Page 22 of Wolf Bonded (Rejected Moons 2)

“Speaking for my pack,” she says, “we wouldn’t have believed anything a Moon Caster said to us. If you’d told us the sky was blue, we would have started to doubt it. Moon Casters were deceptive, wicked…never to be trusted.”

I nod. “We felt the same way about shifters,” I say. “Because shifters always attacked and killed us. A lot of Moon Casters have given up on the idea of making any kind of alliance between shifters and Moon Casters. It feels impossible.”

“Which is probably exactly what that Lord Enorio guy wants.”

“Right. Exactly.”

She grins at me.

I grin back.

I’ve never had a conversation like this. I’ve never been able to talk so openly about these ideas that I’ve been thinking about for my entire life. “I’m really glad I met you,” I tell her.

“I’m glad I met you, too.”

“What about the others?”

“Oh, they’ll get used to it,” she says. “They weren’t even glad to meetmeat first. I don’t know if you’ve spent a lot of time around shifters—”

“Not when we weren’t trying to kill each other, no.”

“Well, it usually takes us a while to warm up to new people,” she says. “It’s the way the pack mentality manifests. We’re inherently mistrustful of outsiders, even if they are other shifters. Anyone who doesn’t belong to the same community we come from is a risk.”

“That makes sense,” I say. “I never thought of it that way, but shiftersarereally pack-oriented.”

“Covens aren’t the same way?”

“No, we choose our covens,” I tell her. “People leave all the time—go off on their own, maybe look for a different group to join for a while. And new people come into the coven all the time, too.”

“That must make things interesting,” she says. “Fresh voices. New people to talk to. Not a lot of that in a wolf pack. Especially…”

“Especially now that no babies are being born?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says quietly.

All the fun drains out of the conversation, and it feels like a heavy cloud has passed over us, even though we’re indoors.

“It’s happening here too, then?” she says. “I guess a part of me was hoping it was just shifters.”

“You were hoping Moon Casters were still having babies?”

“I mean…I know we were enemies, but it still helped to think that new people were being bornsomewhere,” she says. “And since I assumed Moon Casters had caused all this—”

“You thought the covens might have the solution.”

“Well, yeah. I knew Milo didn’t know what was wrong, but I was hopingsomeonedid.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I wish we knew too. But we don’t.”

She’s quiet for a moment.

“There’s something else I’ve been wondering about,” she says. “Something else I thought you might be able to tell me.”

“What is it?” I ask.

“Milo told me that in order for magic to be inborn in a Moon Caster, some kind of spell has to be performed over the mother while she’s still pregnant.”

I nod. “That’s right,” I say. “Generations ago, we developed our magic on our own. We read spell books and practiced under the moonlight until we had the ability to access moon magic. And those things are still done, of course, as part of training and education, but the prenatal blessing gives every Moon Caster baby a surge of moon magic that takes root inside them.”

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