His Moonsilver Mate (Abby and Kade) novel Chapter 121

Chapter 121

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Chapter 121

Kaia

Ndidn’t turn around.

I couldn’t. My body had decided before I did. My back was flat against the cold stone, and my hands were flat beside me, and every muscle from my neck to my heels had locked so hard I could feel my pulse in my teeth.

He came round in front of me anyway. He didn’t hurry. He never had.

Five years had been kind to him. That was the first thing I thought, and I hated myself for thinking it. He was broader through the shoulders than he had been at twenty, and the boy’s softness had gone out of his face and left it sharper, more finished. The fair hair was cut close now. The smile was exactly the same. Easy, warm, a little crooked, the kind of smile that made people feel they had been

let in on a joke.

It had worked on me once. For one whole summer, it had worked.

“Kaia Finnegan,” he said softly. “Look at you.”

I didn’t say anything.

He looked. He took his time about it, from my hair to the hem of my mother’s dress and back up again, the way you might look at a painting someone else had paid too much for.

“Green,” he said. “I’d forgotten how much you suit green. You were wearing it that night. Do you

remember?”

I remembered.

“You look beautiful.” He said it as if it surprised him a little. “Older. It’s good on you.”

He lifted his hand.

I saw it coming. I saw it the way you see a branch coming at your face in the dark, too late to do anything but flinch. His fingers reached for a loose strand of hair by my ear, the one Chloe had left down on purpose, and I jerked my head sideways so hard I cracked it against the wall.

His hand stopped in the air.

For a second, something moved behind his eyes. Then the smile came back, as if nothing had

happened at all, and he let his hand drop.

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“I will. I’m going to.” He tucked his hands into his pockets, easy, a man with all the time in the warld. “I only wanted to say hello. It’s been a long time. I’ve thought about you, you know. More than you’d expect.” He tilted his head. “I’ve been thinking I might be able to forgive you.”

I stared at him.

“For that night,” he said gently. “We were young. You panicked. You said things you didn’Ensan. I was angry for a long time, I’ll admit that. I don’t think anyone had ever done that to me before His mouth moved. “But I’m an Alpha now. Things look different from up here. A man can afford to be generous. I could give you another chance, Kaia. If you asked nicely.”

Another chance.

Wren didn’t growl. She didn’t make any sound at all. She lay flat in the bottom of me with her ears pinned back and her eyes fixed on him, and she didn’t move, and I couldn’t either.

“Leave me alone,” I said again.

“You keep saying that.” He sighed, as if I were being tiresome. Then his eyes moved, very deliberately, to the doors of the hall, and back to me. “I have to say, I was surprised. When I saw you come in. Tiernan Finnegan’s little sister. The girl who was too good for half the Alphas’ sons in the valley.” He smiled. “On the arm of a Beta.”

He said the word the way you would say the name of a dog.

“I didn’t think you’d fall so low,” he said. “I really didn’t.”

***

“Alpha Sebastian.”

The voice came from the far end of the corridor, by the open side door. Cool and clear and pleasant,

the way a knife is pleasant before you notice you’ve been cut.

He turned his head.

A woman was standing just inside the door, with the night behind her. Tall, fair, in a plain dark dress and a gray cardigan, with her hair down over one shoulder. She was holding herself very straight, with her weight a little more on one leg than the other, and she was looking at him with no expression at all.

“Have you lost your way?” she asked. “The hall is the other direction. I’d be happy to show you.”

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“Sloane Sinclair,” he said.

Alpha.”

“I’d heard you were…” He let the word hang. “Indisposed.”

“I’m feeling much better, thank you.” She came a few steps down the corridor, slowly, not hurrying. “Is there something I can help you with? Miss Finnegan looks like she might like some air. There’s

plenty outside.”

The smile came back, smooth as water.

“Nothing at all,” he said. “I was only catching up with an old friend.” He glanced at me. “Weren’t we, Kaia?”

I didn’t answer.

“What’s going on?”

Another voice. Behind me, from the hall doors. Low and level, and I knew it so well already that I didn’t have to turn to know whose it was. I turned anyway.

Liam was standing in the doorway with my untouched glass of water still in his hand.

He looked at me first. He looked at me for a long second, at my back against the wall and my hands flat beside me, and I watched his face change. Then he looked at the man in front of me, and his face changed again, into something I had never seen on it before. Very still. Very calm. Very cold.

Jasper, Wren breathed, from somewhere at the bottom of me.

Sebastian looked at him. Then at Sloane. Then back at Liam, and the corner of his mouth lifted.

“Beta,” he said pleasantly. “Nothing’s going on. I was just saying to Miss Sinclair here, I’m surprised to see her.” He turned the smile on Sloane. “Things must be very bad in Moonhaven, if they’ve started letting the traitors wander around the packhouse during a reception.”

Sloane didn’t flinch. I saw her not flinch. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever watched anyone

Liam put the glass of water down on the windowsill beside the door. Carefully. As if it were very full.

“Miss Sinclair lives here, Alpha,” he said. His voice was perfectly polite. It was the most frightening thing I had ever heard. “So does Miss Finnegan. You’re the guest. And the hall is that way.” He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t move from the door. “I’m sure the Luna is wondering where you’ve got to.”

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“Of course,” he said. “Forgive me. I wouldn’t want to keep the Luna waiting.”

He turned to me. He looked at me for a long moment, and his eyes were warm and amused and completely empty.

“It was good to see you, little wren,” he said softly.

Then he walked past Liam toward the hall doors. As he passed, he inclined his head.

“Beta Liam.”

Liam didn’t move.

“Alpha Sebastian,” he said.

The doors swung shut behind him. The music from the hall rose for a moment, and fell.

***

Liam was beside me before I saw him cross the corridor.

He didn’t touch me. He stopped close, closer than he ever let himself come at home, with one hand

lifted halfway, as if he wanted to put it on my arm and didn’t know if he was allowed.

“Kaia.” His voice had gone low. All the cold had gone out of it. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“You didn’t come back.” He looked at my face. “I waited. Then I couldn’t- I was worried.”

“I’m fine.”

He looked at me for a long moment. I knew what he was seeing. My hands still flat against the wall. My breathing, which I could not seem to make slow down. I knew he had heard what Sebastian called me. I watched it sit in his face, behind everything else. Not a question yet. But it would be.