Page 69 of Rejected Moons (Rejected Moons 3)

“Run!” Milo yells.

I’m trying.

The words don’t find their way to my mouth. I feel half asleep.

He grabs me and throws me over his shoulder. He holds me there with one arm behind my knees, and I see that his other arm is still outstretched. It looks to me like he’s warding off the Moon Casters.

His pace is slow as he runs, and I think they could probably catch us if they wanted to, but they’re not chasing us. They’re just laughing.

And one of them calls out from behind us— “Hybrids are an abomination, you know! You’re even worse than wolves! We’re going to kill you all!”

Chapter Forty-five: MILO

Gasping,IlowerEmlynto the ground. I kneel beside her and scoop up a handful of water from the creek we’ve stopped at. “Here,” I say, holding it up to her lips. “Drink.”

She does.

Just the fact that she’s understanding and following instructions helps me calm down a bit. I brace my hands on her shoulders and wait until she looks me in the eye.

“I’m all right,” she says. “I’m fine, Milo.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” she says. She shakes her head a little. “What was that? It was like my brain shut down.”

I hesitate. She’s so distrustful of what we are already. Still, though, she has a right to know.

“It was moon magic,” I say.

She stares at me. “Seriously?”

“Really advanced stuff,” I tell her quickly. “Not like anything I’ve ever seen before.”

“So you couldn’t do that to me?”

“No. Hell no. Not that I would if I could. But even if I wanted to, I don’t have anything like that kind of power.” I look up at the sky. I can see the moon, just barely, the white daytime ghost of it. “Do you remember me telling you that moon magic is most powerful under the full moon?”

“Sure. Of course. I kind of knew that even before you told me.” She scoops up another handful of water and splashes it on her face.

“Well, right now, we’re under a waning moon in the middle of the day,” I tell her. “This is when magic should be theleastpowerful. No one should be able to do what we just witnessed.”

“Did you see the sigils on their faces?” she asks.

I nod. “I’ve seen other Moon Casters mark their bodies with sigils,” I say. “It’s usually ceremonial. If you specialize in a certain type of magic, you’ll indicate that with a mark like they had. Usually not on the face. That’s different.”

“And you don’t have any idea what that particular mark means?”

I shake my head. “None,” I say. “I’ve never seen that before—before you showed it to me, I mean.”

She shudders. “They were creepy,” she says. “Even if they’d just walked up and asked us how our day was going and been perfectly polite, I would have been creeped the fuck out by them.”

“I think the one who was leading them was probably the leader of a coven,” I say. “He had that demeanor about him.”

“He seemed like an alpha,” she says.

“Yeah, it’s similar,” I say. “Coven leaders can’t compel obedience just by speaking the way an alpha can, but they rule by fear. You saw how the others bent to whatever he told them.”

“What did he mean when he said we needed to make tribute?” she asks.

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