His Moonsilver Mate (Abby and Kade) novel Chapter 100

Chapter 100

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Chapter 100

Liam

The first sign was the deer.

Ryan’s patrol found it three days before the full moon, just inside the northern boundary, where the forest thinned toward the old north field. It hadn’t been hunted for food. It had been killed, ened, and left across the trail with its head pointed at Moonhaven, and someone had rubbed rogue scent over every tree within twenty yards.

“It’s a message,” Ryan said, when he brought the photographs to Kade’s office.

Kade didn’t touch them. “Saying what?”

“That they can walk up to our border whenever they like.” Ryan set the phone face down on the desk. “And that they want us to know it.”

The second sign came the next day. Patrols on the western line caught the scent of at least a dozen wolves none of us knew, crossing back and forth along the ridge as if they were learning the ground. By the time our wolves reached the spot, the trail had gone cold in a way trails didn’t go cold on their own. It simply stopped, mid-stride, like the forest had swallowed it.

The third sign was Imogen.

She came into the kitchen of the packhouse on the morning of the full moon, set her coffee down untouched, and pulled off one of her rings. It was the heavy one she wore on her middle finger, a plain silver band. She put it on the table in front of Kade.

It had gone black.

“I’ve worn that ring for thirty years,” she said. “It turns when someone close by is pulling hard on the moon. It turned last night, sometime after two.”

Abby went still beside Kade. “Cressida.”

“I’d put money on it.” Imogen sat down and finally picked up her coffee. “Whatever she’s building, it’s big and it’s near. I can’t find it. I’ve walked your borders twice. She’s hidden it better than I’d like.”

Kade’s jaw tightened. “Tonight.”

“A full moon cuts both ways.” Imogen glanced at Abby, and her voice gentled slightly, which for Imogen meant it lost one layer of sandpaper. “You’re at your strongest tonight, Abigail. So is anything she made to work with lunar power. She knows exactly what you are now. She’s not going to come at you without a plan for it.”

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noon Moonhaven looked like a town bracing for a storm.

Cassandra had taken over the packhouse. Every child under sixteen, every elder who couldn’t fight, and every family that lived on the outer edges of territory was moving into it. Mattresses went up the main stairs. Food came out of the freezers. Cassandra stood in the front hall with a clipboard and directed traffic like she had been born to it, which in a way she had.

When I passed her, she caught my sleeve.

“Have you eaten?”

“I’ll eat later.”

“You’ll eat now.” She pressed a sandwich into my hand without looking up from her list. “You were a terrible eater at nine and you’re a terrible eater at twenty-six. Go.”

I went.

Daphne had emptied the clinic of everything except beds and supplies. Tessa and two of the other girls from the temple who hadn’t been sent home yet were helping her roll bandages. Tessa looked up when I came to the door, and I saw the fear in her face before she put it away.

“Is it him?” she asked quietly. “The one from the mountain?”

“We think so.”

She nodded and went back to the bandages. Her hands didn’t stop moving, but they weren’t quite steady either.

Cole arrived from Ravenwood just after one with sixteen warriors in three trucks. Tiernan couldn’t leave his own border with rogues moving through the mountains, so he had sent a message instead, and Cole delivered it to Kaia in the middle of the town square, in front of half the pack.

“He wants you home before dark.”

Kaia folded her arms. “He can want.”

“Kaia.”

“I’m living here, aren’t I? That was his idea. He doesn’t get to decide I’m a Moonhaven resident when it’s convenient and a Ravenwood princess when it’s dangerous.” She looked past Cole to me, and

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I had been. I shut my mouth.

ple looked between us, then rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ll tell him you said no.”

“Tell him I said I’m staying with my-” She stopped. Her face went pink. “With the people Mive with.”

***

She turned and walked off before either of us could respond.

Cole looked at me. I looked at the ground.

“Good luck,” he said.

The final planning meeting was in Kade’s office at four.

Kade stood behind his desk with the map of Moonhaven spread across it. Ryan, Cole, Imogen, Abby and I stood around him. Outside, the light was already going gold.

“The deer was left at the north,” Kade said. “The tracks on the western ridge were meant to be found. They want us spread out.” He touched the north field, the long slope of open ground between the forest and the back of the packhouse. “But this is where they’ll come. It’s the shortest way to the center of town, and it’s open. They’ll want room.”

“Room for what?” Cole asked.

“For whatever she’s planning.” Kade looked at Imogen.

She shrugged. “Witches like space. And sky.”

“Ryan takes the west. Liam, you hold the east road with Cole’s people, in case I’m wrong.” Kade’s finger moved across the map. “I’ll be on the north field with the main body.”

“Because that’s where they’ll come,” I said. “And because that’s where they’ll look for you.”

He met my eyes. “Yes.”

We all knew why. Nobody had said it aloud since Imogen guessed what Cressida actually wanted, and it began with the Alpha dead.

“And me?” Abby asked.

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“If I’m in the packhouse, I’m too far away to reach you.” She didn’t raise her voice. That was new oo. My little sister had learned how to say no to an Alpha without shouting. “You know what I can do now. You’ve felt it. You don’t get to lock your Luna in a basement with the spare mattresses.”

“I’m not locking you anywhere. I’m keeping you safe.”

“Then stop putting me away like something you’re afraid to break.”

The room went very quiet.

Kade looked at her for a long moment. I could see the war on his face-the Alpha who knew she was right and the man who had sat beside her for three days while she didn’t wake.

“The training hall,” Imogen said into the silence. “It’s on the rise at the eastern edge of the north field. She’ll have a clear view of the field and of the sky, and she’s out of the fighting unless she chooses to go into it. I’ll be with her.”

“So will Chloe and Noah,” Abby said. “They already asked.”

Kade’s hands curled against the edge of the desk.

“The training hall,” he said finally. “You don’t shift unless you have to.”

“I’ll shift when you need me.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“I know.” Her face softened. “That’s the only promise I can make you.”

He closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them, the decision was made.

I left before they could see me looking at them. It wasn’t my moment to be in.

***

I went home to change.

The house still didn’t feel entirely like mine. There was a second pair of boots by the door now, a jacket that wasn’t my size on the hook, nine potted plants on every surface that would hold one. Two weeks ago that would have irritated me. Now I found myself noticing when the boots weren’t there.

Kaia was sitting on the back steps when I came through the kitchen. She had changed into old training clothes and braided her hair tight against her head, the way fighters did when they didn’t

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“I’ve been fighting since I was fourteen. My brother taught me.” She didn’t turn around. “I’m better han you think.”

“I don’t think you’re bad.”

“You think I’m breakable.”

“I think everyone’s breakable.” I sat down on the step beside her, leaving a careful gap between us. “I watched my sister come back from that mountain unconscious. I’m not underestimating you. I’m just scared.”

Kaia looked at me then.

The sun was low behind the trees, and the yard had gone blue with shadow. Somewhere toward the

packhouse, someone was hammering, and someone else was calling for more rope.

“You’re allowed to say that?” she asked. “You’re the Beta.”

“I’m saying it to you. Not to them.”

She was quiet. Then she looked down at her hands.

“There was someone,” she said. “Before. At home. He was older. Everybody liked him. He used to tell me he’d always look after me.” Her mouth twisted. “It took me a long time to understand that what he meant was that he’d decide things for me. Where I went. Who I talked to. What I was allowed to be

scared of.”

Jasper went very still inside me. Then something low and dangerous moved through him, and I had to make myself breathe slowly.

“Is he still at Ravenwood?”

“No.” She almost smiled. “Tiernan threw him out. Literally. Through a window.”

“Good.”