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All Chapters of The New Moon Mate: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

200 Chapters

Chapter 11: The Pack Meeting

I walked home under the trees with the wolf beside me until the trees ran out, and then I stopped at the edge of the east field and crouched down and put my hand on his head.“You have to stay here,” I said. “You cannot come into town like this. If anyone sees you, Mrs. Bell will not be the only one with a rifle.”The wolf looked at me. Then he turned and went back into the trees, and I watched until the pale fur was gone.I got to the house at ten minutes past four in the morning and June was sitting at the kitchen table in her nightgown with the lamp on and her hands wrapped around a cup.“You are late,” she said. “You are very late.”“I know.”“Did it happen?”“It happened.” I sat down across from her. “June, I need you to listen to me and not ask me questions until I am finished.”She listened. I told her about the field and the wolf and the stone marker and Mrs. Bell’s rifle and Silas standing on the other side of the wall with his folder. I did not tell her about the moment the

Last Updated : 2026-10-25

Chapter 12: Dale's Smile

Silas was waiting at the end of the pack house road with his car parked under the cottonwoods and the engine off.“Get in,” he said.I got in. The car smelled of leather and paper and something clean and sharp, and there were file boxes on the back seat stacked three high and strapped down with a belt.“Where are we going?” I asked.“Nowhere. I want to talk to you in a place where no one from this pack can walk up behind me.” He turned in his seat and looked at me. “You told them about the stone.”“I did.”“You told them about a curse.”“I did.”“You did not tell them about the man.” Silas put his elbow on the steering wheel. “You stood in front of forty wolves and told them a story about a stone and the founders and the harvest, and you did not tell them there is a man in the mill who turns into a wolf on the wrong moon and is bound to you by a mate bond that half the pack could smell on you if they stood close enough.” He let that sit. “Why?”I looked out the window at the dark road

Last Updated : 2026-10-25

Chapter 13: A Room in the Co-op

I did not move for a long time after the barn door closed.The horses shifted in their stalls and the hay settled, and I stood in the tack room with my back against the shelf and my hand on the board that hid the coat and waited until I could not hear boots on gravel anymore. Then I put the board back and the ledgers back and went out of the barn by the side door and along the fence to the road.I did not go home. I went to the co-op.The co-op yard was dark and the elevator was quiet and the office window had a light in it that should not have been on. I stood by the loading dock and looked at it and then I walked up the ramp and opened the side door.June was at the desk with the ledger open and a pencil in her hand.“What are you doing here?” I said.“I could ask you the same thing.” She put the pencil down. “I could not sleep. I came down to look at the co-op books. Harold keeps the grain tickets in the back and I thought if the east field was cut early there would be a ticket for

Last Updated : 2026-10-25

Chapter 14: The New Moon Countdown

I woke up on the floor of the co-op back room with my neck stiff and the sun coming through the broken window latch in a stripe across my face.The cot was empty. The blanket was folded at the foot of it, and the scarf was folded on top of the blanket, and Owen’s coat was hanging on the hook by the door. There was a note on the shelf, written in pencil on the back of a grain ticket.Gone to the trees before the co-op opens. I will not go near the mill. E.I read it twice and then I folded it small and put it in my pocket with the stone. The stone was still warm.June came in at seven and found me in the office with the ledger open and the coffee on.“You look like you slept on a floor,” she said.“I slept on a floor.”She put her lunch pail down and looked at the back room door, which was closed.“Is he in there?”“He is in the trees. He does not like to be inside when the sun comes up. He says it feels wrong.”June nodded slowly. “Well. I brought two sandwiches anyway. You can give h

Last Updated : 2026-10-25

Chapter 15: My Wolf Rolls Over

The light was going by the time I got up the hill, and Maeve had the lamp on in the kitchen and the pie on the windowsill and the tin box open on the table.I sat down across from her and she pushed a plate at me and I did not touch it.“Before you show me anything,” I said, “tell me what happened in that field today. I have heard Silas’s version. I want yours.”Maeve poured the tea. “I was not there. I was up here with a kettle and a bad knee and a very good view of the road.” She set the pot down. “But I saw the truck go out and I saw the truck come back, and I saw Dale get out of it at the pack house and walk to the barn, and he walked like a man who had won something. That is all I need to know about what happened in the field.”“The stone is gone.”“I heard.” She sat down. “Drink your tea.”I drank it. It was the same bitter thing she had given me the night I came up the hill with my hand still warm from the mill, and it went down and warmed me through.“Now,” Maeve said, and ope

Last Updated : 2026-10-26

Chapter 16: The Scar on His Back

I woke before the sun with my cheek on the boards of the loading dock and his coat over me and the cold in my bones.He was sitting up beside me with his back against the office wall and his knees up, watching the east go gray. The coat was off his shoulders and draped over me, and his shirt was back on, and the bag of stones was in his hand."You should have woken me," I said."You were sleeping." He put the stones down. "I do not think you have slept properly in a week."I sat up and pulled the coat around me. The yard was gray and the elevator was gray against a gray sky, and somewhere off to the west a rooster was doing its job badly."Give me the stones," I said.He handed them over. They were warm in my palm, all four of them, and I put them back in the bag and the bag in my pocket."Now," I said. "Tell me the thing you did not want to tell me last night."He did not answer right away. He looked out at the yard."It is about the night your brother died," he said. "I told you I f

Last Updated : 2026-10-26

Chapter 17: June Sees Us

I stood on the loading dock with the coat over my knees and my hair down my back and tried to look like a woman who had been working all night.“The stone is in the mill,” Silas said again. “Harlan called me an hour ago. Someone broke into the mill last night and left something in the loft, and it is not the stone. It is a note. It says the stone is gone and it will be brought to the Council of Alphas in October, and it is signed with a mark.” He came up the ramp. “The mark is a circle with a line through it and another line crossing it. It is the same mark that was on the flat stone under the wall.”“Who left it?”“Nobody saw. The mill has been empty since you took the wolf out of it, and the door does not lock.” He stopped at the top of the ramp and looked at me. “You took the wolf out of it.”“I did.”“Where is he?”“He is not in the mill.”“I did not ask where he is not.” Silas looked at the coat over my knees. It was Owen’s coat, and it was too big for me, and it was draped over

Last Updated : 2026-10-26

Chapter 18: The Council Letter

June stood at the edge of the co-op yard with her lunch pail in her hand and her mouth open, and for a moment none of us moved.“June,” I said. “Come inside.”“That is him.” She did not move. “That is the man from the mill.”“June.”“I have been bringing him sandwiches for a week and I did not know what he looked like. I thought he was old. I thought he was a hundred years old and covered in dirt and could not speak English.” She looked at Elias. “You are not old.”Elias, to his credit, did not smile. He put his hands in his pockets and said, “I am thirty-nine.”“You look younger.”“June,” I said again. “Inside. Now.”The three of us went into the office and I shut the door and pulled the shade down and June put her lunch pail on the desk and folded her arms.“You are going to tell me everything,” she said. “From the beginning. And do not tell me it is none of my business, because I have been lying to Harold for a week about why the back room is locked and I have been lying to Maeve a

Last Updated : 2026-10-26

Chapter 19: Silas Arrives

Dale drove off up the ridge road with his hand out the window in a wave, and I stood in the dust with my heart going and Elias beside me in the trees.“He is going to the pack house,” I said. “He is going to tell Harlan the investigator is coming and he is going to tell him the dinner is Friday, and he is going to make it sound like he arranged the whole thing himself.”“He did arrange the whole thing himself,” Elias said. “He wrote to Boise. He asked for the investigator and he asked for the claim, and the Council gave him both.”“And Silas is the investigator.” I turned to face him. “Silas is already here. He has been here for eleven days. Dale does not know that the man who has been staying in the trailer outside town is the man the Council is sending.”Elias was quiet for a moment.“That is a useful thing,” he said.“It is the only useful thing we have.” I started walking. “Come on. Clara Renn’s house is at the end of the mill road and I want to be there before Dale gets back.”Th

Last Updated : 2026-10-26

Chapter 20: Dinner at the Pack House

Clara Renn put the lid on the box and the box in the cupboard and shut the cupboard door, and then she went to the front of the house and opened the door.“Mr. Silas,” she said. “You are the Council man who has been staying in the trailer.”“I am,” Silas said. “May I come in?”“You may not. I have company and I do not like strangers in my house.” She stood in the doorway with her arms folded. “What do you want?”“I want to talk to you about the boundary stone.”“There is no boundary stone. It was taken out of the east field and nobody knows where it went.”“I know it was taken,” Silas said. “I know it was taken by someone who knew where it was, and I know that person has been watching the field for a very long time, and I know that person left a note in the mill for the Council of Alphas.” He paused. “The note was signed with a mark. A circle with a line through it and another line crossing it. I have been through every record in the Council archive in the last eleven days, and that m

Last Updated : 2026-10-26

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