His Moonsilver Mate (Abby and Kade) novel Chapter 90

Chapter 90

Abby

Ndreamed about silver hair and woke before dawn with my hand already at my temple.

The guest room was dark and cold beyond the blankets. Kade lay on his back beside me, on arm under his head, and I knew without looking that he was awake. The bond told me. It had been quiet and tight since the hallway last night, like a held breath.

“You didn’t sleep,” I said.

“Some.”

“Liar.”

He turned his head on the pillow. In the gray light from the window, his face looked tired. “She had silver hair, Abby.”

“I know.”

“She was younger than Liam in that painting.”

“I know.”

He reached over and found the strand by touch, rubbing it gently between his fingers the way he had done at the clinic when he thought I was still asleep. He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t have to. I could feel exactly what he was thinking, and it sat in my stomach like a stone.

“People get sick,” I said. “People die young. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“Do you believe that?”

I thought about the portrait. The crescent on its pale chain. The way Vincent had hesitated before

he answered.

“No,” I admitted.

Kade pulled me against his chest and held on.

***

Blackridge kept its records in a room under the packhouse that smelled of dust, cold stone, and old

leather.

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deaths, disputes, treaties. My father was very particular about it. So was his.”

“And Seraphina?” I asked.

was already pulling down a heavy ledger bound in cracked brown leather. He set it on the table in the middle of the room and opened it carefully.

“Her mate became Alpha-young,” he said. “Aldric. My grandfather. These are his years.

The handwriting was cramped and slanted, the ink faded to brown. Vincent turned the pages slowly. Boundary disputes. A hard winter. A list of pups born in a single spring.

Then he stopped.

“Here.”

Aldric, Alpha of Blackridge, accepted Seraphina as his mate.

A few lines below, the birth of a son.

My grandfather.

Vincent turned two more pages, and then there was nothing left to turn. Just a thin ragged edge of paper close to the spine, where a whole section had been cut out.

Kade leaned over my shoulder. “How many?”

Vincent ran his thumb along the stubs. “Ten pages. Maybe twelve,” His voice had gone flat. “Clean.

With a blade.”

The next page that remained was written in a different hand. Neater, Rounder. It began mid-year, as though the pack had simply picked up where it left off.

Near the top, a single line.

Seraphina, Luna of Blackridge, died. The pack mourns.

No cause. No date beyond the year. Nothing else.

I stared at it.

“That’s it?” I said.

“That’s it.” Vincent closed his eyes briefly. “I knew there wasn’t much. I didn’t know it was like this.”

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Kade had moved to the shelves. “Are there other records? Letters? Healers’ notes?”

We can look.”

We did.

For most of the morning, the three of us went through every box from those years that Vince could find. Wherever Seraphina should have been, there was a gap.

A letter that started mid-sentence because its first page was missing. A healer’s entry for the year she died with a whole month blacked out in heavy ink. A drawing of the packhouse with someone standing on the steps, the figure scraped away so carefully that only a pale shape remained.

By noon my hands were gray with dust and my head ached.

“Someone did this on purpose,” I said.

“Yes.” Kade put down another empty box. “Someone who had access to everything.”

Vincent didn’t answer right away. He was standing at the table, looking down at the ragged stubs in the ledger.

“My father never spoke about his mother,” he said finally. “Not once. If Naomi asked, he walked out of the room. Eventually we stopped asking.”

“And your grandfather?” I asked.

Vincent’s expression changed.

“Aldric gave the pack to my father the day he came of age,” he said. “Stood up in front of everyone, handed it over, and walked out of Blackridge. He went up into the mountains and never came back

down.”

I stared at him. “He’s alive?”

“As far as I know.” Vincent rubbed his jaw. “He’s past ninety now. He has a cabin above the tree line, two hours’ climb past the last trail. Twice a year I take supplies up. Flour. Salt. Lamp oil. I leave them by his door.”

“You don’t see him?”

“I haven’t seen his face in eleven years.” Something old and tired moved across Vincent’s expression. “The last time I knocked, he told me through the door that if I came back with questions,

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“If anyone alive knows anything, it’s him.” Vincent looked at me. “But he sees no one, Abby. Not

Not anyone. He’s been alone up there so long I’m not sure he remembers how to talk to people.”

Diana stirred.

He was her mate, she said quietly.

I didn’t have to ask what she meant. I could feel Kade at the edge of my mind, and the thought of losing him was so large and so cold that I pushed it away before it could settle.

***

We ate lunch in Vincent’s study, a smaller room with a fire and a window facing the lake. Maren brought sandwiches and tea and then, after one look at our faces, sat down instead of leaving.

“Tell him,” Kade said quietly.

I had known since the hallway that I would have to. Cassandra had told Vincent we were coming because of my bloodline. She hadn’t told him what that meant, because none of us really knew.

So I told him, from the equinox to the morning I woke in the clinic.

My voice wasn’t completely steady by the end. Kade’s hand found mine on the arm of the chair.

“I remember Kade’s voice,” I said, “and then nothing. I woke up in the clinic three days later.”

I touched the strand at my temple.

“With this.”

Vincent hadn’t said a word the entire time. Maren had set down her cup somewhere in the middle and forgotten it.

“And since then?” Vincent asked.

“I get tired.” It felt like a small, stupid thing to say after everything else. “More than I should. Daphne says my body is fine now, but if I use too much, even training, it hits me all at once. Like the floor drops out.” I hesitated. “And Diana is different at night. Stronger. She always was, but it’s more

now. When the moon is up, I can feel it under my skin.”

“Do you know what you are?” Maren asked softly.

“Cressida called it Moonsilver.” I looked between them. “She said it was a legend.”

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carried the moon inside them. That their wolves were pale as frost, and their mates could not be beaten while they stood beside them.” He shook his head. “Naomi loved it. I thought it was a story for children.”

Was my

mother’s wolf pale?” I asked.

“No. Brown, with a gray muzzle. Like mine.” He looked at me. “Nobody in this family has been pale since Seraphina. I don’t think anyone even remembered what color her wolf was.”

Silver, Diana said, so certain it sent a shiver through me.

Kade had been quiet. Now he leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

“We need someone who understands this,” he said. “Our healer has done everything she can. She told us from the start that what happened to Abby isn’t medicine.”

Vincent nodded slowly.

“There’s a woman,” he said. “Imogen. She lives on the far side of the lake, past the old quarry road.

She’s a witch.”

Every muscle in my body went tight.

Kade felt it. His thumb pressed against my knuckles.

Vincent noticed too. His voice gentled. “Not every witch is the one who chained your wolf to a floor,

Abby.”

“I know that.” I did know it. My heart was pounding anyway.

“Imogen helped Maren when our first child came wrong,” he said. “The healers had given up. She didn’t.” He glanced at his mate. Maren’s hand had gone to her stomach, an old, unconscious gesture, “She’s helped this pack more times than I can count. She’s sharp, and she’s rude, and she has never once asked me for anything she didn’t tell me about up front.”

“Does she know about Moonsilver?” Kade asked.

“If she doesn’t, she’ll know who does.”