Page 15 of Rejected Moons (Rejected Moons 3)

“Probably not for three days,” I tell her. “That’s when they were supposed to let me out of the cage. But I’m not planning to go back to them. Not after this. I always knew my alpha was a jackass, but I never knew he had this in him. I can’t be loyal to him anymore.”

She nods as if that doesn’t require any further explanation. “We have time to wait out the storm, then,” she says. “Let’s go upstairs so we can keep an eye on it. We’ll leave as soon as it lets up.”

Chapter Ten: EMLYN

“Youcanputyourclothes in my backpack,” I tell him. “If you want.”

He grins insouciantly. “And what if I say I just want to leave my clothes behind and go naked?”

He really thinks he can bother me like this, I can tell. “I don’t give a damn what you do,” I tell him. “But when it’s windy or cold or raining and you’re balls out in it, don’t come crying to me because I don’t have a spare set of pants that will fit you.”

He rolls his eyes. “Come here,” he says, stripping his shirt over his head.

I already have the backpack buckled around my torso, my shoulders slipped out of it, so I cross the room and turn my back to him. I feel a redistribution of weight as he packs his things into it.

I shimmy out of my own clothes and hand them back to him. “Can you put these in there too, please?”

I’m fully expecting him to say something lewd, to make a comment about my body. After all, no matter how many times we shifted in front of one another, the men in my pack never stopped nudging each other and raising their eyebrow suggestively when they caught a glimpse.

But he doesn’t say anything. He just stuffs my things into the backpack on top of his own and zips it up.

So that’s weird. But I guess he’s probably just not attracted to me. And that makes sense. We did meet under really strange circumstances.

Besides, I’m not attracted to him either.

I fucking wish I was because I’ve been frankly wildly aroused ever since Victor and I went our separate ways. I’d love to get it out of my system, even if it is with this guy. But he’s not putting me in the mood.

Then he slips his fingers under the straps of my backpack. I’m about to object, to pull away from his touch, but he tugs at them a little and says, “Is this going to stay on?” And I realize he’s just evaluating how tight I have it, not looking for an excuse to touch me.

I nod. “It stays on when I shift,” I tell him. “It’s a little loose on me now, but it’s a snug fit on my wolf body.”

“That’s pretty clever,” he says. “I wouldn’t have thought of that.”

I have no idea if he’s mocking me or not, so I don’t respond to it. “You ready to go?” I ask.

“Ready,” he agrees.

“Which way to the coven?”

“Well, hang on,” he says. “We can’t go straight there.”

“We can’t? Why not?”

“I need something to eat,” he says. “I’ve been locked in that cage for four days.”

“They didn’t give you food?”

“They gave me scraps. I finished what I had yesterday. You can’t expect me to be any use as a guide if I’m not fed.”

I sigh. I should have known he was going to give me the runaround.

“Look, it’s no big deal,” he says. “I just need to hunt first. Then we can go.”

“Can we at least hunt in thedirectionof the coven? I don’t want to waste any time.”

“We’re going to have to leave the city if we want to find anything good,” he says. “Unless you want a pigeon.”

I definitely don’t. “Fine,” I say. “We’ll go out to the woods.”

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