Page 75 of Rejected Moons (Rejected Moons 3)

“You fucking know that I do.”

“Then let’s get after her. Don’t worry about anything else until she’s been caught and dispensed of.”

Caught and dispensed of.

I feel ice in my veins.

They’re going to kill her.

They were always going to kill her, of course. But now they’re on her trail. They’re right behind her. And this time won’t be like the last time, when they took her prisoner and went to get the man who was going to do the deed. This time, Victor is a part of the hunting party. He’ll kill her as soon as he sees her.

Unless I can get to her first.

Unless I can warn them.

I roll to my feet on the opposite side of the bush from where Bruce and Victor are standing. Crouched down, my head low, I shift to wolf form and begin to run.

Chapter Forty-nine: EMLYN

“Okay,nowprojectitout. Away from your body. As far as you can.”

I grit my teeth and try. But it’s hard. When we practiced healing spells, I found it easy to access the moon’s energy. It felt like opening my hand and letting water spill through my fingers. Now it’s like trying to drink from an almost empty cup. I’m getting nothing.

“It’s okay,” Milo says. He can see that I’m struggling. “It’s daytime. It was always going to be harder during the day.”

“It shouldn’t bethishard. Are we going to attack them at night?”

“If we have the choice, we will,” Milo says.

I hear what he’s not saying. We might not have the choice to attack them at night—because they might attack us first. We might be on the defense.

That’s a terrifying thought.

But all I can do in response to it is to make myself stronger, and so I will. I refocus my energy on creating the shield Milo’s trying to teach me.

He tosses a pebble at me.

This time, it deflects away, bouncing back to lie at his feet. We both cry out in surprise. “Did you see that?” I say, even though he obviously saw it. “I did it that time!”

“Yeah, you did!” he cheers. “All right, let’s try it with a bigger rock this time.” He picks one up off the ground.

“I wish there was a way to practice this without you chucking rocks at me,” I say, rubbing the rising bruise on my thigh from where he hit me a few rounds ago. “Can’t you just try to shove me or something?”

“No,” he says regretfully. “We already know you can keep out gentle touches without much trouble. What we need now is to see if you can deflect things that might actually hurt you. Trust me, I don’t like it either. I wouldn’t be doing this if I saw another way.”

I steel myself. “All right,” I say. “Go ahead.”

He pitches the rock at my hip. I can tell he’s doing it gently, trying not to make it too difficult. The knowledge distracts me, and I know I’m going to mess this up. I turn a little, taking the impact on my butt, where it won’t hurt so much.

“You can’t do it like that,” I say.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“You can’t throw me softballs. You have to throw it hard. If we’re attacked, the enemy isn’t going to take it easy on me.”

“You were just complaining about me throwing rocks at you,” he points out.

“Yeah, I know, but I was just bitching,” I say. “You have to throw the rocks as hard as you can.”

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