The Ones We Wait For Novels & Stories

We stand together at the window and wait and the bond hums its quiet frequency and somewhere across Silverveil a woman is eating her breakfast and listening to her son explain something about watchtower drainage systems and deciding, in her own time, what comes next. We keep waiting. We have gotten very good at waiting.

I stood at the front of them and looked at the range of faces, the accumulated decades and centuries in the room, the specific quality of people who had been existing carefully for long enough to have developed a considerable patience for waiting. “The waiting is done,” I said. “What Ethan has been building is ready to be used. We are the thing between what he has built and the moment he uses it. That means we move now, not when it’s comfortable, not when we have more information than we have.” I looked at them. “Be ready. The call will come within days and it will not come with a long lead time.” They dispersed.

“They’ll hear us.” We fall silent and watch for a moment. “But what’s the plan?” I ask again. “We wait,” Wilder says. “Wait? I thought we agreed—” “We wait as long as we can,” Wilder says. “The moon is waxing now. Our power is coming back to us.” “I can feel it,” Milo agrees. “But it’s happening slowly,” Wilder says. “The moon won’t be full again for weeks.” A surge of frustration floods me. “If you think I’m going to wait weeks—”

The ground shook again. Kael looked at me. I looked at him. Three months of waiting. Three months of living deliberately, of refusing to let the anticipation hollow us out, of building and preparing and hoping the preparation would be enough. The Purity Pack had decided the moment was right.

"Without knowing what they were waiting for." The room was quiet. "How many people?" Finn asked. Roan looked at the letter again. "She didn't give a number," he said. "She said—enough." The word landed in the room with its full weight. Enough. People inside Merrick territory who had been told—by a woman with no formal standing, no structure, no name for what she was doing—to wait. To hold. To not give up. Because something was coming. The same instinct Maren had followed for twelve years.

I wait patiently for Keith to show up. We'd made plans to go watch a movie tonight and I must say , I'm looking forward to it. We'd texted back and forth in the afternoon, and he'd suggested that we go out for a movie tonight. Now here I am, still waiting for him. I know that he's a bit late and I have no doubt he might be tied up at work. I just hope he'll be able to make it because if he doesn't, no doubt I'll be a little disappointed but I'll still understand. He is a busy man.

𝙅𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙖𝙘𝙘𝙚𝙥𝙩 𝙞𝙩. Ugh. The results are all the same! I tried posting the same question every day using several fake accounts on different websites but it's no use. I'm doomed. I just turned 18 last week and I'm really thankful that until now, I haven't received the government notice yet. But I know for sure that I can't celebrate yet because anytime, the government officials will come and they'll hand me the papers where information about me and my partner will be written. Just the thought of someone owning me for the rest of my life gives me the chills.

For the moment, their side could only wait. Wait for the undertow to stir beneath the still surface. Wait for the enemy to make one wrong move. Wait for fate to crack—just a little—so they could strike.

I love you. I had spent years of my life desperately waiting to hear those exact words. I had waited for them on those dark nights when the electricity was cut off in our tiny rented apartment. I had waited for them when my back was peeling from hauling heavy freight at the warehouse, in so much pain I couldn't straighten my spine. I had waited for them when I stared down at that slice of mango cake at the celebratory dinner. And I had even waited for them the exact moment that HR disciplinary notice was blasted out to the entire company.

Miranda stood in the center of the chamber and looked at the writing on the walls and the objects on the shelves and thought about the patient vast quality of the Old Ones, the sleeping intelligence that had been waiting since before the covenant, and understood that this was not a discovery. It was a delivery. Something that had been waiting to be collected, for as long as it needed to wait, by whoever eventually came.