Chapter 1: Silver Moon, I Wait No More

On the day Sebastian officially inherited the Silver Moon Pack as its Alpha, he took only two people with him when he left.

One was our son, Leo.

The other was Elena, the woman who had saved his life.

Leo, who had inherited his pure Alpha bloodline, was a gift Sebastian refused to let languish in a human town.

And Elena had saved his life. He owed her a debt, a promise he had to keep.

To me, he only said, “Faye, wait for me. Once I’ve stabilized things in the territory, I’ll come back for you.”

In my last life, I clung to that promise, waiting for him in that shabby rental house, year after year.

In the end, I died alone in that room, and he never returned.

But the Moon Goddess gave me a second chance.

I drew my last breath on that cold mattress.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day Sebastian’s bloodline awakened.

I was back three years in the past. Back when I still had time.

This time, I wouldn’t wait.

I picked up my backpack and walked toward the highway without a single look back.

From now on, he could be the Alpha, and I would live my own life.

Our paths no longer needed to cross.

…

I went to the pawnshop in town and slapped the silver pendant he’d given me five years ago onto the counter.

A werewolf’s instinctive aversion to silver meant he’d had to wrap it in layers of black velvet before he could even hand it to me.

He’d said it belonged to his mother and told me to keep it safe.

Now it was seven hundred dollars in cash—enough for a Greyhound ticket to the West Coast and a new life in a town where no one knew my name.

When I pushed open the pawnshop door, I ran straight into Mrs. Higgins, who was just coming out of the gas station’s convenience store.

She was carrying a bag of groceries. When she saw me, her face broke into a teasing smile.

“I hear the Silver Moon Pack’s territory is as grand as an estate.”

“You’re about to move there with Sebastian. What are you doing at a pawnshop?”

She was talking about my husband, Sebastian.

One of the most powerful Alpha werewolves in North America.

Three days ago, the ancient bloodline inside him had fully awakened.

The Silver Moon Pack’s convoy of black SUVs had rolled into our small town, a grand procession to welcome their Alpha home.

Sebastian announced in front of everyone that he would bring two people back with him.

But first, he announced, he had to settle his affairs in the human world.

Everyone thought the people he was taking were me and our son, Leo.

They were wrong.

In my last life, and in this one, he never planned to take me with him.

I smiled, my tone as casual as if I were talking about the weather.

“Sebastian is a powerful werewolf, but I can’t even shift.”

This money wasn’t for some werewolf estate.

It was my ticket out.

Mrs. Higgins opened her mouth, about to say more, but I had already turned and started down the muddy road toward home.

Before I even reached the yard, I could hear laughter from inside the house.

In the middle of the lawn, Leo was practicing how to control his newly awakened claws.

His small, tender hands struggled to retract the sharp talons.

Every few seconds, he’d cry out, “Dad, I can’t control it!”

“Breathe deep. Feel the call of the wild inside you.”

“You were born an Alpha.”

The man he called Dad had a deep, magnetic voice.

He wore a simple black T-shirt that did nothing to hide the powerful lines of his muscles.

He was always intimidating, yet after his bloodline awakened, he exuded such terrifying aura it left ordinary humans trembling at the knees.

That was my husband, Sebastian.

Five years ago, he’d passed through this sleepy Oregon town as a lone wanderer.

We met in the moonlit forest.

He was badly injured, covered in blood, and lying on a bed of pine needles.

I’d followed the coppery scent of blood and found him, pressing my own shirt against the gash in his abdomen to stanch the bleeding.

In that instant, the wolf inside him recognized me.

Not with his eyes, but on a deeper level.

It was the feeling of walking alone in darkness for a hundred years, only to suddenly hear another person’s heartbeat echo your own.

He marked me.

After he recovered, he didn’t reveal that he was a werewolf.

He simply put on an old flannel shirt, knocked on my door like any other man, and asked for a glass of water.

Only later did I learn that he was the sole heir to the strongest pack in North America.

He didn’t take me by force, the way an Alpha could have.

He courted me like a man and asked me to be his wife.

He said he wanted to give me everything I deserved.

I believed him.