Page 26 of Rejected Moons (Rejected Moons 3)

“Okay, fine,” I say. “I wanted you to let me out of the cage, so I told you what you wanted to hear. Are you happy now?”

“Fucker,” she says. “I should have fucking known. I should have left you in that cage. I don’t know why the fuck I listened to you. Your alpha was right to put you in there. He should have left you there to rot.”

“This should be a good thing,” I tell her. “You should be thanking me.”

“Thankingyou?”

“You’re crazy to want to go to the Moon Casters.”

“What kind of wolf are you?” she demands. “I’ve never met one who didn’t want to kill Moon Casters.”

“Yeah, well, you and I both know you’re not planning to kill them.”

“Excuse me?” she stammers.

“Come on, Em. You’re insane, but you’re not an idiot. You must know you don’t stand a chance by yourself against an entire coven. They’ll tear you to shreds. And I’ve spent enough time with you to know that you don’t have a death wish, which means that this is something else. I don’t know what you’re hoping to accomplish by finding them, but it isn’t going to work. You don’t have a chance once they have you.”

“I’m not going to let them catch me,” she says.

“Well, I’m not going to be the one to lead you into their territory,” I tell her. “I’mgladI don’t know where they are. I don’t need that shit on my conscience.”

She shakes her head. “Get away from me,” she says. “I wish I’d never met you.”

She turns and walks away, and I don’t follow.

Chapter Eighteen: EMLYN

Thatabsolutesonofa bitch.

I can’t believe he would lie to me like that. I mean, it shouldn’t come as a surprise—he told me himself that he was the kind of guy to put his own judgment above the rest of his pack. He told me he wasn’t a team player. And all he really wanted was to get out of the cage he was locked in. Of course he made up a story.

What really pisses me off is that I let myself fall for it enough that I was willing to sleep with him! I definitely shouldn’t have done that.

I don’t exactly regret it. Itwasgood for me. And to be honest, I probably would have done it if I had known the truth because he’s really hot and I’m attracted to him. I just wish he hadn’t lied to me. It makes me feel like an idiot.

He’s probably off laughing at me right now.

I don’t know why he didn’t just come clean as soon as he was out of the cage. That’s the weird part. Why did he hang around all this time, acting as if he really was going to take me to find a Moon Caster coven when he knew all along that he wouldn’t be able to do that?

I really don’t understand men at all.

At first, I think it’s just the memory of sex with him that’s making me feel aroused. But the feeling is building, not diminishing. It’s almost as if I’m being pulled toward something magnetically.

Oh, no.

I recognize this. It’s the same feeling I had in the department store when Bruce was looking for me. When Victor was close, waiting to kill me, and yet my body ached to go to him.

Is it possible he’s near me now?

I sniff the air.

There’s definitely something. A hint of wolf. I don’t know if it’s a threat to me, or if it’s something completely unrelated, but I do know it’s not Nate. For better or worse, his smell is completely familiar to me now. I would know it anywhere. He’s woodsmoke and the scent of the sun baked into skin. This isn’t him.

This is something much less pleasant.

I hurry down an alley between two buildings. The pressure inside me is building up now. If I hadn’t been with Nate, I don’t know if I would recognize the urge to fuck as what it is, but I have.

That urge shouldn’t feel sodangerous.

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