Page 62 of Wolf Bonded (Rejected Moons 2)

“We wait,” Wilder says.

“Wait? I thought we agreed—”

“We wait as long as we can,” Wilder says. “The moon is waxing now. Our power is coming back to us.”

“I can feel it,” Milo agrees.

“But it’s happeningslowly,” Wilder says. “The moon won’t be full again for weeks.”

A surge of frustration floods me. “If you think I’m going to waitweeks—”

“Of course not,” Wilder says. “But as long as possible. Until nightfall, if we can manage it. We’ll be stronger if the moon is visible.” He looks at Milo. “You can feel that too, can’t you?”

Milo nods.

“Fucking Moon Casters,” I growl, because even though I am glad to have them with me and glad that their power is going to be joining the fight on my side, this shit is annoying. If we were fighting as three wolves, we could have gone ages ago. It’s driving me crazy having to wait for these two to be ready.

Wilder rolls his eyes at my frustration and says nothing. He’s used to me.

Milo speaks without looking at either of us. “If they move against Emlyn, we go,” he says. “We can see her now. We know she’s safe. If they even show a sign of wanting to hurt her, we’ll act. But as long as they’re just standing guard over her, we can afford to let this spin out for a few more hours.”

“I just want to get out of here,” I say.

“I know,” Milo says. “I do too. But we’ve got to be smart about it. We can’t afford to rush this. It’s more important to be at full strength than it is to hurry.”

“Victor is in there somewhere,” I remind them. “Her alpha mate. We know he’s itching to kill her.”

“Why do you think he hasn’t done it yet?” Wilder asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “He’s probably waiting to make a big production out of it or something. We did make him work for it. He probably needs to use her death as a demonstration to the rest of the pack that he won that battle, so he’s going to do it at high noon in a clearing or some bullshit like that.” I hate that ceremonial crap.

“What I want to know,” Milo says, “is how Victor is even still alive.”

“We never saw a body,” Wilder says mildly.

“But we saw a huge chasm in the Earth,” Milo says. “That earthquake you caused should have killed him. Remember when we dropped rocks down that crack in the ground? Remember how long it took them to strike anything? You can’t seriously think he survived a fall like that.”

“No,” Wilder says. “But what if we were wrong about the fall itself?”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I think there must have been a ledge, not too far below ground level,” Wilder says. “Remember the fog in the chasm? We couldn’t see anything down there.”

“You’re saying Victor fell and landed on a ledge?”

“I think he must have,” Wilder says. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense to me. He must have been lying there the whole time we were talking, listening to us decide that he was dead, waiting for us to go away so that it would be safe for him to climb out. He would have known by listening to us talk that the rest of his allies had died. He would have realized that if he emerged from the chasm before we were gone, we would have killed him. The safest and smartest thing for him to do was to let us believe that he had died.”

“But Emlyn said she stopped feeling the alpha mate bond,” I say.

“No,” Milo recalls. “She didn’t say that. What she actually said was that shedidstill feel it, and we all decided that it was something that would fall away slowly over time. Has anyone checked up with her on that?”

Silence.

I haven’t talked to Em about her alpha mate bond in ages. And by the looks on the others’ faces, I can tell they haven’t either.

Maybe she’s been feeling it all this time.

“Fuck,” I whisper. “I can’t believe we let this happen.”

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