His Moonsilver Mate (Abby and Kade) novel Chapter 84

Chapter 84

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Chapter 84

Abby

The hall went quiet the moment we stepped inside.

Not silent. There were too many people for that. Someone’s child asked a question and washushed.

A bench creaked. Somewhere near the back, a woman sniffed and pretended she hadn’t.

But every conversation stopped, and every face turned toward the doors.

Toward me.

I tightened my hand on Liam’s arm before I could stop myself.

He covered my fingers with his own. “Breathe.”

“I am breathing.”

“You’re holding it in like you’re about to go underwater.”

I let the air out. He was right, and the fact that he could still tell that from the side of my face was somehow the most comforting thing that had happened all evening.

The ceremonial hall had been transformed in a matter of days. I didn’t know how Cassandra had done it, and I suspected half the pack had lost sleep finding out. Pine boughs ran along the beams overhead. Lanterns hung from every hook and post, so the whole room glowed gold instead of the harsh white of the overhead lights. The benches had been pushed back to leave a wide aisle down the center, and at the far end, on the low wooden platform where Kade usually stood for pack meetings, two people waited.

Cassandra, in deep green, with her hair pinned up and her chin lifted the way it always was when she had decided something would go perfectly.

And Kade.

He wore black, which shouldn’t have surprised me. His sleeves were buttoned at the wrists for once, hiding the tattoos, and he looked so serious standing there that for a second he could have been any

Alpha in any hall.

Then he saw me.

The bond answered before he did. Warmth rushed through it, so sudden and so strong that my steps faltered. It wasn’t only that he thought I was beautiful, although that was there, bright and a little stunned. It was the nervousness underneath it. The fierce, almost painful pride. And under all of that,

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Good.

Nam started walking, and I went with him.

The dark blue gown moved around my ankles. Cassandra had altered it herself over two evenings, refusing all offers of help and muttering about seams, and it fit as if it had been made for me My mother’s necklace sat at the base of my throat, the white-gold chain cool against my skin, the crescent resting where I could feel it every time I breathed. Cassandra had pinned my hair up on one

side.

On the side with the mark.

“They should see it,” she had said that afternoon, ignoring the heat flooding my face. “That’s half the point.”

I had a feeling every person in the hall was seeing it now.

Chloe caught my eye from the third row and pressed both hands over her heart dramatically. Beside her, Noah gave me a solemn thumbs-up that ruined the effect completely. Daphne sat near the aisle with her arms folded, and when I passed she gave me one small nod, the same one she used to give me at the clinic when I’d done something right without being told.

My throat tightened.

At the platform, Liam stopped.

For a moment he didn’t let go. I looked up at him and saw the same thing I had seen in the hallway at the packhouse, when he’d first seen me in the gown and had to clear his throat twice before he could speak.

“You good?” he asked quietly.

“Are you?”

The corner of his mouth moved. “Ask me tomorrow.”

Then he lifted my hand from his arm and placed it in Kade’s.

Kade’s fingers closed around mine, warm and certain. Liam held his gaze for a long second. Something passed between them that didn’t need the pack link. Then my brother stepped back and took his place at Kade’s right side, where the Beta always stood.

Where our father had stood, once.

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It was such a ridiculous thing to say that I almost laughed. “Hi.”

“You look-” He stopped.

“I know. I can feel it.”

His eyes darkened, and the bond hummed with something that made my face warm all over again.

Cassandra cleared her throat. “If the two of you are finished.”

A ripple of laughter moved through the hall. Kade straightened, unrepentant, and I bit the inside of my cheek.

Then Cassandra turned to the pack, and the laughter faded.

“Traditionally,” she said, “this is done under a full moon.”

Her voice carried easily. She had been speaking to this pack for longer than I had been alive.

“I was told it would be more appropriate to wait.” She paused. “I decided I had waited long enough.”

More laughter, warmer this time. I saw Kade close his eyes briefly, and I knew exactly which conversation he was remembering, because I had been in the kitchen for most of it.

Cassandra let it settle. When she spoke again, her voice was different.

“I came to Moonhaven as a young woman from Blackridge who didn’t know anyone except the man she was marrying. This pack made me its Luna before it had any reason to trust me. You trusted me with your loyalty, and your children, and your grief when we lost Nathaniel.” She stopped for a breath. Only one. “I have held this title for twenty-seven years. For the last eight, I held it for someone else. I didn’t know who until recently. But I knew she would come.”

She turned to me.

Her eyes were bright, but her hands were perfectly steady as she drew the ring from her left hand.

I had seen it my whole life. A pale moonstone set in white gold, worn thin on one side. I had never

once seen her without it.

When it came off, a narrow band of paler skin remained on her finger.

That was the moment I nearly lost my composure. More than the hall or the gown or the hundred faces, it was that small pale mark where something had been for my whole life and longer.

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A laugh escaped me, damp and shaky.

Cassandra released my hand, stepped back, and lifted her voice again.

“I, Cassandra Blackwell, give my title back to Moonhaven.” A pause. “Moonhaven, here is your

Luna.”

Kade’s hand found mine again.

“I, Kade Blackwell, Alpha of Moonhaven, present my mate. Abigail Hayes.” He didn’t look at the pack when he said it. He looked at me. “My Luna. Yours, if you’ll have her.”

For one second, nothing happened.

Then Daphne stood up.

She was at the end of her bench by the aisle, and she didn’t look at anyone else before she did it. She put her fist over her heart.

“Luna.”

Someone behind her rose. Then the woman beside her. Then a whole row at once, and another, the sound of benches scraping and feet shifting rolling backward through the hall like a wave.

“Luna.”

“Luna.”

The word came from everywhere. From Chloe, grinning through tears. From Noah. From old Mrs. Abernathy who had taught me to read and still corrected my posture at pack dinners. From warriors I had patched up at the clinic and children I had given stickers to after their shots.

Then it came through the link.

I wasn’t ready for it.

The pack link had always been there, faint and familiar, like voices in the next room. Now it opened. Every one of them pressed into it at once, wordless and present. Warmth and wariness and curiosity and hope, dozens of different threads all tied to the same place.

To me.

Diana rose inside me so fast that my vision swam. She didn’t fight it. She didn’t snarl or brace. She

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Through the bond, I felt something surge in him, sudden and bright, like a fire someone had thrown dry wood onto. He drew a sharp breath.

Nooked up at him.

He was staring down at me, startled, and then something softer.

“You all right?” he asked under his breath.

“I think so.” I swallowed. “Are you?”

“I’m-” He shook his head slightly, as if he couldn’t find the word. “Yeah.”

The link settled slowly, the voices drawing back into a steady hum that didn’t fade completely.

I suspected it never would again.

***

After that, the ceremony became a party, and Moonhaven had clearly been waiting a long time for

an excuse.

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The benches were dragged to the walls. Tables appeared from the kitchens, covered in more food than I had seen in one place in my life. Someone’s uncle brought out a fiddle. Children ran between the adults’ legs with stolen bread rolls, and nobody stopped them.

I was hugged more times in an hour than in the whole of the previous year.

Chloe reached me first, nearly knocking me over. “You’re a Luna. You’re an actual Luna. You still

owe me twelve dollars.”

“I don’t think that’s how titles work.”

“It’s exactly how titles work.” She pulled back and looked at the ring, then at the mark on my neck, and her face softened. “You look happy, Abs.”

“I am.”

It surprised me a little how easily it came out.

Noah hugged me more carefully, as if I might break. “Does this mean I have to bow?”

“Please don’t.”

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hand when I found her face in the crowd.

I lifted mine back.

The visiting Alphas came in turn. Alpha Harlan of Greystone and his Luna, an older couple who had known Nathaniel and told me so twice. A younger Alpha from Ashford named Bram, who looked at the white strand in my hair a little too long before remembering his manners.

I thought of Vincent, snowed in on the far side of the pass, and his long past time, and filed away

for later.