His Moonsilver Mate (Abby and Kade) novel Chapter 76

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< Chapter 76

Abby

The first thing I knew was a hand around mine.

Warm. Heavy. Holding on as though it had been holding on for a long time and had forgotten how to

stop.

Everything else came slowly. The ache in my wrists. A dry, raw soreness around my throat that made swallowing feel like a mistake. The smell of antiseptic and clean sheets, and underneath it, dedar and cold night air.

Kade.

I opened my eyes.

Gray light filled a room I half recognized. The clinic. One of the private rooms at the end of the corridor, with the window that looked out over the herb garden. The blinds were open, and the sky outside was the pale, uncertain color that came just before sunrise.

Kade was asleep in the chair beside my bed.

He sat slumped sideways with his head tipped back against the wall, his jaw dark with stubble, his shirt creased like he had been wearing it for days. His hand was wrapped around mine on top of the blanket. Even asleep, his grip was firm.

I stared at him.

The last thing I remembered was light. Too much of it. The floor splitting under Diana’s paws. Stone falling. And his voice somewhere inside all of it, telling me to come back to him.

I had.

I tried to say his name. What came out was barely a sound. Then I tried to reach my wolf.

Diana?

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For one terrible second, there was nothing. Then I felt her, curled somewhere deep inside me, so faint and heavy with sleep that she was barely more than warmth.

Abby. Her voice was slow. You’re loud.

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My fingers moved in Kade’s hand.

woke instantly. His head came up, his eyes found mine, and for a moment he didn’t move at all. He looked at me as if he didn’t trust what he was seeing.

“Abby.”

I tried to smile. I wasn’t sure it worked.

He leaned forward and pressed his mouth against my knuckles. He stayed like that, his forehead resting on our joined hands, and I felt his breath shake against my skin.

“Hi,” I whispered.

He laughed. It sounded broken. “Hi.”

“You look terrible.”

“You were unconscious for three days.” He lifted his head. His eyes were wet, and he didn’t try to hide it. “I’m allowed to look terrible.”

Three days.

I swallowed carefully. It hurt. “Sloane,” I managed. “Did she get out?”

Something passed over his face. He didn’t answer right away.

“Kade.”

“Liam’s been looking for her.” He reached for the cup of water on the table beside the bed. “Drink first. Then I’ll get Daphne, and then Liam can tell you himself.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“I know.” He slid one hand behind my head and held the cup to my lips. “It’s the one you’re getting until you drink something.”

I drank. The water was cool and wonderful, and I wanted all of it, but he only let me have a few sips

before he took the cup away.

Then he reached through the mind-link, and less than a minute later, Daphne came through the door with her hair still half pinned and a cardigan thrown over scrubs.

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My pulse. My eyes. My breathing. She pressed gently along my ribs and asked me to squeeze hér ingers and wiggle my toes, and made me tell her my name, the date I remembered last, and who the anoying man in the chair was.

“Kade,” I said.

“Close enough,” Daphne said.

He didn’t even pretend to be offended.

She unwrapped the bandages on my wrists to check the burns beneath. The skin was red and shiny healing in rough bands where the silver had bitten in. I looked at them and felt the chains again. The weight. The heat. Diana throwing herself against them until neither of us could tell where her pain stopped and mine began.

I looked away.

Daphne rewrapped them without comment. “You’ll have marks for a while. They should fade.”

“My throat,” I said.

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“Raw skin. Some of the other girls have the same marks.” She touched the side of her own neck. “Something was around it for a long time.”

“A collar. It kept Diana away from me.”

Kade went very still beside me.

Daphne only nodded, but her mouth pressed thin. “That’s what the others said too.”

When she finished, she sat on the edge of the bed. Her eyes went briefly to the side of my head. So

did Kade’s.

It wasn’t the first time. I had noticed it when I woke, and again while Daphne was checking my pupils. They kept looking at the same spot, then away.

“What?” I asked.

Daphne glanced at Kade, then reached into the pocket of her cardigan and took out a small compact mirror. She opened it and held it out without a word.

I took it.

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It wasn’t gray. Gray was dull. This was bright, almost luminous in the early light, like a line of moonlight that had been caught in my hair and never left.

I touched it.

It felt like the rest of my hair. Ordinary. It didn’t feel like anything at all.

“When did this happen?”

“In the chamber,” Kade said quietly. “When Diana shifted back. It was there when I caught you.”

I turned the mirror slightly. The strand caught the light again.

“Will it go back?”

“I don’t know,” Daphne said. “I don’t know what caused it. Not in any way I can measure.”

“The light.” I stared at my own reflection. “There was so much of it. I couldn’t stop it.”

Kade’s hand tightened around mine.

I closed the mirror and gave it back to her. My hand was shaking a little. I put it under the blanket

so no one would see.

Liam arrived ten minutes later.

He must have run. His hair was damp, his jacket was on inside out, and he stopped dead in the doorway when he saw me sitting up against the pillows.

“Abby.”

“Your jacket’s inside out.”

He looked down at it. Then he crossed the room in three strides and wrapped his arms around me so carefully that I could feel him holding back. He smelled like soap and pine and my brother, and I pressed my face against his shoulder and breathed.

“You scared me,” he said into my hair.

“I know.”

“Don’t do that again.”

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101 Mon, Nov 2 M0.

composure cracked for a second. She came around the other side of the bed and kissed my forehead.

“Sweetheart.”

unt Cassie.”

“How do you feel?”

“Like a mountain fell on me.”

“One nearly did.” She smoothed my hair back from my face.

I looked at Liam.

“Sloane,” I said. “Kade said you were looking for her.”

The room went quiet.

Liam glanced at Kade. Kade gave him a small nod.

My brother sat down slowly on the edge of the bed. “We went back in yesterday, once the tunnels stopped coming down.”

“And?”

“She wasn’t there.” He rubbed his palms against his knees. “We found where she was. There was a corridor that came down near the lower rooms. A slab fell across it. She was trapped underneath.”

My stomach dropped.

“There was blood. A lot of it.” His voice stayed even, but I knew him too well to miss what that cost. “But someone lifted the stone and pulled her out. We followed the tracks out of the mountain to an old road. There were vehicles. One of them left with her.”

“Someone carried her out?”

“A man.” Liam looked at his hands. “The guards had a name for her. The Boss’s woman. I think the Rogue King took her.”

I closed my eyes.

I saw Sloane sitting on the stone floor of that chamber, far enough away that Diana couldn’t reach her. Her fingers touching the fresh bite beneath her hair.

“It was him,” I said.

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Silence.

Then a soft sound came from the other side of the bed.

Cassandra had gone white, as though something had drained out of her all at once. One hand had closed around the bed rail, and her knuckles stood out sharp against the metal.

Kade saw it too. “Mom?”

She didn’t answer.

“Mom.”

Cassandra blinked. Her eyes moved to her son, and for a second she looked at him as if she were seeing someone else entirely.

Then she let go of the rail.

“It’s nothing.” Her voice sounded almost normal. Almost. “It’s an old name. I knew someone once who…” She stopped. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It looked like it mattered.”

“Kade.” She touched his shoulder briefly, the way she had probably done a thousand times when he was small. “Let me check something first. I’ll come back.”

“Check what?”

But she was already walking toward the door. She didn’t look back.

The door closed behind her.

Kade stared at it. Liam stared at Kade. I looked between them, my heart beating harder than it

should have been.

“What was that?” Liam said quietly.

“I don’t know.” Kade’s jaw had tightened. “I’ve never seen her do that.”

None of us said anything for a moment.

Then I pushed myself a little higher against the pillows. “We have to find her.”

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