His Moonsilver Mate (Abby and Kade) novel Chapter 24

Chapter 24

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V

1:11 pm

Rade

Chapter 24

By morning, we had more names.

Not enough answers.

Tiernan stood at the end of the conference table with both hands braced against the wood while Cole sorted through the reports that had come in overnight.

Ryan sat across from Liam, a map of Moonhaven spread between them.

I hadn’t slept.

Every time I closed my eyes, I heard Abby in Liam’s kitchen.

You didn’t want me when I was just Abby.

I had told her the truth.

I loved her.

I should have understood that long before nearly losing her made it impossible to ignore.

Whether she believed me was another matter.

Cole pushed a page toward the center of the table.

“North Creek confirmed theirs.”

Liam looked up. “The missing girl?”

“Seventeen. Shifted less than two months before she disappeared.”

My hand tightened around the coffee mug.

“Wolf?”

“Nearly white.”

Ryan muttered a curse.

“Anything unusual about the disappearance?” I asked.

Cole shook his head. “She left to meet a friend. Never arrived. No body, no ransom, no confirmed rogue sighting.”

“So they treated it as an isolated disappearance,” Liam said.

“Exactly.”

TI

12-4

V

1:11 pm

Pinecrest.

North Creek.

Redwood.

Silver Ridge.

Names that had meant nothing together until now.

“How many confirmed?”

“Five disappearances that fit closely enough to matter,” Cole said. “Possibly sever. Two packs are still checking old reports.”

Ryan frowned. “That many girls vanish and nobody sees a pattern?”

“They didn’t disappear from one place,” Tiernan said. “One from Pinecrest. Another from North Creek months later Different circumstances. Different borders.”

“And until recently, nobody knew what pattern to look for,” Liam added.

Cole nodded.

“The older reports are vague. The recent ones are more consistent.”

“How?”

“Younger girls. Recent first shifts. Light-colored wolves.”

Silence settled over the table.

Liam leaned back.

“So whoever is giving the orders is narrowing the search.”,

“That’s what it looks like,” Tiernan said.

Testing.

Eliminating what didn’t fit.

Getting closer.

Knox paced inside me.

Find him.

I wanted to.

1:11 pm

We still didn’t know who him was.

“What about the girls who came back?” I asked.

Cole’s expression changed.

Ryan looked sharply at him.

“Some came back?”

“Three cases we know of.”

“Alive?”

“Yes.”

It should have sounded like good news.

It didn’t.

“What happened to them?”

“The same thing in every case. They remembered being taken, Parts of the attack. Maybe a face.”

“And after that?”

“Nothing.”

Ryan frowned. “Nothing?”

“No location. No captors. No memory of what happened while they were gone. One girl was missing four days.

Another almost a week.”

Liam’s face hardened.

“Drugged?”

“Maybe.”

“Magic?” Tiernan asked.

“Possible.”

I looked at the reports again.

Girls disappearing.

Some returning with entire pieces of their lives gone.

Others never returning at all.

1:11 pm

And somewhere above the rogues carrying out the orders was a man nobody seemed able to identify.

The Rogue King.

“What did the prisoner say about the girls who were returned?” Liam asked.

“Nothing useful. His group never handled one directly. They were told to locate possible candidates and report

them.”

Tiernan answered.

“Candidates,” Ryan repeated.

Cole nodded grimly. “Whatever happens after that is handled higher up.”

My thoughts went to Diana beneath the trees yesterday.

Pearl-gray fur.

That faint silver-white sheen when the light caught her.

Then to Liam’s description of her first shift.

Silver beneath moonlight.

We still didn’t know Diana was the wolf they wanted.

But uncertainty didn’t make the danger smaller.

I had already walked into one cave not knowing whether Abby would be alive when I found her.

I would not do that again.

Ryan broke the silence.

“There’s another problem.”

I looked at him.

“The western breaches.”

Liam’s attention sharpened.

Ryan tapped three points on the map.

“Here. Here. And here.”

All of them were too far inside routes our patrols should have controlled.

“The last group crossed without triggering a warning until they were almost at the river,” Ryan continued. “Then there’s the man who took Abby.”

T

1:11 pm

He wasn’t working for the Rogue King,” Fiernan said.

“No,” Ryan agreed. “But he still got into Moonhaven, arranged a lure, and sent a fake runner into the clinic wearing our patrol gear”

Liam’s face went cold.

“And the prisoner escaped.”

Ryan nodded.

I stared at the map.

Different crimes.

Possibly different people.

Same problem.

Access.

“Someone helped them,” Liam said.

Nobody argued.

Cole leaned forward.

“Or your security is worse than you think.”

Ryan’s eyes flashed. “It isn’t.”

“Then someone helped them.”

Ryan said nothing.

Authentic patrol clothing.

Knowledge of our routes.

A service entrance most pack members barely remembered existed.

Two guards unconscious.

A prisoner gone from our own cellars.

Whoever was involved knew Moonhaven.

Not casually.

Intimately.

1:11 pm

My thoughts went where I had been trying not to let them go.

Sloane.

Tiernan looked at me.

“How is she?”

“Sloane?”

“Unless another woman you introduced as your future Luna was beaten by an escaped rogue.”

Liam looked down.

Ryan became very interested in the map.

“She was discharged this morning.”

“Back here?”

“Yes.”

Daphne had cleared her to leave the clinic but not to resume training or pack duties.

Sloane was upstairs in the room she had used for years whenever pack business kept her late.

Once, having her close would have felt normal.

It didn’t anymore.

Tiernan studied me.

“And?”

“And what?”

“You introduced her to me as Moonhaven’s future Luna.”

The room went quiet.

Of course he would ask.

“That was a mistake.”

Tiernan’s eyebrows lifted.

Ryan looked up.

Liam already knew.

1:11 pm

“What changed?”

“Me.

Tiernan waited.

I exhaled.

“I made that decision because I thought Moonhaven needed someone ready to become Luna immediately.”

“And now?”

“Now I know I was wrong.”

“About Sloane?”

“About a lot of things.”

Liam glanced at me.

I knew what he was thinking.

Abby.

Tiernan leaned back.

“So Sloane is no longer your intended Luna.”

“No.”

“Does she know?”

“Yes.”

“The pack?”

“Not yet.”

Something flickered across his face.

“Interesting.”

I didn’t like his tone.

“What?”

“She loses the position. Shortly afterward, your prisoner escapes. Then she happens to find him alone in the woods.”

My irritation rose immediately.

1:11 pm

Not because he was wrong.

Because I had already thought the same thing.

“She was attacked.”

“I saw her injuries.”

“You think she did that to herself?”

The

“No.” Tiernan’s voice stayed calm. “I think being attacked by him doesn’t explain why she was alone with him.”

Liam’s gaze shifted to me.

Sloane’s face flashed through my mind.

Split lip.

Bruised ribs.

The fear in her voice when she asked me not to leave.