His Moonsilver Mate (Abby and Kade) novel Chapter 87

Chapter 87

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Malachi

Chapter 87

Sloane had not spoken to me in two days.

Not a word. Not when I brought her food. Not when I helped her sit up so she could eat it ot tonight, when I unwound the bandage from her leg, cleaned the wound, and wrapped it again while she stared at the ceiling as though I were a draft coming through a crack in the wall.

The swelling had gone down. The bone was setting straight, which was more than I had expected when I first saw the angle of it under that slab. She would walk again. Badly at first. Then better.

I told her so.

She turned her face toward the wall.

I finished the bandage, tied it off, and left the room. I locked the door behind me. The sound of the key turning was the only thing either of us said.

Now I sat by the fire in the main room with a glass I hadn’t touched, listening to the cabin settle

around me.

It was a small place. Four rooms, thick log walls, a roof that leaked in one corner when the wind came from the north. It had been built by someone who wanted never to be found, and I had kept it for years for the same reason. I had never expected to need it for more than a night or two.

Now it held everything I had left, including a woman who would rather look at a wall than at me.

The outer door opened.

Cold air came in first, then Teague. He was a big man, with a scar that ran from his ear into his collar and a habit of saying as little as possible. He had been with me longer than anyone except Cressida. He was the only one I trusted not to want something from me.

“Scout’s back,” he said.

“And?”

“Moonhaven’s lit up. Cars on the east road. Other packs.”

I looked at him.

“A celebration?”

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“Where’s Cressida?”

Teague’s eyes moved toward the back room. “Waiting for you to ask.”

Of course she was.

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Cressida had taken the smallest room for herself and turned it into something that smelled smoke and bitter herbs. Candles stood on every flat surface. Her books were stacked against the wall and her burned hand lay in her lap, wrapped in clean linen, the fingers curled stiffly.

She had been beautiful once, in a sharp, hungry way. Thirteen years had worn that down to the bone. The temple had worn it further. A fresh scar ran along her hairline where the falling stone had struck her, and she had not bothered to hide it.

On the table in front of her sat a shallow bowl of dark water. Seven flat stones lay in it, each carved with symbols I had stopped pretending to understand years ago.

Three of them had cracked straight through.

“Sit,” she said.

I stayed standing.

She didn’t seem to mind. “You heard.”

“Teague says Moonhaven is celebrating.”

“Moonhaven is crowning its Luna.” She lifted one of the cracked stones from the water with her good hand and turned it in the candlelight. “I felt it before your scout ever saw a car.”

“Felt what?”

“Two nights ago. Late. These were in the water, as they have been every night since the temple.” She set the stone down. “They broke. All three at once. I have never seen them do that. Not even when she was standing under the full moon in my circle. I wanted to be sure what it meant before I told you.”

I waited.

“The girl completed her bond,” Cressida said.

Something cold settled in my stomach.

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“I watched her do it.”

To a half-starved stranger. In chains. With a ‘collar barely off her.” Cressida leaned forward

“The stories say she burns brightest for her mate. Whatever she gives to anyone else is a candle. What she gives to him is a fire.”

“And you felt a fire.”

“I felt the whole sky light up.” She smiled. “She accepted him, Malachi. And he marked her And when the bond closed, everything she is poured into him all at once.”

Nathaniel’s son.

I didn’t say it aloud. I didn’t need to.

The boy I remembered was small and dark-haired and loud, forever trying to climb things he couldn’t get down from. He used to grab fistfuls of my hair to keep his balance when I carried him on my shoulders down to the lake. Nathaniel would shout at me to put him down before I broke his neck.

I never did.

I had not seen him since he was six. Cressida had seen him for a few seconds in the temple, before she ran, and she told me afterward that he had Nathaniel’s shoulders. I hadn’t asked.

“So he’s stronger,” I said. “That’s what you came to tell me? That we lost?”

“I came to tell you we don’t need an army.”

I went still.

Cressida set her bandaged hand flat on the table. “You have nine men. You will not take Moonhaven with nine men. Not against Ravenwood and whoever else came tonight to drink to the new Luna. I

know that. You know that.”

“Then what?”

“One death.”

The fire popped in the next room.

“Kill the Alpha,” Cressida said softly, “and the bond breaks. The girl loses everything she just poured into him. And Moonhaven loses its Alpha with no son to follow him.” She tilted her head. “Who is the last male Blackwell, Malachi?”

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“I was exiled.”

“Exiled. Not unmade. Blood is blood. Nathaniel couldn’t take that from you any more than he could take your face.” Her voice dropped. “You walk into Moonhaven as Malachi Blackwell, and there isn’t a pack within three hundred miles that can say you have no right to be there.”

“And the girl?”

“Comes with the pack.”

I stared at her.

“A Luna whose mate is dead is a Luna without a purpose,” Cressida said. “She’s eighteen. She’ll be broken. The pack will want her looked after. And whoever holds her bond holds what she can do.”

“Her bond will be gone. You just said so.”

“Bonds can be made.” Cressida’s eyes didn’t waver. “I made collars that could cut a wolf out of a girl I can make a bond hold.”

“I already have a mate.”

The words came out before I had decided to say them.

Cressida glanced toward the wall. Toward the room beyond it, where Sloane lay with her face turned away from the door.

“You have a woman who hates you,” she said. “Who betrayed you to Moonhaven. Who tried to run from you while the mountain fell, and who doesn’t even know your name.” She let that sit. “One sentence from her, the moment she learns it, and she’s gone. You know that’s what she wants.”

I didn’t move.

I had given Sloane my first name in that temple and kept the rest behind my teeth. I had told myself it was caution. A rejection only works with the full name. Blackwell would tell her exactly who I was, and she would carry it straight back to Moonhaven like everything else.

I had not told myself what it would mean to hear her say it.

“You hesitate,” Cressida said.

“I’m thinking.”

“You’ve been thinking for thirteen years.” She stood. She was shorter than me by nearly a foot, and

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blood on his mouth, and the expression on his face that had been worse than any blow.

Not anger.

Pity.

“And now,” Cressida said, “Adrian’s daughter is sitting in Moonhaven tonight with the whole pack bowing to her. Beside Nathaniel’s son. Pouring everything the Goddess gave her into a Blackwell who never had to fight for anything he holds.”

I turned away from her and looked at the wall.

There had been a night, eight years ago, when I had stood in Moonhaven again. Smoke. Screaming/ Nathaniel in the square, older than I remembered, gray in his hair, coming toward me through the fire with that same look on his face.

I did not let myself remember the rest. I never did.

But I remembered that he had died, and I had not felt what I’d expected to feel. I had waited years

for it.

It never came.

“You promised me Moonhaven,” I said. “Thirteen years ago.”

“I promised you a way.” Cressida’s voice softened. “I didn’t know then what I know now. I thought we needed the moon and a circle and the right girl in chains. I was wrong.” She lifted her cracked stone again and let the candlelight fall through the break. “The girl did it for us. She tied everything she is to one man. Cut that one thread, and all of it comes loose.”

“He’s my brother’s son.”

“He’s the man sitting in your chair.”

I closed my eyes.