His Moonsilver Mate (Abby and Kade) novel Chapter 185

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12:15 Mon Nov 2

Chapter 185

Liam

Hernan came back the next afternoon, a little after three, and parked his truck in the lane outside my house where anyone could see it.

He had left the witch on her way at first light, somewhere down the valley, and driven back one. He looked as if he hadn’t slept. He stood on my step with snow on his shoulders and knocked, the way he always did, as if there were any chance of us not knowing who it was.

Kaia opened the door. She didn’t say anything. She stepped back to let him in, and he came in, and bent and kissed the top of her head, and went past her into the kitchen and sat down at my table as if

it were his own.

“Well,” he said. “It’s the day.”

I had known it was. I had known it for a week, the way you know the date of an exam you haven’t studied for. Ninety days since she had come to Moonhaven in the autumn with one bag and a face like a locked door. Ninety days, and the arrangement he and Kade had made over her head. Three months. Long enough to know. If the answer’s no, she comes home, and nobody says a word.

Kaia hadn’t mentioned it. Not once, all week. She had stopped counting. I knew she had, because she had told me so, the morning after she told me she loved me. She had lain in my bed with the gray light coming in and said, I couldn’t remember the number, as if it were the most astonishing thing that had ever happened to her.

She sat down across from her brother now. I stayed by the stove.

“I don’t need to ask, do I,” Tiernan said.

“No,” Kaia said.

“Say it anyway.” He folded his hands on the table. “I promised Mom I’d hear it from you. In words.”

Kaia looked at her hands. Then up at him.

“I’m staying,” she said.

Tiernan didn’t smile. He nodded, slowly, as if she had told him the weather. But something in his shoulders came down.

“Good,” he said. “That’s good, Kai.”

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kitchen and he didn’t care, and I saw it not settle at all.

“Kai,” Tiernan said, with his back to us.

doesn’t change anything,” she said. “Does it.”

He turned round.

“Saying it.” Her voice was very level. “I’m staying. I’ve said it. And tomorrow, or next month on at the spring session, Bash can still stand up in front of the Council and say I’m a Greyhollow mater. That I was promised. That I refused him without cause and ran off to the one pack in the valley that can’t protect anyone anymore.” She looked at her brother. “And they’ll look at Kade, and they’ll look at what happened at Greyhollow, and they’ll think he’s right.”

“You weren’t promised to anyone.”

“That won’t matter. You saw what he did with that girl.”

Tiernan didn’t answer. He took the kettle off before it boiled and set it down on the side, and stood

with his hand on the handle.

“There’s one thing that would matter,” he said. Quietly.

Kaia went white.

I saw it happen. I saw her understand, and I saw what it did to her face, and I knew what he meant before he said it, because I had been lying awake thinking about it since Greyhollow.

“A completed bond,” Tiernan said. “Marked, and witnessed. Then you’re Moonhaven’s. Not on sufferance, not under protection. Moonhaven’s, by blood and by law. And the old right is finished. Nobody can claim a woman who’s already bound.” He looked at me. Then back at her. “Not Bash. Not the Council. Not anyone.”

The kitchen was very quiet.

“It needs two Alphas,” I said. My voice didn’t sound like mine. “A bond between packs. Doesn’t it. Both Alphas have to stand witness.”

“Yes,” Tiernan said.

“Kade, and you.”

“Yes.”

Kaia was looking at the table. She had both hands flat on it, the way Kade put his hands on his desk

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“Then-” I said.

Not now.”

She lifted her head. Her eyes were wet.

“Not without Abby,” she said.

***

៩

I came away from the stove then. I pulled out the chair beside her and sat down in it, close, facing, her.

“Kaia.”

“She’s your sister.” Her chin was shaking. She held it still. “She’s the only family you’ve got. She should be here. She should be standing next to you, and fussing with my hair, and telling you you’ve got your collar wrong. She’s sitting in a room in his house right now because she stood up for all of us. And you want to-” She shook her head. “I can’t. I can’t do it behind her back, Liam. You’d never forgive yourself. You’d look back on it every day for the rest of your life and think, she wasn’t there.”

“Yes,” I said. “I would.”

She stared at me.

“I’d think it every day,” I said. “You’re right. I’d hate it. I’ll hate it tomorrow, and the day after, and every time I look at that mark.” I didn’t look away from her. “And I’d rather hate it every day for the rest of my life than spend one more night lying awake wondering if he’s going to stand up at the spring session and take you out of this house.”

“Liam-”

“He took that girl in five minutes. I watched him do it. Her own father was on his knees on the floor, and it didn’t matter.” My voice cracked. I let it. “I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop them taking Abby. I stood behind Kade’s chair and watched both of them go, and there was nothing I could do.” I put my hand on the table beside hers. Not on it. Just beside it. “This I can do. This one thing. I won’t let him get to you while we sit here waiting for the right time. There isn’t going to be a right time. Not this winter.”

She looked at me. Her face was wet now.

“And Abby?” she said.

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Mon, No

Behind me, Tiernan made a small sound. I didn’t turn round.

“She would,” he said. “I’ve met her.”

***

We went up to the packhouse together, the three of us, a little before five, when the light was going.

Kade was in his office. He was at the window, the way he was most of the time now, with his back to the room and his hands behind him, looking out at the lake. He turned round when we came. the last of the light from the window, I could see the thread at his collar. It was higher than it had been the day before. It had reached the hinge of his jaw.

He looked at the three of us standing in his doorway. At Tiernan, and at Kaia, and at me.

He knew. I don’t know how. Maybe it was in our faces. Maybe Abby had told him, months ago, she thought would happen one day, and he had been waiting.

“Sit down,” he said.

None of us did.

what

Tiernan said it. He said it the old way, formally, the words his father would have used, standing in the middle of Kade’s office with his hands at his sides. That his sister Kaia of Ravenwood had found her mate in Moonhaven, and had lived under Moonhaven’s roof for the time agreed, and had given her answer. That she wished to complete the bond. That Ravenwood would stand witness, and asked whether Moonhaven would stand witness too.

Kade listened to all of it without moving.

When Tiernan had finished, he didn’t answer at once. He looked at Kaia.

“Is this what you want?” he said. “Not what you need. What you want.”

“Yes,” Kaia said. And then, because she was Kaia: “Both.”

He looked at me.

I didn’t say anything. He had known me since we were boys.

Kade looked out of the window again, at the lake going dark under the snow. He was quiet for so long that Kaia shifted her weight beside me, and I felt her hand find my sleeve.