Chapter 148

Abby

By the end of the week, I had run out of things to do.

Kade was back at work. He was in his office by seven every morning now, with Liam and Ryan and the watch reports and the lists of what the storehouse fire had cost, and what it would take to get through the winter without it. He was good at it. He had always been good at it. I could feel him through the bond all day, steady and busy and careful, and every so often a flicker of the ache in his chest when he forgot himself and stood up too fast.

He didn’t need me in that office. I sat in on the mornings, and then the meetings turned to grain prices and roof timbers, and I felt myself becoming the person in the corner nobody knew what to do with.

So I left. And then I walked.

I walked the corridors of the packhouse, and the garden, and the path down to the lake. I went to the kitchens to ask if they needed help with the new stores coming in, and the big cook in the apron said, very politely