His Moonsilver Mate (Abby and Kade) novel Chapter 78

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Chapter 78

Malachi

Nine.

Teague gave me the number at sundown, standing in the doorway with rain dripping from the brim of his hat, and then he waited the way he always waited, as if numbers were simply weather d I would decide what to do about them.

Nine men.

Forty-three had been in that mountain when the moon rose four nights ago.

Some were under the rock. Some had died in the corridors with Moonhaven teeth in their throats. Seven, if Teague’s count was right, were sitting in Moonhaven’s cells. The rest had run, and men who ran from me once did not come back. Two more had slipped away into the trees since we reached the cabin. Teague hadn’t tried to stop them. Neither would I have.

Every girl was gone. Years of searching, of rumors chased through half the packs between here and the coast, and all of it had left that temple while I carried a woman who hated me down a mountain in

the dark.

I sat by the stove after Teague left, with a glass of whiskey I had poured an hour ago and hadn’t

touched.

Through the wall, I could hear Sloane breathing.

She wasn’t asleep. I knew the difference by now. When she slept, her breath went long and uneven, catching whenever the leg pulled. When she was awake, it was careful. Controlled. As if even her breathing was something she refused to give me.

She had thrown a cup of tea at the wall that afternoon. Not at me. At the wall beside me, which I suspected was worse.

I had cleaned it up myself.

***

My brother used to say that I thought too much about things I couldn’t change.

He said it kindly. Nathaniel said most things kindly, which was one of the reasons I had wanted, for so long, to hit him.

I was twelve the first time I understood where I stood. I remember the night clearly. A storm off the

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Not to his Luna. Not to the elders.

To Adrian.

He saw me and smiled and told me to go back to bed.

Adrian smiled too. He had a good smile. Everyone said so. He taught me to track the year after that, patient with me in a way my brother never had time to be, and I hated him for it a little more every time I got something right.

Blood should have meant something. That was what I believed. I was a Blackwell. I was the Alpha’s brother. And every year I watched an outsider stand at Nathaniel’s right hand, in the place that

should have been mine.

When my wolf finally came, I thought it would change. I thought Nathaniel would look at me and

see a man.

He looked at me and saw his little brother.

So I challenged him.

I remember the circle of faces. The packed dirt behind the training hall. Cassandra pulling her son inside while he screamed to watch. I remember how quickly it ended, and how little Nathaniel had

even had to try.

Mostly I remember lying on my back in the dirt with his weight across my chest, waiting for it.

And he didn’t do it.

He looked down at me with grief all over his face, as though I were the one who had been wronged, and he let me up.

“Get out of my pack, Malachi.” Quietly. Only for me. “And don’t make me do this again.”

Being spared was worse than anything he could have done with his teeth. It told me exactly what I was to him. Not a rival. Not a threat. Not even worth killing.

I walked out of Moonhaven that night with nothing.

The first years of exile taught me what I was worth without a name.

I worked for whoever paid. Hauling, fighting, guarding things for men I despised. I slept in places that didn’t deserve walls. I learned which packs would let a lone wolf through their territory and which would kill him for trying. I learned how to be cold and hungry and still make other men afraid.

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I was living in a hunting shack high in the mountains west of the border by then, drinking more than I ate. She knocked on the door one night as if she had known exactly where I would be, sat down across from me without being asked, and said, “You’re Nathaniel Blackwell’s brother.”

Nobody had called me that in years. I had almost forgotten I was anything but what I had made of myself.

She knew everything. The challenge. The exile. Adrian Hayes. She talked about my brother the way had only ever let myself think about him, and every word she said was something I had already said to myself in the dark.

Then she told me about the Moonsilver wolf.

A she-wolf touched by the moon. Rare enough that most packs called her a story. Strong enough that whoever held her could not be beaten. She would draw the moon into herself and pour it into the wolf beside her, and that wolf would become something no Alpha could stand against.

“Help me find her,” Cressida said, “and you take Moonhaven back. Everything your brother gave away. Everything he took from you.”

I didn’t believe in legends.

But I believed in the way she said it. And I believed in what I wanted.

*****

Eight years ago, we went into Moonhaven at night.

I knew the patrol routes because I had walked them as a boy. I knew which way the wind came off the lake, and where the packhouse doors were, and how long it took the warriors to wake. Cressida had her chants. I had men who would follow me anywhere, because by then I had made sure there was nowhere else for them to go.

We wanted two things.

Nathaniel.

And the girls.

Cressida didn’t know who the Moonsilver wolf would be. Only that she would be young, a she-wolf, pale. So the order was simple, and I was the one who gave it. Take the girls alive. Any pale young female old enough to run. We would sort them out later.

I found my brother at the edge of the square.

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I remember what was in it, and I have never let myself name it.

When it was over, Nathaniel was on the ground, and I was standing. That is all I have ever allowed myself to keep of that night. The rest I put somewhere I don’t go.

I heard later that Adrian Hayes was dead too. And his mate.

I told myself I felt nothing about that.

And the girls we took that night were nothing. Not one of them was what Cressida wanted. We had searched every house we could reach, and I learned only this autumn, from Sloane, whose daughter the silver wolf in the temple was.

Abigail Hayes. Adrian’s girl.

Ten years old that night. Hidden somewhere in her father’s house while my men walked past her.

The thing we had spent eight more years hunting had been beneath our feet, in the home of the man I hated most, and we had stepped right over her.

The door opened without a knock. Cold air came in, and Cressida with it.

She had changed the bandage on her head. Her burned hand was wrapped fresh, held a little away from her body. She had been out in the outbuilding with her stones and her books since dusk, and she smelled of the herbs she burned there.

She looked at the untouched whiskey. Then at me.

“You’re brooding.”

“I’m counting.”

“Teague told me.” She sat down across from me without being asked. “Nine is not nothing.”

“Nine is not an army.”

“Armies can be bought.” She leaned forward. “There are rogues in the north who will fight for anyone who pays. Packs that broke apart and never recovered. Men with nothing left to lose. You know where to find them. You found the first ones.”

I said nothing.

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“She brought a mountain down.”

“The temple brought the mountain down. It amplified her. I didn’t expect that.” Her eyes had gone bright, the way they did whenever she spoke about the girl. “But think about what that means, Malachi. Think of what she can do. Everything I told you was true. You saw it yourself.”

I had.

I had seen a starving captive straighten and stand on her own. I had seen a wolf glow so brightly she turned the stone around her pale. Cressida had seen silver chains snap like thread.

And I knew about the young Alpha of Moonhaven walking through a collapsing mountain to reach her.

My brother’s son.

I hadn’t seen it myself. Cressida had, and she had described it to me in the truck with her burned hand cradled against her chest. The ceiling coming down. The chamber shaking itself apart. And Nathaniel’s boy walking straight into the light toward the girl, as if the mountain falling around him were simply in his way.

I didn’t need to see it. I knew exactly who he had learned that from.

“Moonhaven has Ravenwood now,” I said. “They fought together in that temple. They’ll hold

together after it.”

“Alliances break.”

“So do men.” I looked at her. “I had forty-three, I have nine. The captives are gone. The temple is gone. Thirteen years of your plans, Cressida, and all I have to show for them is a girl in the next room

who throws tea at walls.”

Her mouth tightened at that. At Sloane.

“She is a distraction.”

“She is my mate.”

“She is the reason Moonhaven found us.” Cressida’s voice dropped. “And you went back for her, instead of the one thing that could have given you everything.”

I didn’t answer.

The truth was, I didn’t know why I had gone back.

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