Silver Moon, I Wait No More novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Wait for Me
Jolene dies waiting for Nash, wakes on the morning he leaves with their son and Delaney, walks away first and pawns his silver pendant, and Delaney walks into the pawnshop.
On the day Nash became Alpha of the Silver Moon Pack, he took two people with him.
One was our son, Bodie.
The other was Delaney Dray, the woman who had saved his life.
Bodie had his father's blood. Nash said a pure Alpha line couldn't grow up in a human town.
Delaney had pulled a silver trap off his leg on Pike Ridge. He owed her.
To me, he only said one thing.
"Jolene, wait for me. Once things are settled in the territory, I'll come back for you."
Then he got into a black SUV, and Bodie waved at me through the back window.
He was waving with Delaney's hand around his.
I waited.
I waited in the little gray rental on Alder Lane for three years.
I worked doubles at the Cold Creek Diner and wrote him forty-one letters.
Nobody wrote back.
Bodie never called.
The last winter, the power company shut off the heat, and I got a cough that wouldn't leave.
I died on a bare mattress on the night of October 16th, with my coat on.
The last thing I saw was my own breath, white in the dark.
Then I opened my eyes.
There was sun on the ceiling.
The room was warm.
I sat up and looked at my hands.
No cracked knuckles. No blue nails.
My phone said Friday, October 17th.
Three years ago.
Outside, car doors slammed.
I went to the window.
Three black SUVs were parked on the lawn, crushing the mums I'd planted in May.
Men in dark coats stood around them, very still, looking up at the trees.
Nash stood in the middle of them.
His father had died the night before, in a valley forty miles north that I had never seen.
And when Nash woke this morning, his eyes had been gold.
I remembered all of it.
I got dressed. Jeans, my denim jacket, sneakers.
I packed my old backpack with my wallet, two shirts and my birth certificate.
Then I went downstairs.
Bodie was on the porch steps in his pajama pants, his dinosaur backpack already on.
Delaney was crouched beside him, zipping his coat.
Her red hair was down over her red wool coat. She had black leather gloves on, the way she always did.
"There's my wolf," she said to him. "Ready to see your real home?"
"Ready!" Bodie said.
He saw me in the doorway.
"Mom, Delaney says there's a lake and I can swim in it with no clothes because wolves don't care."
"That sounds cold," I said.
"You're always cold." He made a face. "Delaney says that's because you're human."
Delaney smiled at me over his head.
She didn't say anything. She didn't have to.
Nash came up the walk.
He stopped in front of me and took my face in both his hands.
His hands were hotter than they used to be.
"Jolene," he said. "Listen to me."
I knew the words before he said them.
"Wait for me. Once things are settled in the territory, I'll come back for you."
Last time, I had cried.
Last time, I had held on to his coat and asked him how long, and he had kissed me and said, "Not long."
This time I looked at his gold eyes and said, "No."
He blinked.
"No what?"
"No, I won't wait."
Delaney stood up slowly.
Nash's hands slid down to my shoulders.
"You don't understand what's happening. The pack doesn't allow humans in the valley. Not yet. I need time to change that."
"Take all the time you want," I said.
I stepped out from under his hands.
I knelt down in front of Bodie.
"I love you," I said. "Be good."
"I'm always good," he said, and looked past me at Delaney.
I stood up and slung my backpack over my shoulder.
"Jolene," Nash said. "Where are you going?"
I didn't answer.
I walked down the steps, across the crushed mums, past the black cars and the men who smelled the air when I went by.
I walked to the end of Alder Lane and turned toward Main Street and the highway.
I didn't look back once.
The pawnshop on Main Street opened at nine.
I was the first one in.
I took the little bundle of black velvet out of my jacket pocket and set it on the glass.
Nash had given it to me on Bodie's first birthday, five years ago.
He couldn't hold silver. None of them could. He'd wrapped it in three layers of velvet before he could even hand it to me.
"It was my mother's," he'd said. "Keep it safe."
I had kept it safe for five years, and for three more after he left, and I'd died with it around my neck.
The pawnbroker unfolded the velvet.
A silver crescent moon on a thin silver chain lay on the cloth.
He picked it up with his bare fingers and turned it under his lamp.
"How much?"
"Seven hundred. Thirty days to buy it back."
"I won't be buying it back."
He shrugged and counted out seven hundred-dollar bills.
I was folding them into my wallet when the bell over the door rang.
Delaney Dray stood in the doorway in her red coat.
She wasn't looking at me.
She was looking at the silver moon in the pawnbroker's hand.
"Put that down," she said. "That belongs to the Luna of Silver Moon."
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