Page 53 of Wolf Bonded (Rejected Moons 2)

“He said you were crushed in that earthquake.”

“I wasn’t,” I say. “He lied to you.”

She shakes her head slowly. “Victor is our alpha,” she says. “He wouldn’t lie.”

“But you see that I’m not crushed,” I say. “So it had to be a lie.”

“You tricked him,” she says. “You did magic on him. He told us you caused the earthquake with magic.”

“No, I didn’t!” It was Wilder who did that, not that I’m about to volunteer that information. “Listen, Jess…please, just take the chains off me, okay? I won’t bother you guys. I’m not a threat to you. I’ll just leave, and you’ll never have to see me again.”

But she shakes her head vigorously and backs away toward the bushes.

I can see the fear in her eyes.

She was my best friend once. We did everything together. We got ready for our alpha mating ceremony together and fantasized about how one day we would raise babies together.

Now she’s afraid of me. She thinks I’m her enemy, and she’s chosen Victor’s side over mine.

I’ll never do anything to hurt Jess. But at the same time, I know I can’t repair things between us. I’ll never get her back. Our friendship has been destroyed forever because she can’t accept the fact that I’m a Moon Caster.

31

WILDER

“Youthinkherpackmateshave her?” I ask.

“I’m sure of it,” Nate says. His hands are flexing—his whole upper body is flexing—and it could not be more evident that he’s aching to throw a punch.

Maybe that’s why Milo’s standing several feet away from him, with his own hands up in the air as if to ward Nate off. “We don’t know that,” he says. “We don’t knowwhathappened.”

“Tell me another explanation that fits, then,” Nate says.

Milo throws up his hands. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know! It’s obvious there were wolves there.”

“At the same time as Emlyn.”

“Maybeat the same time. We can’t know that.”

“How do you explain the fact that she’s disappeared, then?”

“I can’t!” Milo explodes. “And maybe you’re right, okay? You’reprobablyright. I’m just saying that I think we should take a minute to try to find out what happened before we barrel into her pack’s old territory.”

“Hold on.” I hold up my hands. “Do we even know where her packmates are located?”

“We could track the scent they left,” Milo says. “That’s what Nate wants to do. He wants to track them back to wherever it is they’re staying, find Emlyn, and break her out.”

“Wehaveto do that,” Nate says. “We can’t just leave her with them. Have you forgotten the fact that they were absolutely, one hundred percent, planning to kill her?”

“No,” Milo says, rather icily. “Of course I haven’t forgotten that.”

“But you still want to drag your feet about this?”

“Listen,” Milo says. “If they were that determined to kill her, they would have killed her in the store. The fact that they took her to a second location—if that’s actually what happened—means they’renotplanning on killing her right away.”

“You don’t know what it means,” Nate snaps.

“You’re right!” Milo says. “I don’t know! I don’t know anything! And neither do you. But you want to do the same thing you always do—solve the problem with your fists. What happens if we charge into the middle of Emlyn’s old pack and attack them, and she’s not there at all? We’ll probably get ourselves killed trying to fight them all, and we won’t have helped her. You don’t even know that the wolves whose scent we caughtwerethe wolves from her pack.”

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