by Noah Harris
Promised Passion
A Wolf’s Choice
Noah Harris
Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
Important Information
Author Notes
All Rights Reserved
Published by BUP LLC, 2018.
Copyright © 2018 by Noah Harris
All registered trademarks in this book are the property of their respective owners.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. All resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
This book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Please don't read if you are under eighteen.
All rights reserved.
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Chapter One
It took every ounce of self-control for Dante to remain still as he felt the prick of another needle. Nervous energy bristled through him, feeling like it was about to burst from his skin and spill out into the room.
Finally, his control faltered. “Are we done?”
“We could have been done with all this over a half hour ago if you had just stayed still,” the woman kneeling before him chided.
The long-suffering Dante took a deep breath and tried to steady himself again. His nervous energy had always been a problem, for both him and the rest of his sept. Werewolves in general weren’t known for being particularly patient, but Dante was regarded as more restless than average. The sept, the governing and social body made up of representatives from several werewolf packs, were still waiting for the moment when adulthood would hopefully take the edge off Dante’s seemingly constant need to be active.
He didn’t have the heart to tell them he didn’t think that day would ever come. His twenty-fifth name day, the day widely regarded by most civilized werewolf septs as the day of true adulthood for a werewolf, was approaching fast. Dante had yet to see any evidence that a sudden onset of self-control was any closer than it had been when he was a child. He was beginning to believe it might have to be the sept that had to change rather than him.
Rosa, the woman who knelt at his feet, shot him another warning look as if anticipating the thoughts, he was having would make him antsy. After his family, then the rest of his pack, had been killed in battle in a war against another sept, Rosa had been charged with his care. She was the closest thing he had left to family. She was his mother figure, but sometimes she was more of a warden. He loved her dearly, as she seemed to be the only person in the entire sept who understood him. She was definitely the only one with any patience for what were regarded as his less than preferred personality traits. It certainly didn’t mean he didn’t have some small measure of fear for her, especially when she was looking at him with that dark look of hers, the one that usually heralded another lecture.
She wasn’t a tall woman, at least compared to Dante. She only came up to just below his nose, but on occasion she somehow still managed to make him feel like a young boy. She was a strong woman, and wasn’t particularly shy about flaunting it. Rosa’s greatest pride and joy, however, was her hair. It was a rich brown color, long and luxurious. She maintained her plaited braid on a daily basis, and it was perhaps the only act of vanity he’d ever seen from her. Her eyes were dark now, but not nearly dark enough to tell him he was in any real trouble.
“I’m sorry, but we’ve already done this fitting at least three times. Do we really need to go over it a fourth time?” He asked her, knowing he was whining.
Rosa frowned. “The fourth fitting for a fourth outfit.”
“I don’t know why I need all these damn outfits. It’s not like the guy is going to care what I look like in my clothes. All he’s going to care about is that I was raised right, and that I look good naked,” Dante grumbled.
“Don’t be crude,” Rosa told him with a frown.
He winced at the next jab of the needle, sure that one wasn’t accidental. “The whole thing feels crude.”
Rosa hesitated, her shifting fingers faltering as she looked up at him. “Having some second thoughts?”
She was the only one who ever asked that question in a neutral way, and so she was the only one he would dare voice his doubts to. Rosa was responsible for his well-being, his training, and everything that came with being in charge of an important ward. She could be stern and strict, usually in direct proportion to just how difficult Dante was being and how important it was that he did something. In private moments, however, her hard exterior could melt in an instant at the first sign of Dante being troubled.
Dante sighed. “It doesn’t matter if I’m having second thoughts.”
“It does if they’re true thoughts and not just you panicking,” she told him softly.
Dante shook his head. “This path has been set for me for years now. I know what I’m supposed to do, and I have to do it. It’s as simple as that, isn’t it?”
She said nothing, and he felt a twinge of guilt at the troubled look on her face. Officially, she was responsible for his upbringing, a neutral figure who was in charge of making sure he was taught and raised correctly. Unofficially, she took his care to heart and worried about him. He knew she was privately torn between her duties and how she felt for him. As he’d gotten older, he’d tried his best to make the task of reconciling the two easier on her.
“We could always discuss the matter with the Elders,” she offered.
He shook his head. “We both know that would get us nowhere. They’d just end up being unhappy with both of us, and we don’t need that.”
“Even they must understand that they’re asking a lot of you,” she continued, only half-heartedly lingering with the fitting.
They both knew what he wanted wouldn’t matter in the slightest to the Elders. The sept’s governing body, and thus the leaders of each pack within the sept, cared only about the sept as a collective. The whims and desires of one werewolf, no matter how prestigious his lineage, wouldn’t matter one whit to them in their final calculations. Without his pack to dictate his future, he’d been left to be cared for and directed at their will. Their will had been laid down years ago, and with the coming final milestone of full adulthood, he would be expected to fulfill their plan.
“It would help if I just knew the guy a bit. I mean, for Gaia’s sake, I’m supposed to be binding myself to him, and I don’t know a damn thing about him. I don’t even know what he looks like! For all I know, he could be a troll, with an even uglier personality,” Dante complained, tugging at the material around his chest.
Dante rolled his eyes. “The Elders will say anything to try and make me behave. I bet they’re just saying that until the guy shows up and suddenly I have to be nice because he’s right there in front of me.”
Rosa chuckled. “There are worse things than being presented before a well-respected and honored alpha, even if he is ugly.”
Neither of them were saying it, but they both knew Dante wasn’t truly worried about looks. Without a pack to lead him, it had been decided he would carry on his pack’s lineage another way. When he was younger, he hadn’t known quite what it meant, but the Elders had promised him to the alpha of another sept. It wasn’t until he was older that he realized it was the very same sept they had been at war with; the very same one that had slaughtered his family in battle. The years had softened his anger, knowing that a say in his future, and where his genetics would go, was the best chance at continued peace his sept had.
His real issue was the realization that his opinion in anything that happened was without his consideration. True, he could speak out against it, and with his coming-of-age approaching fast, they would be forced to hear him out. Every werewolf had a say in their own fate, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be pushed into obeying the will of the Elders through other means. If he were to oppose the arrangement, they would inevitably have to respect his wishes. It would, of course, mean he’d have to endure their disappointment and the fallout from not having fulfilled what was considered his responsibility to the sept that had raised him. He was pretty sure they would also find a way to make him feel guilty for having failed Rosa.
He’d come from a pack of noble warriors and peerless leaders. More than once in their storied past, his pack had led war parties to victory against all odds, expanded the territories of their sept, and even led from within the Council of Elders. That history had been cut short by the very sept Dante was expected to join himself to as a gesture of goodwill. The arrangement had been made years ago, one of many concessions made to cement the fragile peace between the septs. If he tried to balk at it now, he risked insulting their once enemy, now allied sept.
“At least he doesn’t have a lame name,” he said in an attempt at humor.
“Noah is a perfectly fine name,” Rosa agreed, playing along.
Rosa patted his hip once more. “There we are. All finished. Look at how handsome you are.”
It was something she was supposed to say, but he knew she meant it. He turned around to see her handiwork in the full-length mirror behind him. It wasn’t a bad outfit by any means, though it wasn’t necessarily to his taste. It reminded him of a robe, with the loose sleeves and wide bottom. It was loose enough that he felt comfortable in it, unlike the restraining fabric of the last outfit that had been fitted around his broad shoulders and thick waist. He preferred the relative freedom and comfort of this outfit over the more formal outfits he’d been squeezed into lately.
He wasn’t sure what the fabric was and would probably forget its name within moments of being told anyway. It was dark brown, fitting in with the deep tan his skin had for most of the year. His tanned skin was due, in no small part, to spending most of his free time roaming the forest wearing minimal clothing. The outfit’s silver accents complimented the stark blackness of his short hair, drawing attention to the shock of vibrant green color in his eyes. The open design hid most of the bulk of his body, built from long hours training for battles he might not ever fight, and from his sojourns into the woods.
“Does it work for you, oh picky one?” Rosa asked with a none too small edge of sarcasm in her voice.
Dante laughed, wiggling his hands to make the loose folds of the robe move. “At least it’s not choking me like the last one.”
“You’re expected to have a few nice outfits to show off when your mate-to-be arrives. So, do me a favor and try not to drag any of them through the dirt and mud before he shows up,” Rosa requested with a sigh.
“I only did that once, when I was ten!” Dante protested.
Rosa stood up, the top of her head barely coming up to his nose. “And you will never hear the end of it.”
He glanced down into her dark eyes, grinning. “You’d think everyone would appreciate that I’m not some homebody.”
She reached up to sweep aside a non-existent strand of hair from his forehead. “Perhaps it would have been different if your pack was still around. Then you might have the choice of being something more active like a warrior or scout. Sometimes I wonder if your potential is wasted by all this politics and diplomacy.”
“Only sometimes, huh?” he asked, trying to keep the conversation light.
“Namely when I have to hike into the woods to drag you from another mud puddle or cave you’ve decided you need to map out,” she told him.
That was a bit of an exaggeration, since he hadn’t wandered far enough away from the sept to find a cave he hadn’t already explored. Another sept, one far closer than the one he would be joining, had become more aggressive. The peace Dante’s sept had known for years was threatened once more, and even he wasn’t sure if war could be averted at this point. It was one of the reasons his arranged joining was so important. His sept couldn’t afford offending another sept while they were warily preparing for war with a third. They would need all the allies they could get.
“Think Noah will be impressed with me?” he asked.
Rosa snorted. “If he’s not, then he’s a fool, and a blind one at that.”
“I’ll be sure to tell my future mate you said so,” Dante said with a laugh.
“You had better not. Let the man get to know you before he has to face dealing with me,” she chided him, giving him another playful swat.
He playfully cowed before the much smaller woman. “Yes ma’am…can I go now?”
“You wait until I get that outfit off you before you go charging off. Erik waiting for you?” she asked, as she began to fuss with the clothes once more.
“Why do you always assume he’s my reason for wanting to leave?” he asked with a fake indignant sniff.
“Because the two of you have been joined at the hip for years. Where there’s trouble, one of you can always be found, and the other is bound to be close by,” Rosa said with a sigh.
“We don’t get in that much trouble,” Dante protested.
“You certainly don’t behave yourselves for very long,” Rosa said.
Dante grinned. “We’re not up to anything today, but it beats standing around here while you make pretty clothes for me.”
“Honestly, you would think looking nice for other people was the worst torture imaginable by the way you tell it,” Rosa complained.
He fought the urge to move as the clothing began to fall away from him. “I just…have things to do.”
“Those things being running around and avoiding having to deal with any of the Elders,” Rosa said, and Dante could hear the roll of her eyes in her tone.
“Do you enjoy being given the same lecture over and over again?” he asked, stepping away as the new outfit puddled at his feet.
She gathered up the clothing, making a shooing gesture at him. “Yes, I know, it’s terrible being treated so importantly. Go on. Go cause trouble while you still can.”
He’d swear she sounded almost sad when she said it, but Rosa’s face retained its exasperated quality as he backed away. Snatching his shirt and shorts from the nearby chair, he pulled them on hastily. Even if she was feeling a little bittersweet, he knew when it was time to make his escape. There was always a chance she might want to fix something on the new robes or pull one of the previous outfits out in order to adjust that instead.
Before he fled, he bent to kiss the top of her head. “Thanks Rosa. You’re the best.”
Chapter Two
“So, you’re really going to get hitched, huh?” Erik asked, casually tossing a rock into the lake.
Dante raised a brow. “Hitched?”
“You know, hitched, tied down, married, whatever,” Erik explained with a shrug.
Dante rolled his eyes. “It’s not a marriage.”
He could see his best friend trying to think of something else that would fit the definition. Erik’s family had originally belonged to one of the City Wolf packs, and he still occasionally struggled to understand the concepts that were second nature to Dante. Erik had been a part of the sept long enough to understand most of it, but there were things, such as the arrangement between Dante and Noah, that still tripped him up.
“I mean, it’s pretty much the same thing though, right? You’re going to be his mate, which means you’re going to be a part of his pack, basically his family. You’re going to be spending the rest of your lives together, to have and to hold and all that shit,” Erik finally said.
“I suppose, but it’s not really a marriage,” Dante insisted.
“Still sounds like the same thing to me,” Erik repeated.
Dante shook his head but didn’t bother to correct him further. His best friend was stubborn by nature and trying to explain the subtle differences was a waste of time.
“You should just do it, then divorce him,” Erik said with a grin.
“We don’t do divorce,” Dante said with a laugh, familiar with the human concept from his conversations with Erik.
Erik said nothing, only frowned as he rooted around for another rock to throw. Dante didn’t push it, knowing his best friend wasn’t a fan of the arrangement. Erik was a strong believer in individuality and personal choice, and it offended him that Dante was forced to have little choice in who his mate was. It had been a fact of Dante’s life for years, and he’d come to accept it, albeit grudgingly. There was no alternative for him, certainly not a more appealing one, so despite his own reservations, he was set on this course. They’d had more than a few conversations, and downright arguments about it in the past, and Dante could see his friend was trying to avoid another one.