Page 85 of Wolf Bonded (Rejected Moons 2)

“I don’t think luck necessarily has anything to do with it,” I say. “We love you, Emlyn. I’m comfortable speaking for all of us. We’re in love with you. You deserve that. You deserve all the good things in your life.”

51

MILO

Wereachourhomethe next morning.

It’s strange. I didn’t realize how much comfort I got from Giuseppe’s until this moment, seeing the familiar broken sign and stairs leading down off the street. I’ve been thinking of it as a place to crash, but it really has become a home.

Maybe Emlyn’s thinking the same thing because she looks around at all of us and says, “Are you sure we don’t have to leave now?”

“Do you want to leave?” Nate asks.

“No,” Emlyn says definitively. “I want to stay. I just don’t want it to be crazy for us to do that.”

“It’s not crazy,” Nate says. “Now that the pack is out of the way, this whole city has become categorically safer for us. No one here is going to be hunting us anymore.”

“You don’t think the remains of the pack will come for us?” I ask.

“They won’t,” Emlyn says. “No one besides Victor—and maybe Bruce, the old alpha—cared what happened to me. They won’t come for me now. If anything, they’ll be too afraid of us to try, after what just happened.”

After what just happened.Is this the time to bring it up? I can’t help wondering if anyone else is worried about the strength of the magic Emlyn was able to perform. Am I really the only one who thinks that was too intense?

“If we’re staying here long term, there are some things I can do to make the place safer for us,” Wilder says. “Some wards I can put up.”

I frown. “If you can put up wards on places, how come you haven’t been doing that all along?”

“Because it’s draining,” he says. “It’s big magic. The kind of thing Regine wouldn’t let me do on the coven. Would have protected us from the Ravagers, though, if she had.”

“I thought you didn’t mind big magic,” Emlyn says.

“I don’t,” Wilder says. “It’s just that I’ll probably be out of commission for a couple of days after I do it. So if we’re planning on staying here for weeks or months, it’s a good idea, but if we’re going on the run in a couple of days, it wouldn’t be smart.”

We all look at each other.

I’m reluctant to say anything.

The magic we do has gotten noticeably bigger since Wilder joined us. It’s starting to scare me a little.

But he’s the expert, right? He’s the one who grew up around all this stuff. He’s the one who was fully trained. Sometimes I feel like I’m still the ten-year-old kid who ran away from magic when it was used to kill my mother.

So even though my instinct is to advise caution right now, I lean over and make eye contact with Nate instead. Because Nate is the decisive one, and Nate was raised to hate magic even more than I was.

If he says it’s okay, I’ll get on board.

And Nate only hesitates for a moment before nodding. “All right,” he says. “This is our home. Do it.”

“Okay,” Wilder says. “Everybody get inside, then. It will be easier to do if I can focus on surrounding the people I love with protection, rather than projecting it away from us.”

Emlyn tucks herself into my shoulder.

It’s so hard to stay frustrated with her when she does that.

We make our way down the stairs and into the restaurant. Immediately, Wilder locks the door behind us.

“Do we still have that padlock?” he asks. “The one that was on the door when we arrived?”

It’s in a drawer under the bar. I go and get it for him. “What are you going to do with this?”

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