His Moonsilver Mate (Abby and Kade) novel Chapter 124

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Chapter 124

Kade

They got me into the chair before dawn, so nobody would see.

Ryan on one side and Liam on the other, down the length of the Alpha wing at a quarter to ix, with Daphne walking behind us telling all three of us we were idiots. It wasn’t far from my bedroom door to the office. It felt like the length of the valley. By the time they lowered me into the chair behiny father’s desk, my shirt was stuck to my back and my hands were shaking so badly that I had to ut them flat on the wood to stop it.

Daphne checked the bandage. Then she checked it again. Then she stood in front of the desk with her arms folded and looked at me the way she used to look at me when I was eleven and had broken my wrist falling out of the big oak by the lake.

“If you stand up,” she said, “I will sedate you myself.”

“I won’t stand up.”

“You’ll want to.”

“I know.” I took a breath and let it out slowly. “That’s the point. They have to think I don’t need to.”

Imogen took the chair in the corner by the bookshelves, where she could see everyone who came through the door and nobody would think to look at her. She had a cup of something that smelled like bark in one hand, and her rings caught the lamplight as she settled. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. I could feel her the way you feel a draft, a faint cold pressure at the edge of the room, keeping watch on the thing in my chest.

Ryan stood by the door. Liam took the other corner.

At five to nine, my mother came in with a pot of coffee and set it on the desk, and straightened my collar without asking, the way she had on my first day as Alpha.

“You look well,” she said.

“I look like a corpse in a good shirt.”

“A well-dressed corpse is still well-dressed.” She looked at me for a moment longer than she needed to. “She’s asleep. I checked.”

I didn’t ask who. I didn’t have to.

***

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had started singing again. I told him I was glad. I was. He shook my hand across the desk, and his grip was too careful, as if he was afraid I might come apart.

Then Harlan of Stonecrest, who had known my father and wanted me to know it. He talked about Nathaniel for ten minutes. About the winter of the floods. About a hunting trip twenty years ago when my father had carried him half a mile on his back with a broken ankle. I listened. Every so often his eyes went to my hands on the desk, and to the bandage under my shirt, and back again

Then the gray Luna from the north, Aurelie of Highmoor, with her mate standing silent behind her She asked me directly how bad the wound was. I told her directly that it wasn’t closing. She nodded as if she respected that, and told me that her own mate had taken a silver blade in the gut twenty years ago and been unable to shift for a year, and that it had been the worst year of both their lives, and that the pack had survived it.

“So will yours,” she said. “If your Luna’s anything to go by.”

I hadn’t expected that.

Bram of Ashford. Two Alphas from the far side of the mountains I had met once each and barely remembered. Tiernan, who came in last but one, shut the door behind him, looked at me, and said You look terrible, and then sat down and talked about nothing for a quarter of an hour, because he knew I needed someone in that chair who wasn’t counting.

I liked him more than I could say for that.

Every one of them looked.

I watched them do it. At the desk. At my hands. At the way I didn’t rise when they came in, and didn’t rise when they left. At the bandage, a little thicker under the left side of my shirt than it should have been. They were polite about it. Some of them were kind about it. But every one of them went away knowing a little more about Moonhaven than they had when they walked in.

It was what I had expected. It was what Abby had walked into last night, alone.

***

Last night.

I hadn’t slept after. I had sat in the armchair by my window until it got light, with the bond pulled tight in my chest like a wire, feeling her on the other end of it.

I had felt all of it. The whole evening. I had felt her smiling until her face hurt. I had felt her go cold and careful every time certain men came near her, the way an animal goes cold when it smells something it doesn’t like. I had felt her miss me. Over and over, at odd moments, in the middle of

other things, a sharp little tug toward the empty chair beside her.

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once before, in a temple under a mountain. I hadn’t known what it was. I only knew she was

frightened, in a way I had never felt her frightened, and I was three corridors and a flight of stairs/ away, sitting in a chair by a window, and I couldn’t get to her.

had reached for her through the link. I had said her name.

She hadn’t answered. She had cried.

I had listened to her cry through the bond, in the dark, for a long time. And I had sat there with my hands clenched on the arms of that chair and done nothing, because there was nothing I could do

Ryan had brought me the box an hour later. I had opened it and looked at what was inside, and then I had closed it again, very carefully, and handed it back to him and told him to lock it in the safe and find out who had left it. He had come back at two in the morning to tell me that nobody had seen anyone, and there was no scent on it, or on the paper, or on the string.

I had sat there until dawn with that.

Ten days. I had shut her out for ten days. I had told myself it was for her. That she was doing too much, carrying too much, sitting up at night listening to me breathe and then going down to that council table to be picked apart by old men. That she needed to rest. That if I wasn’t in the room, she might stop pouring herself into me the way I knew she wanted to, and sleep.

She had gone, when I sent her. She had done what I asked. She had gone into the Luna’s rooms and shut the door, and I had lain in this bed with Daphne and Imogen at my side and felt her on the other side of that wall every single night. Missing me. Not sleeping. Dreaming, sometimes, things that made her wake with her heart hammering and lie very still in the dark.

I had felt all of it. And I had let her do it alone.

I had thought I was protecting her.

I had been protecting myself. From the look on her face when she saw how weak I was. From the thing she wanted to do for me that I was too afraid to let her do.

***

“Alpha Sebastian Thorne,” Ryan said. “Of Greyhollow.”

He came in smiling.

I had met his father. A heavy, pleasant, dangerous man who had held Greyhollow for thirty years by being everyone’s friend until the moment he wasn’t. The son was taller. Fairer. He moved more easily, like someone who had never once had to wonder whether a room would make space for him. He wore a dark suit that had cost more than my truck.

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exactly as long as it should have. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much.”

“Alpha Sebastian. I was sorry to hear about your father.”

Thank you. It was very sudden.” He sat down’ in the chair across from me without being asked and crossed one leg over the other. “But that’s the way of things, isn’t it? One day you’re a son, and the next you’re the one everybody’s looking at.” He smiled. “I imagine you remember.”

“I do.”

“Of course you do.” His eyes moved, just once, to the bandage under my shirt, and away. “was so sorry to hear about all of this. The attack. The witch. It sounds like a terrible business.”

“It was.”

“And the wound still won’t close.” He said it lightly, sympathetically, as if he were commenting on the weather. “That’s what one hears, anyway. Something about a cursed blade.”

“One hears a lot of things.”

“One does.” He tilted his head. “Your Luna is extraordinary, by the way. I had the pleasure of meeting her last night. So young. And so composed. She handled the room beautifully.” He paused. “Even at the end. That unpleasant little business with the box.”

The room was very still.

I didn’t look at Ryan. I didn’t look at Liam. I kept my hands flat on the desk and my face exactly

where it was.

Sebastian Thorne smiled at me with every appearance of warmth.

“It must be such a worry for you,” he said. “Sitting up here. Not being able to be at her side. A girl that age, carrying a whole pack on her shoulders, with a witch sending her parcels.” He shook his head slowly. “If anything were to happen to you, Kade, and of course nobody wants to think about it, but if it did, she’d be in a very difficult position. A Luna on her own. No heir. Your uncle, I understand, is still alive somewhere in the mountains.” His voice was gentle. “I only mean to say that she wouldn’t be on her own for long. Someone would step forward. A girl like that doesn’t stay a widow.”

He said it kindly. He said it the way you would say something reassuring at a funeral.

Knox stood up inside me.

Not slowly. All at once, every hair on his back on end, and the growl came up through my chest so low and so deep that I felt the desk vibrate under my hands. I didn’t let it out. I held it in my throat, the way you hold a dog by the collar, and it took everything I had.

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they were still there.

Then he smiled again.

Neaned back in my father’s chair. Slowly. Carefully. As if it cost me nothing at all.

“I was eighteen,” I said, “when I sat down in this chair.”

He waited.

“My father had been dead four days. Half this valley came to pay its respects. And half of them sat where you’re sitting, Sebastian, and smiled at me, and told me how sorry they were, and counted how many wolves I had on the wall.” I held his eyes. “I remember every single one of them. Most of them aren’t Alphas anymore. Some of them aren’t anything anymore.”

His smile didn’t move. But something behind it did.

“I’m sure you’ll make a fine Alpha,” I said. “Greyhollow’s a good pack. Your father built it carefully. But you’ve been in that chair for, what, six weeks? Two months?” I let the silence sit. “That’s not very long to start making enemies, Sebastian. Before you’ve had the chance to find out whether you can fight them.”

For a long moment, neither of us said anything.

Then Sebastian Thorne laughed. Lightly. Easily. As if I had told a very good joke.

“Of course,” he said, and uncrossed his legs and stood. “Forgive me, Alpha. I spoke out of concern. I hope I haven’t given offense.”

“You haven’t.”

“I’m so glad.” He buttoned his jacket. “Please give my regards to your Luna. Tell her I hope she enjoys the gloves.”