His Moonsilver Mate (Abby and Kade) novel Chapter 123

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Abby

Chapter 123

miled until my face ached.

I smiled at the river Alpha with the beard like a hedge, who had brought his two daughters mome and held my hands in both of his and couldn’t finish his sentence. I smiled at the gray Luna om the north, who looked me up and down as if she were pricing a horse and then said, unexpectedly, that she had been eighteen once too and it had been dreadful. I smiled at Harlan of Stonecrest andis wife, who told me twice that they had known Nathaniel, and at Bram of Ashford, who was barely older than me and so nervous he dropped his glove.

I smiled at all of them.

Behind me, on the dais, the two carved chairs stood side by side. I didn’t sit in mine. I didn’t look at his. But I could feel it there the whole night, the way you feel a draft on the back of your neck. Every Alpha who came through those doors looked at it. Some of them glanced and looked away. Some of them looked for a long time, and then looked at me, and I watched them do the sum behind their

eyes.

The Alpha can’t do the stairs.

“The Alpha will receive you in his office tomorrow morning,” I said, every time, with my best smile. “He asked me to tell you personally how much he regrets not being here tonight.”

He hadn’t asked me anything. He hadn’t spoken to me in ten days. Cassandra had carried the message up and brought his answer down: Fine. Nine o’clock. One at a time. That was all.

I wished he were here. I wished it so badly that some moments I couldn’t breathe around it. Not for the chair. Not for the pack. For me. I wanted him standing at my shoulder in his dark suit with his hand at the small of my back, saying nothing, the way he used to at pack dinners, so that every man who came too close would look at him first and think again.

Sloane had been right about them. All of them, almost.

They were polite, and they were careful, and they bowed over my hand. And under the bows, they were looking. At the borders, at the wolves on the walls, at the empty chair. At me. The way wolves look at a deer that has started to limp. Not hungry, not yet. Just interested.

And none of them looked at me quite the way Sebastian Thorne did.

He was the youngest Alpha in the room, and the handsomest, and he knew both of those things. He came down the aisle like a man walking into his own house. He took my hand and bowed over it, and held it a moment too long, and when he straightened, his eyes went over me in a way that made my

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“I wouldn’t have missed it.” His eyes moved past me to the dais. To the empty chair. He let them stay there a moment. “I was so sorry to hear about Alpha Kade. Such a shock. One hears all sorts of things.” He looked back at me and smiled. “I do hope he’s on his feet again soon. It must be a terrible weight for you, carrying all this alone.”

“I’m not alone,” I said. “But thank you.”

“Of course not.” His smile widened, just slightly. “Of course you’re not.”

He moved on. I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.

Beside me, Cassandra didn’t move. But I felt her go very still, the way she went still in council when someone said something she intended to remember.

****

There were good moments too.

I saw Liam come in with Kaia on his arm, and for a second I forgot to smile at the person in front of me, because my brother was walking into a room beside someone and looking at her as if he didn’t quite believe she was there. Kaia was in pale green, with her hair up, and she was so beautiful it was almost unfair. She kept her eyes straight ahead. Liam kept his on her. Neither of them seemed to know the other was doing it.

I saw Tiernan, later, by the long table, deep in conversation with Chloe. Or Chloe was deep in conversation, and Tiernan was standing very still with a glass in his hand and the faintly stunned look of a man who had been talked at for fifteen minutes and found, to his own surprise, that he didn’t mind. Chloe laughed at something he said. He looked startled, then pleased, then tried to hide it.

I nearly laughed out loud.

I wanted to go over there. I wanted to grab Chloe’s arm and drag her off to a corner, the way we used to at every pack dance since we were twelve, and make her tell me everything he had said, word for word. I wanted to find Noah in the kitchens stealing canapés and steal some too. I wanted to take my shoes off under the table and complain about my feet.

I wanted, for ten minutes, not to be the Luna.

I couldn’t. So I watched them across the hall, and I smiled at the next Alpha, and I let myself miss them, just a little, the way you press on a bruise.

At some point I realized Kaia was gone from Liam’s side. A while later, Liam came back through the side doors alone, with a face like a shut door, and went straight to Ryan by the windows and said

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I stood at the foot of the dais and waited for the room to quiet.

It took longer than I wanted. Then Cassandra lifted one hand, very slightly, and the hall went still.

My heart was pounding so hard I was sure the front row could hear it.

“Thank you,” I said. “All of you. For coming.”

My voice came out smaller than I meant it to. I made myself stand straighter, the way Cassandra had shown me, and lifted my chin, and let it fill the hall.

“Moonhaven has had a hard season,” I said. “I won’t pretend it hasn’t. You’ve all heard the stories. Some of them are true.” A small, uncertain murmur went round the room. “Our Alpha was badly hurt defending this pack. He is recovering, and he will recover, and until he can stand here himself, I speak for him. I know that’s new for many of you. It’s new for me.” A few people laughed, softly. I hadn’t meant it as a joke, but I let them. “But I want you to know that Moonhaven is still standing. Our borders are held. Our wolves are on the walls. And we are grateful, more than I can say, for every one of you who came tonight to see that for yourselves.”

I took a breath.

“I hope that Alpha Kade will be back on his feet soon,” I said. “And I hope that until he is, you’ll find Moonhaven a good neighbor. And that we can work together. All of us.”

The silence lasted a moment too long.

Then someone near the front cleared his throat. It was the river Alpha with the beard like a hedge. He stepped forward, a little stiffly, and turned to face the room.

“I’ll say it, then, if no one else will.” His voice was rough. “Moonhaven went into the mountains after my girls when nobody else would. Brought them out of that cursed place. Fed them, clothed them, sent them home to their mother.” He looked at me. “We’re in your debt, Luna. All of us whose

daughters came home. We won’t forget it.”

He reached into his coat and took out something small, wrapped in soft leather, and held it out to

It was a knife. Small and plain, with a bone handle worn smooth by generations of hands.

“My grandfather’s,” he said. “For whoever needs it next.”

I took it. My hands were shaking, and I didn’t care if anyone saw.

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One by one, they came forward. The gray Luna from the north gave me a length of heavy blue wool, woven by her pack, and told me it would keep the cold off better than anything I’d find in a shop.

Harlan of Stonecrest gave me a silver bowl that had been his grandmother’s and told me again that he had known Nathaniel. Bram of Ashford, red to the ears, gave me a jar of honey from his mother’s hives and then fled. One of the older Alphas, with a wicked twinkle, presented me with a carved wooden cradle, and the whole hall laughed, and I laughed too, and my face went so hot I thought my hair might catch fire.

Behind me, I heard Garrick Shaw say something under his breath, and Edmund tell him to be quiet.

Sebastian Thorne gave me a pair of gloves. White kid, soft as skin, lined with fur.

“For your hands, Luna,” he said, as he laid them on the table beside the others. “I couldn’t help noticing how cold they were.”

I thanked him. I didn’t touch them.

The pile on the long table beside the dais grew. Furs and wool and silver. A clock. A pair of silver candlesticks. A carved box of herbs from a pack that had a famous healer. I thanked every one of

them. I meant most of it.

I was almost at the end of it. I could feel the end coming, the way you feel the top of a hill when you’ve been climbing in the dark. Another ten minutes. Another five.

Then one of the kitchen boys came up the aisle with a box in his hands.

It was small, about the size of a book, wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with string. No card. No name. He was holding it out in front of him the way you hold something you’ve been told is precious, very carefully, at arm’s length.

“This was at the door, Luna,” he said. “With the others. Nobody said who it was from.”

“Thank you.”

I took it. It was lighter than I expected.

Cassandra was at my shoulder. Liam had come up on my other side at some point while the gifts were being given, and was standing close with his hands clasped behind his back. Ryan was by the dais steps. The hall had gone soft and murmuring again, people turning back to their drinks, the musicians at the far end beginning to tune.

I pulled the string. The paper fell away.

Inside, there was a wooden box. Plain, dark, with a hinged lid.

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For a moment, I didn’t understand what I was looking at.

Then I did.

Old and worn, the metal dull. The band woven through with thin dark threads that seemed to soak up the candlelight instead of reflecting it. I knew it before I touched it. I knew the width of it knew the exact place on the inside of the band where the silver had been rubbed bright against my throat. I had worn it for days. I had woken up with it in a cell under a mountain, with Diana gone silent inside me, and I had lain on stone with it locked around my neck and thought I would never hear her again

Someone had taken it off me in the temple, and I had never once thought about where it went. I had assumed it was under the mountain with everything else. It should have stayed there forever.

Diana flattened inside me with a sound I had never heard her make. Not a growl. A whine, high and thin, the sound a wolf makes when she remembers being chained.

I couldn’t breathe.

My throat closed as if the collar were already around it. I could feel it there, the weight of it, the cold band against my skin and the moment the clasp clicked shut and Diana went quiet. My body remembered it so well that for one terrible second I couldn’t tell whether it was lying in the box or locked around my neck.

I couldn’t move. I stood at the foot of the dais with the open box in my hands, and the candlelight shivered, and the noise of the hall went thin and far away.

She knew. That was all I could think. She knew exactly where I was, and exactly what I was doing, and exactly what this would do to me. She had sent it to my reception, in front of every Alpha in the valley, wrapped in brown paper like a present.

I haven’t forgotten you, it said. Don’t you forget me.

“Abby.”

Liam’s voice. Very near. His hands came over mine on the box and closed the lid, gently, the way you close a door on a sleeping child.

“Abby. Look at me.”

I looked at him. I didn’t know what my face was doing. Whatever it was, it made his go white.

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