His Moonsilver Mate (Abby and Kade) novel Chapter 160

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Abby

Chapter 160

melled him before I saw the hut.

We had come up through the trees in the gray half-dark, and crossed the line where Moonhoven’s scent thinned out and stopped, and climbed the last long slope of the western hill with the show up to our shins. Kade in front. Imogen behind him, steady as a goat. Liam at my side. Ryan at the ba Nobody had spoken since the lake.

At the top of the slope, the wind turned and came down to us off the hill, and I stopped walking!

Woodsmoke. Leather. Cold iron, very faint. And under it, something I had no word for, something that belonged only to him, the way Kade’s scent belonged only to Kade.

I knew that smell. The last time I had smelled it, I had been in chains in a stone chamber under a

mountain.

Diana went flat inside me. All at once, belly to the ground, ears pinned, the way a hare goes flat in the grass when the hawk’s shadow crosses it. My mouth went dry. My hands, inside my gloves, were suddenly wet. I stood in the snow in Cassandra’s white-lined coat and couldn’t make my feet go

forward.

Liam’s hand closed on my elbow.

“Abby.”

“I’m fine.”

I wasn’t. He knew I wasn’t. He didn’t let go.

Up ahead, Kade had stopped too. He didn’t turn round. But I felt him through the bond, reaching

back for me, very steady. I’m here. I’m right here. He won’t come near you.

I know.

I made my feet move.

***

The hut stood in a fold of the hill, low and gray, half buried in snow. Stone walls, a turf roof with the snow lying thick on it, a door hanging slightly crooked in its frame. A thread of smoke went up from the chimney into the still air. Behind it, the old sheepfold, a ring of tumbled stone. Beyond that, nothing but white hillside going up into the pines, and the sky over the eastern ridges turning slowly

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I had last seen him on the field, a month and a half ago, through smoke and moonlight, with Knox ined under him by the throat. And before that, at the hearing, at the foot of the long table in chains. He looked different now. Thinner. There was gray at his temples that I didn’t remember, and a winter’s worth of stubble, and his coat was patched at the elbows. But he stood the way he had always stood. Tall and very still, with his shoulders squared.

Kade’s shoulders.

I had known that. Everyone knew that. But I had never seen it like this, the two of them facing each other across twenty yards of snow, and the same set to their shoulders, and the same way of holding their heads. I felt something cold go through me that had nothing to do with the morning.

He didn’t come any further. He stood in the doorway with his hands at his sides, open and empty, where everyone could see them.

“I came alone,” he said. “As I said I would.”

His voice. I had forgotten his voice. Low, and rough, and very quiet. I had heard it in the dark, through stone.

Kade didn’t answer. He stood in the snow at the front of us with his hands in his coat pockets and looked at his uncle, and through the bond I could feel Knox, all the way up, every hair on end, and under Knox the curse turning slowly in its sleep. He was holding them both. I could feel what it cost

him.

Malachi’s eyes moved along the line of us. Kade. Imogen. Liam. Ryan.

Then me.

They stopped on me for a moment, gray and pale and very tired, and I couldn’t breathe. I took a step back without meaning to. Liam’s hand tightened on my arm.

Malachi saw it. He looked down, at the snow in front of the door. Then he took one step back himself, into the doorway, so that there was more ground between us, not less.

“Luna,” he said, to the snow. “I won’t come nearer to you than this.”

I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t have, if I’d wanted to.

****

Then the door opened wider behind him, and Sloane came out.

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I didn’t think. I pulled my arm out of Liam’s hand and went across the snow to her, past Kade, past lhof it, and she came down off the step, limping, and we met halfway, and I put my arms round her so hard we both nearly went over.

She smelled of woodsmoke. Of him. I didn’t care.

“You’re alive,” I said into her shoulder. “You’re alive. You’re alive.”

“I’m alive.” Her voice was shaking. “Abs. I’m all right. I’m all right.”

I held on. She held on. Behind me, I heard the snow creak as somebody moved, and a sharp breath,

“Sloane Sinclair.”

Ryan.

I turned my head. He had come forward to the front of us, past Liam, past Imogen, and he was standing in the snow staring at Sloane with a face I had never seen on him. White. Then red. Then white again.

“Moved,” he said. He didn’t look at her. He looked at Kade. “Somewhere safe. Somewhere nobody in the house knew. Under your protection.” His voice was shaking with fury. “You sent her to him.”

“Ryan-”

“You stood in that corridor and lied to my face in front of my own men, and all this time she was-” He stopped. His hand had gone to his belt. “Sloane Sinclair. You’re under arrest. You’re coming back

down that hill with me if I have to-‘

He started forward.

Malachi moved.

He didn’t move fast. He didn’t move toward Ryan, or toward me, or anyone. He simply stepped down off the threshold, into the snow, and stood in front of Sloane. Between her and Ryan. That was all. He didn’t lift his hands. He didn’t say anything. He stood there with his back to her, and his open hands at his sides, and looked at Ryan.

Ryan stopped dead.

Everything stopped. For a moment the whole hillside was utterly still. I could hear the smoke rising from the chimney. Ryan’s breath going up in clouds. My own heart. I was standing three feet from Malachi Blackwell, closer than I had been since the chamber, close enough to see the frost on his

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one that came up from the bottom of him, and it went across that snow and stopped Ryan’s hand on his belt.

Alpha-”

“She went because I asked her to. With my message. And she brought him down.” Kade’s eyes didn’t leave Malachi. “You can be as angry with me as you like, Ryan. You’ve every right. Be angry with me on the way home. Not here.”

Ryan stood in the snow, breathing hard. Then, slowly, his hand came away from his belt.

He didn’t step back. But he didn’t step forward either.

Malachi didn’t move from in front of Sloane until he had. Then he turned his head, very slightly, toward her, without looking round. Some question. She touched his arm, once, through his coat. He stepped aside.

I saw that. I didn’t know what to do with it. I filed it away to think about later, when I could think.

***

Kade and Malachi faced each other across the snow.

Neither of them spoke for a long time. The sky over the eastern ridges had gone from pink to gold, and the first edge of the sun came up over the trees behind us, and the light went across the hillside, long and low and yellow, and lit them both. The first sunrise after the longest night.

“I’m not here to forgive you,” Kade said.

“I know.”

“I’m not here to pretend I don’t know what you did. To my father. To Abby’s parents. To her. To Sloane. To me.” His voice was very even. “I want you to understand that before you say anything else.

Nothing you tell me today changes any of it.”

“It shouldn’t,” Malachi said.

Kade’s jaw moved.

“I didn’t come down here to be forgiven,” Malachi said. His voice was quiet, and rough, and very plain. “I know what I am to you. I know what I am to every one of you.” His eyes went, for a moment only, to me, and away again. “I brought men to your door in the dark. I did that. Whatever else happened in that square, I did that. You’ll hate me for it as long as you live, and you should. I won’t stand here and argue about one word of it.” He paused. “That’s not why I came.”

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going to do things with her that I won’t say out loud on this hill. And I know how she thinks. I know where she keeps things. I know what she did to those girls you took off the mountain. I sat across a table from her for thirteen years.” His voice didn’t change. “That’s all I’m good for now. So I came down to give it to you.”

Kade said nothing.

“And in return,” Malachi said, “I want nothing. Not your forgiveness. Not my name back. Not one foot of ground on your side of that line.” He glanced, very briefly, at Sloane behind him. “I wa ber left alone. That’s all. Whatever happens after.”

“That’s not yours to ask for,” Ryan said, low.

“No,” Malachi said. “I know.”

And I saw Kade’s hands, in his coat pockets, close into fists. I felt Knox rear up. I felt the curse turn over in his chest, slow and attentive, the way it had been lying since the training hall. I felt Imogen, beside him, go very alert.

“Kade,” Sloane said.

She came out from behind Malachi. Slowly, limping, into the open snow between them. She stood there, with the low sun on her face and her hands at her sides, and looked from one of them to the

other.

“I know,” she said. “I know what he did. I was there for some of it. I was the reason for some of it.” Her voice was steady. “I’m not asking you to forgive him. I’m not asking you to forgive me either. You don’t have to forgive anybody. Nobody on this hill has to forgive anyone, ever.”

She took a breath.

“But she’s up there. Right now. Somewhere in those mountains, with her candles and her books and that girl in your clinic, waiting for you to do exactly this. Stand in the snow and hate each other.

That’s what she wants. She wants every one of us alone. Kade with a thing in his chest. Abby with the whole pack looking at her like she’s a stranger. Him on his mountain. Me on mine.” Her voice cracked, just slightly. “And she’s going to get it. Unless you two can stand on the same side of something for a few weeks without killing each other.”

Nobody said anything.

“That’s all it is,” Sloane said. “The same side. For as long as it takes. And then you can go back to hating each other for the rest of your lives, if that’s what you want. I won’t say a word.” She looked at Kade. “But if you don’t, there isn’t going to be a rest of your lives. For any of us.”

The sun had cleared the trees. It lay across the snow between them, very bright.

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Malachi nodded once. He turned and went back into the hut, and Kade went after him, and Imogen, and Liam. Ryan stood in the snow with his jaw clenched, and then he went and planted himself beside

he door, outside, with his back to the wall and his arms folded, facing the slope.

I stayed where I was.

I couldn’t go in there. Not yet. A room that size, with him in it. I couldn’t.

Sloane saw. She came across the snow to me and took my arm, and turned me, gently, toward the sheepfold.

“Walk with me,” she said. “Just a minute. They can start without you.”

***

We sat on the tumbled wall of the sheepfold, side by side, in the sun.

It was very quiet out there. The snow lay smooth and gold over the hillside, and the pines went up dark behind it, and down below us, far off, I could see the thin smoke still rising from the shore of the lake where the fires had burned all night. Somewhere down there, Cassandra was standing on the ice in the sunrise, greeting the sun in her son’s place.

Sloane sat with her hands in her lap. I looked at her. At the windburn, and the thinness. At her eyes, which were tired and very clear.

“Does he treat you well?” I said.

It came out smaller than I meant it to. She heard that. She was quiet for a moment, looking at the

hut.

“He chops wood before I’m up,” she said at last. “Every morning. So the box is full when I get to it. He never says anything about it.” Her mouth moved. “He doesn’t lock any doors. Teague took the screws out of the window the first night. He doesn’t touch me unless I put my hand out first. And when I ask him something, he tells me. Even when it’s bad. Even when it makes him look worse than I thought he was.” She looked down at her mittens. “He doesn’t try to make any of it smaller. What he did. To me. To you. To everyone. He never once tries to explain it away. I keep waiting for him to, and

he doesn’t.”