His Moonsilver Mate (Abby and Kade) novel Chapter 200

Chapter 200

Kade

ten that night there was nothing left for me to do, and I couldn’t stop doing it.

Ryan had the trucks. Five of them, fueled and loaded in the yard, with chains on the tires and the emergency packs Malachi had told us to carry stowed under the seats. Twenty-two men, and kaia, who had come to Ryan herself that afternoon and stood in front of him in her training clothes til he

put her name on the list. Liam hadn’t argued. I had watched him not argue, and I knew what cost

him.

Garrick would hold the house. I had asked him that afternoon, in the corridor outside the dining hall, while the Council’s cars were still pulling out of the yard. He had looked at me for a while, leaning on his cane. Then he had said, “Your father asked me that once,” and nothing else, and

nodded.

Imogen had rung Agnes. The coven would be waiting at Elspeth’s house above Blackridge. Vincent had rung me. His men had pulled back off the mountain, every one of them, and were watching the north end of the lake from the far shore, through field glasses, from a long way off.

There was nothing else. There was the map, and the crosses on it, and the long white shape of the lake. And nineteen days.

I was sitting at my desk looking at it when somebody knocked.

***

It was Malachi. One of Ryan’s men stood in the corridor behind him, one of the young ones, looking as if he wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to come in too.

“I’d like a word,” Malachi said. “With you. Alone.”

I looked at him. Then at the warrior.

“Go and get yourself something to eat,” I said. “He’ll be here when you come back.”

The young man hesitated. Then he went.

Malachi came in and shut the door behind him. He didn’t sit down. He stood just inside it, the way

he had stood against the wall in this room a week ago, with his hands at his sides.

It was the first time we had ever been alone together. I realized it as I looked at him. At the solstice there had been Abby and Liam and Ryan and Imogen and Sloane, and a table between us. In this office there had been nine of us. On the steps there had been the whole pack. I had never once been in a

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“I’d rather stand.”

Then say it.”

He looked at me. In the lamplight his face was older than I remembered it. More gray in the beard. The lines at the corners of his eyes cut deeper. He had been sleeping badly too.

“Tomorrow you’re going to stand next to me,” he said. “On that road. And on that mountain And on the ice, if it comes to that. You’re going to do it for her, because you have to. And every hour of you’re going to be standing next to the man you think put his hands on your father.”

I didn’t answer.

“I’d like to tell you the truth once,” Malachi said. “So you don’t have to wonder. That’s all. I’m not asking for anything. I want you to know.”

***

He told me standing up, with his back to the door, and he didn’t look away from me once.

“I didn’t kill Nathaniel,” he said.

The thing in my chest turned over.

“Garrick saw you,” I said. My voice came out very low. “In the square. He saw my father go down, and you walking away through the fire.”

“He did. He saw me afterward.” Malachi’s jaw tightened. “I’d brought them there. Every man who was in that square, I brought over the line that night. I knew the patrol routes. I knew where the doors were. I gave the orders.” He stopped. “And I went looking for him myself. I found him at the edge of the square, with the fire behind him. I had a knife in my hand. I’d been going for him for twelve years, every night in my head, and there he was.”

I couldn’t breathe.

“He knew me,” Malachi said. “Through all the smoke. He said my name. Just my name. And then he put his hands down, at his sides, and stood there and looked at me. He didn’t fight.” His voice had gone rough. “And I couldn’t. I stood there with the knife in my hand, and I couldn’t do it.”

The room was silent. The lamp hissed.

“Then who-” I said.

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dropped. “He didn’t say anything else. He’d already said my name. He looked at me, and then he wasn’t looking at anything.”

I stared at him.

“That’s how they found me,” Malachi said. “Half of Moonhaven came round the corner of the packhouse and saw the Alpha’s exiled brother on his knees over the Alpha’s body, covered in is blood. My hands. My coat. All of it. My own knife still clean on the stones beside me, and noody looking at that.” He lifted his eyes again. “So I stood up, and I walked away through the fire, and every man who saw me go thought what anybody would think. I let them. When your Luna asked meat your council table, I said yes. I’ve never told anyone else but her.” He paused. “They weren’t wrong. Not really. I put him on those stones. Holding him while he died on them doesn’t change who put him

there.”

“Adrian,” he said. “And Naomi. That wasn’t my hand either. I never went into that house. I never saw them. I didn’t know which of my men did it until long after, and by then it didn’t matter, because it was mine anyway. I sent them. I sent every man who went into every house on that street.” He paused. “The girl was in that house. Your Abby. Ten years old, and hiding. My men walked right past

her.”

My hands had closed on the edge of the desk.

“I’m not telling you this because it makes it better,” Malachi said. “It doesn’t. I brought them, and then I knelt down in what they’d done, as if I had any right to.” His voice was flat again. “And I did kill that night. I won’t pretend I didn’t. Men of this pack. Two at the gate. One more in the smoke, whose face I never saw. I know how many. I’ve always known.”

He stopped.

“That’s all of it,” he said. “It’s unforgivable. I know that. I’m not asking you to forgive it.”

***

I don’t know how long I sat there.

The thing in my chest had come awake while he talked. Not climbing. Only turning, slow and heavy,

pressing up against Imogen’s knots, sending its cold ache up into my jaw. I sat with my hands on the edge of the desk and let it, and looked at my father’s brother standing by my door.

I had imagined it so many times. When I was eighteen, and nineteen, and twenty, lying awake in this house with my father’s chair empty at the end of the table. I had imagined Malachi Blackwell with his hands on my father, in the smoke, and his face, and what it would look like. I had built it out of what Garrick told me and what I couldn’t stop picturing, and I had carried it for eight years.

His hands had been on my father. Garrick had been right about that much. It had never once

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He said my name.

“Why are you telling me now?” I said.

Malachi was quiet for a moment.

“Because you’re going to stand next to me tomorrow,” he said. “And I’d like it to cost you little less.” He looked down at his hands. “And because there’s a chance one of us won’t come down off that mountain. I didn’t want to leave it unsaid. Not to you.” He paused. “You were his son. You had right to know how it went. You should have had it eight years ago.”

I didn’t say anything.

“When it’s over,” Malachi said, “when she’s home, and the witch is dead, if that’s how it goes. If you tell me to go, I’ll go. Past the mountains. Further than that, if you like. You’ll never see me again. Nobody in this valley will.” He lifted his eyes to mine. “You only have to say it.”

“And Sloane?”

Something moved in his face. Quick, and gone.

“What about her?”

“You know what I’m asking.”

He was quiet for a while. When he spoke, he didn’t look at me. He looked at the dark window behind my desk.

“Twenty years I had nothing,” he said. “No mate. I didn’t look for one. I didn’t think the Goddess owed me anything, after what I was, and I didn’t want anything from her.” His mouth moved. “And then that night in the temple, they brought a Moonhaven girl into that chamber, and the bond hit me in front of everyone. A Moonhaven girl. On the one night of my life I’d come for something else.”

He stopped.

“I thought the Goddess was laughing at me,” he said. “I thought it was a curse. Her last joke. I said so, out loud, in front of my own men. And then I treated her as if it was. You know some of what I did. Not all of it.” His voice was very low. “She’ll hear the rest tonight.”

I didn’t say anything.

“And then she walks out of a storm to my door with a message from my brother’s son, and tells me exactly what she thinks of me,” Malachi said quietly. “And doesn’t leave.”

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“Even if she never chooses me. Even if that bond stays cut till the day I die. It was still given.”

“That’s hers to decide,” I said.

Yes. Not yours. Not mine either.”

“Does she know? Any of this?”

“Some of it. Not all.” He was quiet for a moment. “She will. Tonight, if she’ll hear it.”

I looked at him. He let me.

“I don’t know what I’ll say to you,” I said at last. “When it’s over. I don’t know.”

“I know.”

“Ask me then.”

He nodded. Once.

He turned to the door. With his hand on it, he stopped, and didn’t look back.

“He’d have been proud of you,” he said.

Then he went out, and shut the door quietly behind him, and I heard his footsteps go away down the corridor toward the back of the house, and stop, and a door open, and close.

I sat there in the lamplight with my hands on the desk. After a while I noticed that the ache in my jaw had eased. Not much. A little.

I hated that it had.

***

I didn’t sleep. Nobody expected me to.

At five, Ryan knocked, and I went down.

The yard was full of dark shapes and breath and the low noise of engines. Ryan’s men were in their places. Liam stood by the second truck with Kaia, both of them in heavy jackets with packs on their backs, and Liam lifted a hand to me across the yard. Imogen was already in the cab of the third, with her basket on her knees. Malachi stood by the last one with Teague, and Sloane between them, with her hood up.

And at the foot of the steps, in the light from the open door, my mother was waiting.

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