His Moonsilver Mate (Abby and Kade) novel Chapter 85

Chapter 85

Nad spent eight years imagining what it would feel like.

Not often. I’d had a little sister to raise, a pack to help run, and a best friend who had been Alpha since he was eighteen and needed someone to tell him when he was being an idiot. There hadn’t been much room left for daydreaming.

But sometimes, late at night, I had wondered.

I had imagined it as something quiet. A recognition. A sense of things clicking into place.

It wasn’t quiet.

It was Jasper hitting the front of my skull so hard the hall tilted. It was a scent cutting through roast meat and pine boughs and a hundred other wolves as though none of them existed. Rain on cold stone. Juniper. Something sharp underneath, like the air before a storm.

It was her face.

Mate, Jasper said again, as if I might have missed it the first time. Ours.

I put the glass down. I didn’t remember deciding to. My hand simply needed to be empty.

Ryan said something beside me. I didn’t hear it.

Across the room, Tiernan’s sister was staring at me as if I had just walked out of her worst

nightmare.

Then she let go of her brother’s arm, turned around, and walked straight back out through the doors she had come in by.

Tiernan looked after her. Then at me. His expression went through surprise, understanding, and something close to resignation in about two seconds.

“Liam,” he said.

I was already moving.

Liam? Kade’s voice came through the link, sharp with alarm. What’s happening?

Not now.

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She hadn’t gone far. She stood at the bottom of the steps with her back to the hall, arms wrapped around herself, breathing as though she had run a mile.

I stopped at the top of the steps.

Jasper wanted to go down them. All of them. Now.

I held him back.

I had watched what happened when someone got this wrong, from the worst possible seat. Whatever this was, I wasn’t going to start it like that.

“Hi,” I said.

Her shoulders went rigid. She didn’t turn around.

“I’m-”

“I know who you are.” Her voice was low and flat. “Liam Hayes. Moonhaven’s Beta. My brother talks about you.”

“Good things, I hope.”

“He says you’re dependable.”

It didn’t sound like a compliment the way she said it.

I came down two steps. Not all the way. “And you’re Kaia.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve fought beside your brother. He never brought you.

“He doesn’t advertise me.”

Finally, she turned.

Up close, under the light spilling from the hall doors, she was even more startling. Gray-green eyes. A small scar through one eyebrow. Her cheeks were flushed with cold, or with something else, and her jaw was set so hard I could see the muscle in it.

Jasper made a sound inside me that I was very glad no one else could hear.

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“Whatever you came out here to say. You have the face of a man with a speech.”

almost smiled. “I don’t have a speech.”

“Everyone has a speech.”

“I don’t.” I put my hands in my pockets, mostly so she could see where they were. “I wasn’t expecting this tonight. I came to watch my sister become Luna and eat too much and go home

“Same,” she muttered. “Minus the sister.”

“Then we’re both having a bad evening.”

Something flickered across her face. Not quite amusement. Close enough that I took it as a small

victory.

Then it was gone.

“I’m not doing this,” she said.

The words landed somewhere under my ribs.

“Okay,” I said carefully.

“You don’t know me. I don’t know you. I walked into a room and some-” She waved a hand at her own chest, as if something inside it had personally offended her. “-some ancient piece of nonsense decided I belong to a man I’ve never spoken to. I don’t belong to anyone.”

“I’m not asking you to belong to me.’

“Then what are you asking?”

That was the problem. I didn’t know.

No. That wasn’t true. I knew exactly what I wanted to say. It had been sitting in my chest since the moment Jasper woke up.

I came down the last steps, slowly, and stopped an arm’s length from her.

“I’m not going to treat this like it’s nothing,” I said. “If you’re my mate, then you’re my responsibility. Whatever you need. Time, space, help with your pack, someone to stand behind you when you don’t want to stand alone. I’ll take that seriously.”

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“Your responsibility.” She said the word as if she was holding it up to the light to look for cracks. bike a debt. Or a dog.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“It never is.”

The cold settled between us. ~

“Who was he?” I asked.

She went very still.

I hadn’t meant to ask. It came out anyway, because I’d heard it in her voice. Not the general resentment of someone who didn’t like being told what to do. Something specific, with edges.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Someone told you that you were his responsibility once.”

Her chin came up. “Someone told me I was a lot of things once.”

“And?”

“And I believed him.” She looked past me, toward the dark line of the trees. “He didn’t need a bond to make promises. He made them all on his own, and he was very good at it. It took me a long time to find out what he meant by them.” Her gaze came back to mine, cold and bright. “So you’ll forgive me if a man I met four minutes ago telling me he’ll take me seriously doesn’t make me want to throw myself into his arms.”

Jasper went quiet. Not calm. The kind of quiet that came before a growl, except the growl wasn’t for

her.

I wanted the man’s name. I wanted it badly enough that I had to unclench my hands inside my pockets.

“I’m sorry,” I said instead.

“Don’t.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you.”

“You don’t know what happened.”

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Behind me, the music in the hall had started again. Someone laughed. Through the link, I felt Káde hovering at the edge of my awareness, not pushing, just there. And underneath him, faint and new, bby. The pack link had changed tonight. She was in it the way Cassandra had been, a warm, steady point at its center. I could feel her worry from here.

I didn’t reach back.

“I know your full name,” Kaia said quietly.

My stomach dropped.

“Tiernan has said it a dozen times. I know exactly what to say.” She lifted her eyes to mine. I could

end this right now.”

“You could.”

“You’d have to accept it.”

“I know how it works.”

She waited, as if she expected me to argue. To beg, maybe. Or to tell her she was making a mistake.

“I won’t stop you,” I said. “I’m not going to force anything on you. If that’s what you want, I’ll

accept it.”

Jasper snarled inside me. I ignored him.

“But I’m asking you not to do it tonight.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re angry. Because you walked into a party you didn’t want to come to and got ambushed by the Goddess, and you’re standing in the cold without a coat.” I paused. “And because rejection isn’t something you can take back. I’ve watched two people I love try.”

Her lips parted.

For a moment, I thought she was going to say it anyway. I could see her gathering it, her shoulders drawing up, her breath catching.

“I-”

She stopped.

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