rest of my pack by doing exactly that.

When I found out I was part Moon Caster, it was one of the most difficult things I had ever had to absorb.

But now…well, if what Regine is saying is true, it means everything I’ve ever known about Moon Casters has been wrong. They’re not violent by nature. They’re not evil.

I’mnot evil.

I don’t have to despise this new part of me. I don’t have to question what I really am, or who my mother was, or how she could possibly have slept with a Moon Caster to produce me.

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