His Moonsilver Mate (Abby and Kade) novel Chapter 138

Chapter 138

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Chapter 138

Abby

Nwoke to his mouth on my temple.

Then on my cheekbone. Then very lightly, at the corner of my eye, where my lashes were, slightly that I felt it more as warmth than touch. I lay still with my eyes closed and let him do it, because I was warm and heavy and halfway still in a dream, and I wanted to see how long he would go on before

he realized I was awake.

Not long.

“You’re pretending,” he said against my ear.

“I’m not.”

“Your heart just did something.”

“My heart does lots of things.” I turned my face into the pillow. “It’s very busy. It has a lot of responsibilities.”

He laughed. Quietly, low in his chest, and I felt it go through me where we were pressed together under the quilt, and opened my eyes.

The fire had burned down to a red glow. That was all the light there was. It came across the floor of the cabin in a long low wash, and caught on the edge of the table, and the two chairs, and the stack of split wood by the hearth, and his face above me on the pillow, all gold and shadow. Outside the small window, it was full dark. No moon. Only stars, and the pale shapes of snow on the branches, and the sound of the stream running somewhere behind the cabin under the ice.

He was looking at me.

“What time is it?” I said.

“Late. Or early.” He brushed my hair off my forehead. “Somewhere around two. We should go back before it gets light.”

“We should,” I agreed, and didn’t move.

Neither did he.

****

It had been his idea.

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had Nooked at Kade and said, And you. Whatever you’re thinking. Don’t

He had waited until after supper.

Then he had come into the Luna’s rooms, where I was pretending to read through Hester’s accounts, and shut the door behind him, and leaned against it, and said, “Come with me.”

“Where?”

“You’ll see.”

“Kade. Your own orders. Nobody goes out after dark.”

“Nobody goes out alone after dark.” He held out his hand. “You won’t be alone. You’ll be with your Alpha. Who has told his Gamma he’s unavailable until dawn unless the sky falls in.” His mouth. moved. “Ryan said a great many things about that. I’ve chosen not to remember any of them.”

So we went.

Out the back of the packhouse, past the kitchens, along the edge of the garden where the cabbages stood in rows under the frost. Into the eastern woods. The same path we had taken the first time, in the autumn, soft with needles under the snow now, the old trees standing tall and far apart in the

dark.

He walked it.

The whole way. Slowly, with his hand in mine, and sometimes he stopped and stood still for a moment with his other hand pressed flat against his side, and I stopped with him and waited and didn’t say anything. But he walked it. I could feel the thing at the bottom of his chest the whole time, through the bond, heavy and still and asleep, and Knox stretched out across it like a guard on a doorstep. Not once did it stir.

The cabin had smoke coming out of the chimney.

“You came out earlier,” I said.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I lit the fire this afternoon.”

“And cleaned. A little.”

“A little,” he said, and I laughed, because I had said those exact words to him the first time, standing in this clearing, and he had said exactly the same thing back.

***

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on his knees, with the moon on both of us. As if he were trying to learn me by heart.

“I nearly lost you,” he said. “Twice. On the field. And four nights ago.” His thumb moved along my heekbone, very slowly. “And in between, I sent you away. For ten days. I lay in that bed and felt you on the other side of a wall, and I thought I was being kind.” He swallowed. “I don’t want to waste any more of it. Any of it. Whatever we’ve got.”

“Then don’t,” I said.

He bent his head and kissed me.

Not the way he had been kissing me before, light and teasing, at my temple and the corner of my eye. Slowly, and deeply, and for a long time, as if there was nowhere else in the world he needed to be. I put my hands up into his hair. Diana rolled over inside me and stretched, all the way, from her nose to her tail, the way she did on the first warm day in spring.

Through the bond, I felt Knox lift his head.

Kade paused above me. Only for a second. His hand pressed flat on the mattress beside my head, and I felt him reach down inside himself, the way he had to now, and check. The thing at the bottom of his chest. Asleep. Not stirring. Knox, alert but quiet, with his head up and his ears forward and every muscle loose.

He let out a breath.

“Imogen,” I said, “said nothing about this.”

He laughed against my mouth. “Imogen said anything that makes your blood

“That’s very broad.”

go up.”

“It is very broad.” His eyes were dark and very warm in the firelight. “I’ve decided to interpret it narrowly.”

“Oh, have you?”

“I’m the Alpha,” he said. “I get to interpret things.”

I pulled him down to me.

***

I don’t want to say much about the rest of it. Not because I’m ashamed. Because it was ours, and there are things that belong only to the two people who were there, in the dark, with the fire burning down.

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you have very nearly lost, and have been given back, and mean to keep. And I was careful with him/ With the place below his ribs, where the wound had begun at last to close, pink and new and tender at the edges. With the faint gray lines at the side of his throat, like pencil marks rubbed out. With the weight at the bottom of his chest that we both felt and neither of us mentioned.

At one point, he stopped. He held himself very still above me in the red light, with his forehead against mine and his breathing ragged, and I felt him go down inside himself again, and check.

“All right?” I whispered.

“All right.” His voice was rough. “Better than all right.”

The bond between us was so bright, so open, that I couldn’t tell anymore where I stopped and he began. I could feel his heart. I could feel him feeling mine. And somewhere at the very edge of it, so faint I wasn’t sure at first, I felt Diana reaching for him through it, wanting to pour, the way she had

in the training hall. Wanting to give him something.

I caught her. Gently. No light, I told her. Not tonight. Daphne said.

She subsided, grumbling.

Kade must have felt it. He laughed, very softly, against my neck.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing.” He kissed my throat, just above the mark. “Just you. Arguing with your wolf. In the middle of” He stopped. “I love you.”

“I know,” I said. “I love you too. Stop talking.”

He stopped talking.

*****

Afterward, I lay with my head on his chest and listened to his heart slow down.

The fire was almost out. He had put another log on, at some point, and it had caught and burned and fallen in on itself, and now there was only a deep red bed of coals at the bottom of the hearth, ticking softly as it cooled. The cabin was full of shadows. Outside the window, the stars had moved.

His fingers were in my hair. Moving slowly, round and round, the way they did when he was thinking. Every so often they found the two silver strands at my temple and stopped there, and rubbed them gently between finger and thumb, the way he had rubbed the first one in the clinic, and

then moved on.

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