Chapter 167

Kade

My mother was bleeding to death under my hands, and my mate was holding her together.

That was all I knew, for a while. I knelt on the floor of the Luna’s rooms with my knees in the blood and my hands over Abby’s, and felt both of them through my palms. Under Abby’s fingers, my mother’s side, wet and warm and much too still. Under my own, Abby’s hands, shaking, with the claws still curved at the ends of them, and the light going out of them into my mother in a steady stream I could feel the way you feel heat off a stove.

I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t heal. I couldn’t help Abby hold. I could only kneel there and keep my hands where they were and say her name, and my mother’s name, over and over, as if one of them might need to hear it.

My mother’s face was gray. Her eyes were closed. There was blood in her hair, at the back, where she had struck the fender. I could hear her breathing. Very faint. Very slow. Each breath took so long to come tha