Page 30 of Rejected Moons (Rejected Moons 3)

I nod. He’s giving me an easy job here, and I recognize that. He’s acknowledging that, actually, Iamone of his best customers, and he wants to help me out. “You got it,” I say. “Drinks first, though, and work after?”

“You’d better not blow me off.”

“I won’t,” I assure him.

He goes to his little still, takes down a glass, wipes it out with a rag, and fills it up, then brings it back to me. “That’s one,” he says severely. “Don’t think I’m not counting, now.”

I pick up the glass, steel myself for the bite of the liquor, and knock back the first third of it in a quick gulp.

The older members of my pack tell stories about liquor sometimes, late at night when we’re all sitting by the fire, when they get sentimental about the good old days. The way they describe it, they make it sound like some kind of magic. Dozens of different flavors, some of which went down almost as smoothly as water does. They mock the stuff we drink now. They call it swill.

Itishard to choke down. But after a few swallows of it, I feel my mind start to unsnarl and my body start to relax.

“What’s been going on since I last saw you?” Paul asks.

I shake my head. I definitely don’t want to get into everything I went through with Emlyn. I came here to forget about her, not to dwell on it all. So what if she’s the sexiest woman I’ve met in months—maybe ever? There are other women out there. I’m not hung up on her.

And I’m not going to tell Paul what’s going on with me and my pack, either. I like the guy, but he’s definitely a gossip, and I don’t want word getting around that I’ve decided Butch can go to hell. Even though Butch himself probably knows by now that I’m not going to come back, he doesn’t need to hear what I have to say about him.

So I turn the question around on Paul. “Same old shit,” I say. “But what have you heard? What’s the news coming through the bar?”

He leans forward. “All kinds of drama, actually,” he says.

“Really?” I’m not surprised. No matter what’s going on, it’s exactly like Paul to make it seem more serious than it is.

He leans across the bar toward me. “You want a job?”

“What do you mean? Something for you? Like fixing your stool?” Maybe I do. It might be good to hole up here with Paul for a while, do some odd jobs, get as much liquor as I like, and then eventually go on my way when I’ve decided which way that’s going to be.

But he shakes his head. “Not for me,” he says. “I’m talking about a bounty.”

“A bounty? Seriously?”

“I know,” he says. “I haven’t seen one in years. It’s pretty uncommon for shifters to want to take down one of their own.”

“Yeah, it is,” I say. “I don’t know if I can have any part of that. What kind of shifter pack would turn on a fellow shifter? I mean, turn them out of the pack, sure, but take out a bounty on them? That’s not natural.”

“None of this is natural.” Paul reaches into his pocket and pulls out a piece of paper. There’s a sketch on it and a scrawl of writing below. But it’s the image that catches my eye. I can’t believe what I’m looking at. There must be some mistake.

This is a drawing of Emlyn.

I’d know her anywhere. That big hair, that elfin face—whoever did this has even managed to capture the knowing look in her eyes. No one who had seen Emlyn could see this picture and not know it was supposed to be her.

I stare at it for a long time.

Then I look up at Paul. “What’s she wanted for?”

“Read it,” he says, pointing. “She’s part Moon Caster, but she infiltrated a pack. She’s been living among them for years, pretending to be normal. According to the man who brought these papers in—” He holds up a stack that he’s apparently been keeping behind the counter— “she even got herself alpha mated to a member of the pack. It was obviously some kind of scheme to take over the wolf pack by mating with them and spreading Moon Caster blood. It’s part of their scheme for world domination.”

I frown. That doesn’tsoundlike Emlyn. She didn’t want to go back to her pack. She was trying to get to Moon Casters. She was looking for a coven.

Maybe that was because her mission to infiltrate the pack failed.

But if that was the case, why would she need me to lead her to a coven? She would have known where her coven was.

A lot of this isn’t really adding up.

“There’s a reward for her,” Paul says.

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