His Moonsilver Mate (Abby and Kade) novel Chapter 73

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Mon, Nov 2

Chapter 73

Kade

By the time we reached open air, Abby had stopped shivering, and that frightened me more than the shaking had.

All the way down from the chamber and back through the tunnels, her body had trembled ainst mine. Now she lay still, wrapped in my jacket, her head tucked into the crook of my neck, and counted every shallow breath against my throat as I followed Tiernan through the trees.

Behind us, the mountain kept coming apart. Stone crashed somewhere deep in the ruins, and a low grinding rolled down the slope after it. Warriors and wolves moved both ways along the trail, carrying rescued girls toward the vehicles and turning back for anyone still below. One girl walked barefoot between two of our warriors with a coat around her shoulders. Ryan passed us with another in his arms, so thin she barely looked real.

Liam caught up with me at the tree line. He still had the girl from the circular chamber with him, one hand under her elbow, and he passed her to the nearest healer before he turned to me. He hadn’t

said a word since we left the chamber. Now he reached for his sister.

“Let me take her for a while. You’ve carried her the whole way-”

Knox reached the surface before I could stop him. The growl came out of my chest, low and unmistakable, and I turned so that my shoulder was between my mate and my oldest friend.

Liam’s hands stopped in the air.

For a second neither of us moved. Then he let them fall and stepped back without a word. I knew I should say something. Knox wouldn’t let me loosen my hold long enough to find it.

Lanterns burned between the trees ahead. Daphne had come up with the second Moonhaven team

and set up a medical station beside the vehicles, blankets spread across the ground and two healers moving between the girls already brought out. She took one look at my face and came straight to us.

“Put her down, Kade.”

I didn’t move. Letting Abby leave my arms felt wrong even when I knew Daphne needed access to

her.

“Thirty seconds,” she said, more gently. “I can’t examine her while you’re holding her.”

Liam spread a blanket on the ground without being asked. I knelt and lowered Abby onto it, keeping one hand behind her head until Daphne took over.

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band of irritated skin around her throat.

“Poor child,” she murmured. “What have they done to you?”

hen she checked her pulse, her pupils and her breathing. Abby didn’t react to any of it.

“Tell me exactly what happened.”

I made myself go back into that chamber. “Diana was still shifted when we found her. Stre was chained in the middle of a round room with lines carved into the floor, glowing white. She was glowing too-her fur, her eyes, everything. Silver-white, brighter than anything else in there. She broke the chains before I reached her. Then she shifted back and fell.”

“Did she hit her head when she fell?”

“No. I caught her.”

Daphne was quiet for a moment.

My stomach tightened. “Why isn’t she waking? Is something wrong with her heart?”

“I don’t know yet. I need proper tests.” She draped a clean blanket over Abby. “Her heart is steady, and she’s breathing on her own. “Nothing I can see tells me she’s crashing. We get her home, and I run everything I can.”

“Can you wake her?”

“No.” She saw my face and added quickly, “That doesn’t mean she won’t wake on her own.”

I tucked the blanket more securely around Abby and picked her up again.

Liam had turned away to scan the girls gathered by the vehicles. “Has anyone seen Sloane?”

“No,” Ryan called back.

Liam went still, reaching through the mind-link. He waited, frowned, and tried again. “She isn’t answering.”

Something hot and ugly moved through me at her name. Sloane had given us Abby’s location. She had also helped put Abby in that temple, in those chains, under that witch’s hands. If the mountain had come down on her, part of me couldn’t find it in itself to grieve, and I hated that almost as much as I hated what she had done. Knox didn’t care about any of it. He only wanted Abby off this mountain and as far from all of it as I could carry her.

“We’re leaving,” I said.

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“We can’t leave her in there, Kade. Whatever she did.” He glanced at the trail, at the warriors still going up and the stretchers still coming down. “And someone has to run this. Ryan can’t hold the teams together alone, and you’re not leaving Abby’s side.”

He was right, and we both knew what it meant. He was doing my job because I couldn’t.

“Find her if you can,” I said.

He nodded. His eyes went to Abby one more time. “Keep her safe.”

“Always.”

When I looked back from the vehicle, he was already walking up the trail toward the ruins.

***

The drive home took hours.

Abby lay across my lap wrapped in the blanket, and Daphne sat across from us. Every time Abby’s breathing changed, my head snapped down, and Daphne reached for her wrist without waiting to be

asked.

“Still stable.”

After the fourth time, she stopped explaining and simply gave me the words.

Once, Abby’s fingers moved against the blanket. I bent over her. “Abby?”

Nothing followed.

“It could be reflexive,” Daphne said.

By the time we reached Moonhaven, dawn was turning the sky gray. The clinic was lit, and so was the community hall beside it. My mother had apparently woken half the pack. People were carrying cots, blankets, food and clean clothes between the buildings, and every healer we had was waiting for

the girls coming in behind us.

She was directing people at the entrance when she saw me, and she stopped.

“Kade.”

“She’s alive.” I wasn’t sure which of us I was saying it for.

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Daphne hadn’t been able to do on the mountain. They drew blood, started fluids, cleaned and dressed the burns, and treated the raw skin around her throat. Chloe brought soft clothes from the packhouse and helped dress her.

None of it explained why she wouldn’t wake.

Daphne came and went all day with results that ruled things out without explaining anything. It wasn’t silver poisoning. Her organs were working. She was badly exhausted and dehydrated, ut not badly enough to explain this.

The clinic never went quiet. Somewhere down the hall, a girl was sobbing, and later another one laughed through her tears when someone told her that her mother was on the phone Liam was still

on the mountain, searching.

All of it mattered. I couldn’t make myself care while Abby lay six feet away and wouldn’t open her

eyes.

In the evening, Mom brought food and set it beside me. When I ignored it, she pulled up a chair and looked at Abby for a long time. Then she leaned over and gently brushed the hair back from Abby’s face, and her fingers stopped at the white strand.

“This wasn’t there before.”

“It happened in the chamber.”

“What happened in that chamber, Kade?”

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I told her. She listened without interrupting, and when I finished, she rested her hand on my

shoulder.

“Eat something, sweetheart. She’ll need you on your feet when she wakes.”

When, not if. I held on to that after she left.

Abby didn’t wake that night.

***

The next morning, someone knocked softly on the door.

A healer stood outside with one of the rescued girls. She looked about Abby’s age, maybe a little older. Her dark hair had been hacked unevenly above her shoulders, and the borrowed clothes hung loosely on her.

“She asked to see the silver wolf,” the healer said.

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