Page 60 of Rejected Moons (Rejected Moons 3)

“Well,” Milo says, “youdon’t belong to a wolf pack.”

“I don’t belong to anybody,” Nate says, his lip curling back to expose his teeth. I’m pretty sure that was involuntary. I’m also pretty sure Milo should watch his step. I don’t want these two to start fighting.

“Exactly,” Milo says. “You left your pack, why? Because you didn’t want to be a part of them? Maybe because you didn’t want to be subject to an alpha telling you what to do?”

Nate doesn’t answer. I know him well enough to know that he’s disconcerted that Milo figured him out so quickly.

“You hate what you come from as much as I do,” Milo says. “But I bet that hatred doesn’t stop you from using your own wolf form when it benefits you. I bet you’re willing to shift when it’s advantageous.”

Nate doesn’t answer.

“He is,” I say. “We both do.”

“It’s not the same,” Nate says.

“I think it is,” I say. “Nate, it’s not just your own pack that you think badly of. You know that. You hateallpacks. You hate mine.”

“They tried to kill you, Emlyn! You don’t think I should hate them for that?”

“I’m just saying, you’re able to differentiate between hating a group of people and hating the power that unifies them. You don’t hate the ability to shift. You don’t hatewolves. You hate being ruled by an alpha. Maybe it’s the same with the covens. Maybe moon magic itself is just a tool, like you said, and it’s just the covens who are bad.”

Milo looks at him. “You said that?”

“I was just guessing.”

“But that’s exactly how I think of it,” Milo says. “The magic—it’s born in me. Did you know that? It’s part of Moon Caster ritual that when a woman is expecting a child, she takes part in a ceremony to pass her magic along to him. It’s been going on for generations, so magic has become part of our genes now.”

“But your mother was a wolf,” I say. “How could she have passed it on?”

“That’s the thing,” Milo says. “No one knows. For a long time, they thought I wouldn’t have any magic at all because my mother wasn’t a Moon Caster.”

“But you do.”

He nods. “My mother told me, before she died, that she insisted on having the ceremony performed on her,” he says. “My father refused to do it—of course, he wouldn’t want to share magic with anyone he didn’t feel was worthy of it. This is what I mean about the covens.” He spits on the ground. “But one of the women of the coven took pity on my mother. My mother told me that she was pregnant too, and that the two of them were friends with one another during their pregnancies. Of course, the friendship dissolved once the children were born. My mother was just a wolf prisoner. She wasn’t worthy of real friendship.”

“You must have hated growing up there,” I say quietly.

“I would have left sooner than I did if it hadn’t been for my mother,” Milo says. “I would never have left her. But the moment she was dead, there was no reason for me to stay.”

“I wonder how I came to have the magic?” I muse. “My mother was a wolf. Everyone around her was a wolf.”

“Someone must not have been,” Milo says.

I don’t answer. There’s really only one possible explanation for who thatsomeonecould have been—my father.

But I’m not ready to confront that particular mystery.

“So they did the spell thing on you, to make you a Moon Caster?” Nate prompts. He’s come closer to the two of us and is watching Milo with interest.

Milo nods. “And that means the power is a part of me,” he says. “Just like the wolf is a part of me. Just like the wolf is a part of each of you. I couldn’t get rid of my magic without getting rid of a part of myself in the process. That’s why I can embrace moon magic, even though I hate the covens and everything they stand for. Even though I would kill them if I got the chance. It’s the covens I hate. It’s not the magic.”

I ponder that.

The magic is a part of me.

It doesn’t have to change the way I think of Moon Casters—the way I’ve thought of them all my life. It doesn’t mean that I have to give up everything that my upbringing as a wolf made me. I was raised to fight the people who destroyed our world, and just because I share a trait in common with them now, that doesn’t mean Ibelongto them any more than my wolf means I belong to my pack.

These aremyqualities, and they don’t bind me to any particular group of people.

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