His Moonsilver Mate (Abby and Kade) novel Chapter 125

Next Chapter Chapter 125

Rate Chapter

Send Gift

Comments

MON

22

2

O

52 Mon, Nov 2

Chapter 125

Abby

woke to his voice.

Abby. Come to me. Please.

For a second I didn’t know where I was. Gray light, the tall windows, the green leather desk Luna’s rooms. My eyes were sore and swollen from crying, and I was still in the slip I had wonder the lavender dress, and the dress itself lay over the back of the chair where Ivy had hung it at some point in the night while I slept.

Please.

I was out of bed before I had decided to move.

I didn’t stop to dress properly. I pulled on the first thing I touched, an old sweater and a pair of trousers from the back of the wardrobe, and went out into the corridor barefoot, past Kade’s closed bedroom door, down the length of the Alpha wing toward his office.

The door was open. Liam and Ryan were inside, on either side of the desk. Daphne was there, and Imogen in the corner. And Kade.

He was sitting in his father’s chair behind the big desk, in a good dark shirt buttoned to the collar, with his hands flat on the wood in front of him. He looked like an Alpha. He looked like he had been an Alpha all morning, receiving every man in the valley in that chair and sending them away again.

He also looked gray. His face was wet at the temples. And his hands, flat on the desk, were shaking.

He looked up when I came in.

Neither of us said anything.

.

“We need to get him back to bed,” Daphne said briskly, into the silence. “Now. Before he falls out of

that chair and makes a liar of me.”

***

It took all of us.

Liam and Ryan got him up, one on each side. He didn’t make a sound. He just set his jaw and let them take his weight, and the three of them went down the corridor very slowly, with Daphne walking behind and me walking beside them, close enough to touch, not touching.

MON

2

22

|||

୮

52 Mon

“You opened it,” she said. “You stubborn- I told you.”

Ldidn’t stand up.”

“You didn’t have to. You held yourself in that chair for four hours like a statue.” She was already reaching for her bag. “Abby. His shirt. It’s soaked through. Help me.”

So I helped her.

I unbuttoned the good dark shirt with fingers that weren’t quite steady and eased it off his shoulders while Daphne held him up. His skin was hot and damp. Under the bandage, the dark threads reached out across his ribs, faint and gray, and around the edges of the wound they had gone darker this

morning, like ink spreading in water.

I didn’t say anything about it. Neither did Daphne. She cleaned it and dressed it again, quickly, with her mouth in a flat line, while I found a clean shirt in the drawer, a soft old one, worn thin at the

collar, and helped him into it. One arm. Then the other. He let me. He watched my face the whole

time.

When it was done, he lay back against the pillows and closed his eyes for a moment, breathing

carefully.

I pulled the blanket up over him. I tucked it in along his side, away from the wound, the way I used to tuck in patients at the clinic when I was sixteen. I didn’t know what else to do with my hands.

Then his hand found mine on top of the blanket and held it.

“Abby.”

I looked at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

His voice was rough. He didn’t look away from me.

“I sent you away. I shut the door and told myself it was for you. That you needed to rest. That if I wasn’t there, you’d stop pouring yourself into me and sleep.” His fingers tightened. “It wasn’t for you. It was for me. I didn’t want you to see me like this. I didn’t want you to look at me and see something you had to carry.” He swallowed. “And I felt you every night through that wall. Not sleeping. Frightened. Dreaming things that made you wake up shaking. And I let you do it alone.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

“Last night,” he said, “I felt you at the end. I felt you go cold, and I couldn’t get to you. I couldn’t

O

MON

2

22

O

bed until I fell asleep.

I wasn’t done.

came up all at once, the way it had last night, from somewhere underneath everything. I pent over the bed with my hand still in his, and I cried, and he tugged once on my hand, gently, and I let him pull me down.

I lay against his chest on the side away from the wound, the way I had for two weeks before ent me away, with my face in the soft old shirt and my hand fisted in the front of it. He wrapped harm around me and held on. His other hand came up and found my hair, and stroked it, slowly, over and over, from the crown of my head down to my shoulder.

Cedar and woodsmoke and Daphne’s antiseptic. His heartbeat under my ear, uneven and steady and

there.

Diana curled up inside me like a dog finally allowed back in from the cold.

Somewhere in the room, someone moved. A drawer closing. Footsteps. The door opening and shutting, very softly. I didn’t look up. I didn’t care who was still there, or who wasn’t, or what they

saw.

“I don’t want us to be apart,” Kade said into my hair. Very low. Only for me. “Not like that. Not anymore. I can’t do it, Abby. I’m no good at it.”

“Then don’t,” I said into his shirt.

“I won’t.”

I felt him take a breath, as if he were going to say something else. Then he didn’t. He just held me

tighter.

After a while, I lifted my head.

His eyes were wet. He didn’t hide it.

“You did something,” he said quietly. “Didn’t you? The first night you were in there. I woke up and the pain was just gone. Like someone had put a hand over it.”

I went very still.

“I felt you,” he said. “I didn’t know what it was at first. I thought I’d dreamed it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You told me not to. I know you did. I heard you through the wall and it was so bad, and I didn’t think-”

MON

2

22

|||

<

“I’m not angry.” His thumb moved across my cheek, catching the last of it. “I’m not. I just– I hated that you had to do it in the dark. Like you were stealing something.”

Someone cleared her throat.

I sat up quickly, wiping my face. Imogen was standing at the foot of the bed with her arms forded and her rings glinting, looking at the two of us with her head tilted, the way she looked at a wound she was deciding how to treat. Daphne was still by the washstand, packing her bag very slowy, pretending to be busy. Liam and Ryan had gone.

“Well,” Imogen said. “Now that that’s out of the way.”

Kade let out a breath that was almost a laugh.

“Speaking of stealing things in the dark,” Imogen went on. She came round to the side of the bed and looked down at the bandage, at the faint gray threads at the edge of the shirt collar. “I felt that too, you know. That night. Very small, very careful. You did it well, girl. You did it exactly right.” She looked at me. “And it held for about a day.”

I didn’t say anything.

“It went back down after Sebastian Thorne this morning,” she said to Kade. “Barely. And it’s spreading at the edges again since you sat in that chair. I can keep pressing it back. I’ve been doing it for three weeks. But I can’t do it forever, and I can’t make it let go. Not while that blade is whole.”

“We know,” Kade said.

“I know you know.” Imogen turned her ring once. “So listen to me now, both of you, because I’m only going to say it once and I don’t want either of you interrupting.”

We listened.

“There’s a binding,” she said. “Old work. Older than Cressida. I can’t break what she put in you. But I can tie it down. Put it to sleep. Not for good. For a month at a time, maybe. From one full moon to the next.” She looked at Kade. “It won’t cure you. You won’t be what you were. But you’d be able to stand. Walk the stairs. Sit through a council meeting without your shirt soaking through. Maybe even shift, if you’re careful, and not for long.”

Kade didn’t say anything. His hand had tightened on mine.

“I can’t do it alone,” Imogen said. “I don’t have the strength, and what I have isn’t the right kind. It has to be done at the full moon. And it needs her light.” She looked at me. “She amplifies her mate

O

MON

2