Wolf Hunted (Rejected Moons Book 1) Read online

  Wolf Hunted

  Rejected Moons Book One

  J.L. Wilder

  Copyright © 2022 by J.L. Wilder

  All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  Contents

  1. EMLYN

  2. EMLYN

  3. EMLYN

  4. EMLYN

  5. EMLYN

  6. EMLYN

  7. EMLYN

  8. EMLYN

  9. NATE

  10. EMLYN

  11. NATE

  12. EMLYN

  13. NATE

  14. EMLYN

  15. NATE

  16. EMLYN

  17. NATE

  18. EMLYN

  19. EMLYN

  20. NATE

  21. EMLYN

  22. NATE

  23. EMLYN

  24. EMLYN

  25. NATE

  26. EMLYN

  27. NATE

  28. EMLYN

  29. NATE

  30. EMLYN

  31. NATE

  32. EMLYN

  33. NATE

  34. EMLYN

  35. MILO

  36. EMLYN

  37. NATE

  38. MILO

  39. EMLYN

  40. EMLYN

  41. Chapter 41

  42. MILO

  43. MILO

  44. EMLYN

  45. MILO

  46. EMLYN

  47. MILO

  48. NATE

  49. EMLYN

  50. MILO

  51. NATE

  52. EMLYN

  53. EMLYN

  54. MILO

  55. NATE

  56. EMLYN

  57. Chapter 57

  Chapter 1

  EMLYN

  Something about a mating night always feels different.

  I’ve felt it as long as I can remember.

  And it’s not just the fact that mating night is one of the few nights all the members of the pack come together for a common goal. It’s not the fact that we’re out of the hollowed-out remains of the city for once, away from the evidence of everything that’s wrong with our world. It’s true that mating night feels like a vacation, and sleeping under the stars is always a treat. But there’s more to it than that.

  Mating nights are some of the few nights I’ve ever experienced a sense of hope among the pack. On mating nights, people aren’t just bitter about our past—they’re planning for a future that some even believe might be possible.

  Mating nights are all about possibility.

  My best friend, Jess, grunts in displeasure and frustration beside me. “I can’t get my braid right,” she says. “Can you help me?”

  I step behind her and take her hair in my hands. “It looks fine to me,” I tell her, but I’m already combing through it with my fingers. This isn’t about looks, and I know it. She’s nervous about tonight.

  “I’m sure you’re going to get a good match,” I tell her. “The odds are good this year. There are eleven men coming of age, and only five women.”

  Jess nods. “At least I’ll be sure to get someone,” she said. “This is the one night of my life I’m actually glad for the fact that there are more men in the pack than women.”

  “We shouldn’t really be glad about it,” I say. “Not ever. We need more women. The fact that there are so few of us…” I hesitated. I don’t want to cast a pall over tonight’s festivities. We’re celebrating tonight, not worrying about the often inevitable-seeming fate of our pack.

  “Do you think we’ll be able to carry babies to term?” Jess asks.

  “You know we have our best chances to do that with alpha mates,” I tell her. It’s the same thing we’ve been taught since we were little girls, but always before, it was an abstract premise. Today, it’s beginning to feel real. “The pack alpha will match us with the person he feels gives us the best genetic chance of producing strong babies.”

  “I have this fantasy that I’m going to be the one to finally do it,” Jess says. “To carry a baby that survives."

  I nod. I know what she means. Almost no one can do that. Not anymore.

  Not under the Inverse Moon.

  “Who are you hoping to be mated with?” Jess asks.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” I don’t want to answer the question. It feels like I’d be jinxing it.

  But Jess gives me a knowing look. “You want Victor, don’t you?”

  Victor. I feel a rush of heat at the sound of his name. Of course I want him. He’s the sexiest man in our year, and in my opinion, the sexiest man in the whole pack. I’ve had a thing for him for years. And now that I’m of mating age, I fully intend to mate with him, whether he’s my alpha mate or not.

  There are a few perks of living in a world that requires women to seek out every reproductive opportunity.

  But even though the pack will allow—encourage—me to fuck anyone and everyone who interests me, in the hope that I’ll get pregnant, there’s still something special about the alpha mate. We’ll be bound to each other by the mandate of our pack’s alpha. We’ll be tied to each other for at least one week of every month, the week when I am most likely to conceive. During that time, we’ll find ourselves a love nest and retreat to it, coming up only when we need to eat. All our energy will be devoted to conceiving a child.

  A solid week in bed with Victor every single month sounds like heaven. I can imagine being with Victor would be so intense, I might not want to be with anyone else anyway.

  “Everyone wants Victor,” I tell Jess, deflecting her question. “He’s the strongest in the pack. Probably the most likely to give one of us a successful pregnancy. If someone from our year does carry to term, I’m willing to bet money it’ll be his mate.”

  Jess giggles at the old expression, and I smile too. It’s one of those idioms we learned from the pack elders, something they say all the time, but that has no real meaning for us. I know what money is, of course. I’ve read about it in books. But I was still a toddler when it became obsolete. I don’t remember that world at all.

  “Your hair looks good,” I tell Jess.

  She pats it critically. “Are you sure?”

  “Listen,” I tell her. “Your mate has already been chosen. It doesn’t really matter what you look like when you go out there. You know? I know you want to look good. So do I. But just remember that it’s not actually going to change anything. So you don’t need to stress about it.”

  “It could change things,” she says. “He could reject me.”

  I laugh. “Men don’t reject their alpha mates, Jess. I mean, okay, it’s been known to happen, and technically anyone can refuse to mate with anyone. But no guy would refuse an alpha partnership. It would basically be refusing to try to conceive a child—and what woman would want him after that! He’d be alone forever.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” Jess says.

  “Come on,” I tell her. “I want to get out there. The moon is high.” Mating ceremonies are always performed under the full moon. It’s tradition.

  We leave the tent and step out into the moonlight, and as we do, something strange happens. My heart flutters, seems to skip a beat. An electric shiver comes through me. I feel it pass through my body like a tremor. This has happened a few times recently, and it’s always a little bit alarming.

  It’s just nerves. I’m sure that’s all it is. Tonight is going to be the biggest and most important night of my life. Of course I’m nervous.

  There’s nothing wrong with me. And my life is about to change forever.

  I hurry over to join the line of women
waiting for their alpha mate assignments.

  Chapter 2

  EMLYN

  I’ve seen this ceremony once a year going back as long as I can remember. I know every word of it by heart. But even so, this year is different because I’ve never been one of the women waiting to be assigned a mate.

  I’ve never stood here in the line facing the men of the pack while our alpha, Bruce, spoke the words of the ritual. I’ve never listened with the knowledge that what happened tonight would change my life forever.

  Beside me, I feel Jess grope for my hand. I thread my fingers through hers. I know how nervous she is—but I’m not. I’m just excited. This is going to be the best day of my life.

  My heart does that little flutter in my chest again as the moonlight washes over me. I shrug the sensation off; it’s just nerves.

  Bruce strides into the center of our clearing, between the line of men and women. He raises his hands and immediately is greeted by silence. No one would ever dare speak when the alpha is about to begin his address.

  “Welcome, everyone, to another mating night,” he says. “And a special welcome to the young men and women who reached their twenty-third birthday in the past year and will be assigned their alpha mates tonight.” He surveys the five of us women who stand shoulder to shoulder, then turns and looks at the men across from us.

  And then, turning in a slow circle, he takes in the entire pack around us.

  “Every year,” he says quietly, “our pack grows older.”

  This is met with silence. We all know what he means, and yet the story is an important part of the ceremony. He’s reminding us of why tonight is the greatest night for our pack.

  “In the first year following the Lunar Reversal,” he says, “our pack had a full generation of children. We counted ourselves lucky then. We called ourselves survivors because we had managed through strength and cunning to evade the natural disasters and wild elements that eliminated so many after the Moon Casters did their evil.”

  I look up at the moon. It looks perfectly normal to me, of course, but the Lunar Reversal happened twenty years ago. I don’t have any memory of what things were like before. My mother, before she died, told me that the other side of the moon used to face the Earth. She told me that it was farther away from us too, demonstrating by holding up her thumb. She told me that when she was a child, she could blot out the moon by covering its position in the sky like that.

  I hold up a fist now, and the moon still shines around the edges of my hand.

  It’s the only moon—the only sky—I’ve ever known. But even so, I know every time I look up at it that it isn’t right. The Moon Casters violated the natural position of the moon when I was just a baby.

  “It took us several years to understand what we now know and accept,” Bruce said. “For reasons we don’t comprehend, the Inverse Moon has affected our ability to bear children. In the twenty years since the reversal took place, only six new children have been born to us.”

  This time I’m not the only one looking away from my alpha. Everyone’s eyes find the children. When I was younger, we came to the ceremony with family or sought out our friends. But now because our few children are so precious, they’re minded constantly by Bruce’s mate, Melinda. We can’t risk that a parent would decide to try to leave the pack with a child.

  “The Moon Hunters are a proud pack,” Bruce says. “We survived the Lunar Reversal, when so many were killed. And we will survive whatever blight has caused us to struggle to produce our next generation. We’ll survive by creating the best and strongest mate bonds possible, giving each of you the best chance to produce children who can survive in this new world.”

  I survey the men standing across from me.

  As usual, my eyes go right to Victor. Tall, fair-skinned, blond hair that he keeps cropped close. Even though I know that tonight is about my alpha mate, he’s the only one I can’t wait to be with. After this ceremony, I’m allowed to mate with anyone I want, as long as I go to my alpha mate’s bed when I am most fertile. But no matter what, I am determined to mate with Victor.

  “When I call your name,” Bruce says, addressing the women now, “step forward to receive your mate.”

  My heart skips again. This time it feels like it’s beating too quickly. It feels like my blood is rushing through my body, moving too fast, like a river rushing downstream. Can anxiety really cause such a thing?

  I’m not even that nervous.

  I wish I understood why my body was reacting strangely—but maybe that’s normal the night of the mating ceremony. I should have taken the time to ask Jess if she was experiencing anything similar.

  “Jessica, daughter of Verne,” Bruce says.

  Jess squeezes my hand, then lets go and steps forward.

  I’ve seen this play out so many times, but it’s different this time. It’s my best friend.

  Bruce takes her hand in his. “Jessica, our pack honors your kind heart and gentle nature,” he says. “Your mate will be the man whose kindness is equal to your own—Harley, son of Peter.”

  A smile breaks across Jess’s face as Harley steps forward to meet her. I’m happy too. Harley is a great match for my tender-hearted friend. He’s a total sweetheart. But he isn’t someone I would have wanted for myself.

  Bruce leads them through their vows to one another. When the words have been exchanged, they kiss briefly, then go over and start another line—the mated pairs.

  There are scowls on some of the men’s faces now. One woman is gone, and they haven’t been chosen yet. Victor doesn’t look upset, though. His expression is one of extreme confidence.

  He should be confident. I can’t imagine he won’t be chosen.

  One by one, the women around me are called forward and assigned their mates. Finally, I’m the only one left in the line.

  There are six men still standing across from me. Some of them are looking at me like their predicament is my fault. I raise my eyebrows at them. As if I can help the fact that there are more men than women in this pack!

  “Emlyn, daughter of Elizabeth,” Bruce says. “Come forward.”

  I’m the only one to be called by my mother’s name instead of my father’s, of course. I’m the only one here who never knew my father. He wasn’t from our pack; my mother told me when I asked, and refused to say another word about it. I learned pretty quickly to stop asking questions.

  I step forward, and Bruce takes my hand.

  “Emlyn,” Bruce said, “our pack honors your warrior spirit and the fighting skills you’ve honed throughout your life. One day, you’ll no doubt be one of the best female hunters our pack has ever known. Your mate will be the man who can hunt by your side, our greatest warrior.”

  I know then. I know I’m going to get my wish.

  He knows it too. I can tell because he starts to move forward a moment before Bruce says his name. “Victor, son of Thomas.”

  Yes! Inside, I feel triumphant, but I don’t allow anything to show on my face besides a smile.

  Bruce takes Victor’s hand and places it in mind. As soon as we touch, I feel hot all over. I want him immediately.

  He looks at me hungrily. I’m pretty sure he feels the same way. I bet he was hoping for this outcome just as much as I was.

  “Victor,” Bruce says. “Do you accept Emlyn as your alpha mate?”

  “Hell yeah, I do,” Victor says.

  Fuck, even the sound of his voice feels like foreplay. I had no idea the moment of my alpha mating would be this powerful.

  “And Emlyn,” Bruce says. “Do you accept Victor as your alpha mate?”

  “Yes,” I say. I’m staring into his blue eyes, feeling the heat coming off his hand, and I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything so badly in all my life.

  “As the alpha of the Moon Hunters, I bind you,” Bruce said. “You have accepted one another of your own free will. Now I order you to do all you can to produce children for this pack, beginning tonight and continuing throughout your l
ives.”

  I feel the weight of his order settle around me. More than ever, my body is hungry for Victor’s. I’m being drawn toward him magnetically, almost gravitationally. It’s not just about what I want anymore. I need him. I’m starving for him. I didn’t think it was possible for me to want him more than I did, but here we are.

  It’s not required to kiss at the end of this part of the ceremony, but most new mates do, and I can tell already that we’re going to be no exception. If I could, I’d tear his clothes off and throw him down right here and now.

  But that’s not how the ceremony goes. We have more to do before I can finally enjoy my prize.

  He pulls me to him, though, and kisses me fiercely, crushing his lips to mine. I can feel him everywhere at once, his lips bruising mine, his teeth sharp and eager, his tongue hot and reckless and hard. I lose myself in the intensity of it, and the heat inside me begins to build.

  Then, grinning, he lets me go. “Let’s hunt!”

  Chapter 3

  EMLYN

  I hardly take notice as the men who weren’t chosen are shuffled away off the field. I’ve paid attention to them in past years because they stay behind while the new mates go off on the hunt together. I’ve always observed how angry it makes them. But tonight, my thoughts are a million miles away from them because I’m about to have my own official first hunt with my mate.

  “Bring out the quarry!” Bruce calls.

  A group of five Moon Casters, bound at the wrists and attached to a long iron chain, are led out. It was a pure accident that we learned that iron disrupts their magic, but I’m glad we know it because it allows us to keep them captive. These five would have been killed when they were caught if we hadn’t needed them for the hunt. As it is, we’ve been saving them all year.

  Which means this isn’t going to be a real hunt. These prisoners aren’t anywhere near their full strength. They’ve been deprived of nutrition and sleep, unable to use their magic, for months. Maybe they hope to escape, but there’s no real chance for them.