Chapter 171

Kade

Abby slept for most of two days after the binding.

Daphne said it was the best thing for her, and I believed her, because I could feel it through the bond. Not the cold, frightening emptiness of the night in the clinic, when the light ran out of her all at once. Something slower. A deep, heavy stillness, like ground under snow, with something alive and patient underneath it, waiting for spring.

She woke sometimes. Long enough to drink what Ivy held to her mouth, and look at the window, and ask about my mother, and fall asleep again before I had finished answering. Once she woke and looked at me sitting on the edge of the bed, and frowned, and said, “You should be working,” and was asleep before I could tell her I was.

I was. I had to be. A storehouse to rebuild before the worst of the winter came down. A council that watched me every time I stood up, to see if my knees would go. A pack that had seen its Alpha’s mother carried out of the Lun