Page 67 of Rejected Moons (Rejected Moons 3)

“I know it doesn’t,” I tell her. “I never thought it did. Please don’t worry about that.”

“I just thought—I thought he liked me. I thought we were starting to really have something.”

She sighs and rolls onto her back, and I’m relieved to see that her eyes are dry. “I guess it’s silly, isn’t it? I hardly knew him.”

“Mate bonds form fast,” I say.

“We’re not mated.”

“Are you sure? Maybe you were.”

“No,” she says. “We couldn’t have been. I was mated to someone else. I had my alpha mating ceremony, and my alpha assigned me to someone.”

“But you’re not with that person now.”

She doesn’t answer.

“Maybe when you left your pack, the alpha bond dissolved,” I suggest.

“No, it definitely didn’t,” she says. “I can still feel it. I feel it all the time. It’s with me wherever I go.”

“Okay,” I say. “But I think something was tying you to Nate too. You’re not just heartbroken over a crush here. There was a real connection between the two of you, and you’re feeling that.”

“Do you think so?” she asks.

“I sensed something the first time I met you,” I say. “I knew there was something between the two of you, something I wasn’t a part of and could never be a part of. That’s why I was so hesitant the first time we had sex.”

“Except that youwerepart of it,” she says. “You were. You felt that too, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I did,” I say. “I didn’t think it would be like that, being part of a harem, but it was.”

“Not a harem,” she says. “He was never with us. It was always a lie.”

“You and I aren’t a lie, though,” I tell her. “Can you believe that?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I believe it. You’re a hybrid like me. We’re the same. I trust you.”

I know how lucky I am that, after Nate’s betrayal, she can still find the strength to trust me.

I wrap my arms around her and let the moonlight in, letting it do its magic, hoping it will heal our broken hearts.

Chapter Forty-four: EMLYN

Iprowlthewoodsa short distance from where Milo is hunting, hoping that I can unearth some small game and chase it toward him. We’ve known each other for such a short time—only two days, really—but it feels like much longer. Maybe the stress of Nate’s betrayal is bringing us together or something.

Anyway, the upshot is that hunting with him already feels like something I’ve been doing my whole life. And I’m eager to lose myself in it, to forget the breakdown I had last night. That was a little embarrassing.

Because really, who cares about Nate? I don’t. I let myself start to care about him for a moment there, but I’ve known all along that he was a cocky son of a bitch. He’s never dealt honestly with me.

I’mluckyhe’s gone.

I startle a chipmunk and try to drive it in Milo’s direction, but it dodges away. Of course. I’m not on my game today.

I take a deep breath and refocus.

A squirrel bolts out of a bush. It’s running straight at me, wide-eyed and intimidated, and I know immediately that this is Milo’s doing.

Perfect.

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