His Moonsilver Mate (Abby and Kade) novel Chapter 137

Chapter 137

Sebastian Thorne was my mate.

I sat on the landing floor with my back against her door and heard it, and nothing in memeved

Then Jasper did.

He came up so fast and so hard that my vision went red at the edges, and I had to put both hands flat on the boards on either side of me and hold on. He wasn’t growling. He was past growling He was on his feet inside me with every hair on end, and he wanted out, and he wanted the road over the mountains, and he wanted a man in a dark suit who had stood in a corridor under the lanterns and

called her little wren.

I breathed. In, and out. In, and out. I held him there.

On the other side of the door, she had gone quiet. I could feel her listening. Waiting to hear what I

would do with it.

“Okay,” I said.

My voice came out rough. I tried again.

“Okay. I’m still here.”

I heard her let out a breath. Shaky, and long, as if she had been holding it for five years.

***

She didn’t open the door. Not at first.

She told me through it. Sitting on the floor on her side, I think, with her back against the wood where mine was. Her voice was very low, and very flat, and sometimes it stopped for a long time and I didn’t know if it would start again. I didn’t ask. I sat on the landing in the moonlight from the window and let her take as long as she needed, and I didn’t say a word.

She was eighteen. It was midsummer, at Greyhollow. The games, the long tables by the lake, half of Ravenwood come over the border for the week. She had known him for years by then, the way you know everyone in the next pack. He was twenty-one. He was going to be Alpha. He was funny, and handsome, and he had never once looked at her twice.

And then, on the second night, by the fire, he did. And the bond woke between them, all at once, the way it does.

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He had asked her to keep it quiet. Just for a little while. Until he had told his father properly, until the time was right. She had thought that was romantic. For three weeks, she had slipped away every night to meet him, at the edge of the trees, by the water, wherever he said. He was sweet to her. He was patient. He called her little wren, because of her wolf, and she had thought it was the loveliest thing anyone had ever called her.

“He never tried anything,” she said. “Not really. Not the first two weeks. He held my handle kissed me. He said there was no hurry. He said we had our whole lives.”

Her voice stopped.

When it started again, it was different. Thinner.

“There was a boathouse. Down at the end of the lake, past the jetties. He said to meet him there. The last night of the games.” A long pause. “There were boys outside when I got there. His friends. Three of them, sitting on the jetty with a bottle. They laughed when they saw me. I didn’t know why I thought they were drunk.”

My hands had closed into fists on the boards. I opened them.

“He was inside. He’d been drinking too. Not much. Enough. And he said-” She stopped. “He said it was time. That he’d been patient long enough. And I said not yet. Not here. Not with them out there.” Her voice had gone very quiet. “And he laughed and said, They’re waiting, wren. I told them by the end of the games. Don’t make a liar of me.”

I didn’t move. I couldn’t.

“It was a bet,” she said. “All of it. The whole three weeks. He’d bet them he’d have me before the games were over. His own mate. The bond had told him I was his, and he thought that meant,” She stopped. “He thought it meant he didn’t have to ask.”

I closed my eyes.

“I said no,” Kaia said. “I said no and he didn’t stop. He put his hand over my mouth.” Her voice cracked. “I bit him. I bit him so hard I tasted blood. Wren came up, all the way up, I couldn’t have stopped her if I’d tried, and I got my hands into him with claws, and he let go. And I got the door open and got out.”

“Kaia-”

“I didn’t run,” she said fiercely. “Not straight away. I stood on that jetty with his friends staring at me and him in the doorway with his hand bleeding, and I rejected him. Full names. In front of all of them.” A ragged breath. “I, Kaia Finnegan, reject you, Sebastian Thorne. And it went through me like a knife, and I didn’t care. And he laughed.” Her voice dropped to almost nothing. “He laughed, and he

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don’t know how long I sat there before I could speak.

Jasper was still up. Still on his feet. But he wasn’t straining at the road anymore. He had tumed round, inside me, and was standing with his whole body pressed up against the place where he was, on the other side of a door, as close as he could get…

“You never told anyone,” I said.

“Who would I tell?” Her voice was raw. “He was right. Who was going to believe me? He was going to be Alpha. His father was Alpha. I was the Ravenwood girl who’d been following him around all summer, everybody had seen it. And if I told Tiernan-” She stopped. “If I told Tiernan, he’d have gone over that border the same night. He’d have killed him, or tried. And Greyhollow’s twice our size, Liam. It would have been war. Over me. Over something I let happen because I was stupid enough to think the bond meant something.”

“You didn’t let anything happen.”

She didn’t answer.

“Kaia. You didn’t let anything happen. You bit him and you clawed him and you rejected him on a jetty in front of his friends.” My voice was shaking. I didn’t care. “That’s not letting something happen. That’s the bravest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Silence on the other side of the door.

Then, very small: “I didn’t feel brave.”

“I know.”

“I felt like I was going to die. For weeks. The rejection-” She drew a breath. “You’ve heard what it does. It felt like he’d torn something out of me. And Wren wouldn’t stop crying. And Tiernan sat outside my door every night for a month, just like you’re doing now, and never once asked me why, and I couldn’t tell him.” She paused. “And then the bond pulled me onto your porch in the middle of the night, five years later, and it felt exactly the same. Exactly the same, Liam. As if the Goddess had looked at me again and said, here, try this one.”

I let my head fall back against the door.

“So you wanted me to reject you,” I said.

“Yes.”

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agam.” A pause. “And now he’s waiting at the end of it.”

I understood, then. All of it, all at once.

you reject me,” I said slowly, “there’s no reason for Tiernan to say no to him.”

“None.” Her voice had gone flat again. “No mate. No bond. Just an Alpha with a good offer and a letter from his council, and Ravenwood too small to turn him down without a reason. And n’t give the reason. I can’t.” She swallowed. “And if I don’t reject you, then I have to accept you. I have to let the bond have me again. I have to trust it. After that.” Her voice broke. “I can’t do that either can’t

do either of them. I can’t—”

I heard her stop. Heard her breath go short and fast, the way it had in the hall.

I turned round on the floor and put my hand flat on the door. Low down, about where her shoulder

would be.

“Kaia,” I said. “Listen to me. Will you listen to me?”

A shaky breath. “Yes.”

“You have to tell Tiernan.”

“I can’t-”

“You have to. Not because of me. Not because of any of this.” I pressed my palm against the wood. “Because he’s your brother, and he’s about to stand in his office and shake hands with the man who did that to you, because he doesn’t know. Because nobody told him. That isn’t fair to him, and it isn’t fair to you.” I took a breath. “He sat outside your door for a month and never asked. He asked tonight. He’s ready to hear it.”

“He’ll go to war.”

“He might want to. That isn’t the same thing.” My voice was steadier now. “He’s not on his own anymore, Kaia. Ravenwood isn’t either. You came here on a deal between two packs. You think Kade’s going to sit up there in his father’s chair and let Sebastian Thorne threaten an ally? After that man sat in his office and told him his Luna wouldn’t stay a widow long?”

Silence.

“He said that?” she said.

“He said that.” I let my head rest against the door. “So no. Tiernan won’t be on his own.”

She didn’t answer. But I heard her breathing change. Slow down. Just a little.

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I had thought about how to say it. All the time she was talking. All the time I was sitting on the floor with my fists clenched and Jasper raging at the end of his chain. I had thought about what I wanted to say, and what I was afraid to say, and in the end there was only one thing that mattered

“That’s not a door you have to walk through,” I said. “Not to get away from him. I’m not a wall you have to stand behind.” I swallowed. “Whatever you decide about me, Kaia, whenever you decide it, that has nothing to do with him. If you reject me tomorrow, I’ll still be standing between you and Sebastian Thorne. If you reject me in three months, I’ll still be standing there. You don’t have keep me to keep him away. You don’t have to give me anything at all.” I pressed my hand harder against the wood. “Nobody’s taking you anywhere you don’t want to go. Not him. Not anyone, I promise you.”

The silence went on for a long time.

Then, on the other side of the door, I heard her move.

The latch clicked.

The door opened a few inches, inward, and I nearly fell through it. I caught myself on the frame. And she was there, sitting on the floor just inside, with her knees pulled up and her arms round them and her face wet and swollen and blotched with crying and still, somehow, a streak of flour along her

jaw.

She looked at me.