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  Erik pondered that for a moment. “So, he just freaked out and took off without a word of explanation?”

  Dante nodded. “He wouldn’t tell me what was scaring him so badly. He definitely seemed to know what the hell was up, but he wasn’t telling me.”

  A thought seemed to occur to Erik, his eyes widening. “Oh!”

  Dante’s head jerked toward his friend sharply. “Oh? What’s ‘oh’ about this?”

  “Oh shit, Dante, that’s what. Damn, I was only partially kidding when I said you know how to rock the boat earlier, but damn,” Erik all but whispered.

  Bewildered at his friend’s sudden seriousness, Dante growled. “Damn it all Erik, if you’ve got an idea, then share it!”

  “I’m kind of afraid to say it out loud,” Erik admitted.

  Now Dante was really worried. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means that if I’m right, then you’ve got a lot bigger problem than just having a hard-on for the guy,” Erik said.

  Dante took a deep breath, frustrated with his friend’s evasion and he was worried at the same time. “Just give me your crazy theory. I’ve never known you to hold back on offering them up before.”

  “Because none of them ever involved the possibility of you having just experienced the Joining with someone that isn’t the one you were arranged to be mates with,” Erik stated bluntly.

  Dante’s mouth fell open in shock. “The...the Joining? You can’t be serious.”

  “Think about it. You’ve been drawn to the guy from the moment he talked to you at the celebration. You felt some weird pull toward him the first-time you guys talked on the beach. Then you guys actually touch and that feeling between you gets even stronger than before, and you’re making it sound like you were drunk after you kissed him. Dude, I know what a good kiss feels like, and I know what it’s like when you’re really into someone, and what you’re describing is something way beyond that. I don’t even know everything you felt when you kissed him, and please don’t share. Even I have my limits about your private time, but I bet its way more than what you’ve told me. The more you’ve talked about it, the more antsy you’ve gotten. You look like you’re about ready to go running off into the woods looking for the guy to do…well, probably a lot more than kissing him,” Erik said, marking each point by extending the fingers of his hands.

  Dante let it wash over him before slumping. “It can’t be, that’s just not possible. I’m supposed to be mates with Noah, really soon actually. Damn it all, the guy is here and trying to court me like he’s supposed to, it’s not possible that I experienced the Joining with someone else.”

  “Look, I’m not exactly an expert on this sort of thing. The chances of finding someone you experience the Joining with are supposed to be low, and I’m not really what you’d call romantic, so I didn’t bother thinking about it too much. Still, you get enough people blabbing on about it for long enough, and even I start to pick shit up. This sounds a lot like the Joining to me,” Erik said grimly.

  He didn’t need the ominous look on Erik’s face to tell him what he already knew. The Joining was meant to be Gaia’s way of showing that she meant for two werewolves to be mates, True Mates, with one another for life. If Dante really had experienced the Joining with someone who wasn’t his originally intended mate, it spelled a whole heap of trouble. It would mean being torn between his obligations to the sept, and his obligations to obeying the will of Gaia. If there was ever a harder place to be stuck in, Dante couldn’t think of it.

  “Holy shit, what do I do?” Dante asked.

  Erik shook his head with a pitying look on his face. “I don’t know man, but you better talk to someone who knows about this sort of thing. After that? I have no idea. But you need to find out if that’s what happened before you do anything else.”

  “Liam sure as hell seemed to know what was going on. Come to think of it, I think he came to the same conclusion you did,” Dante said.

  “From the sounds of it, he doesn’t want to talk too much about it right now. But then again, I don’t know the guy very well. Do you think he’ll talk to you?” Erik asked.

  Dante shook his head. “Probably not, since he looked about ready to take off. I’m afraid to try to make him talk, and risk him leaving for good.”

  “Then I guess you need to find someone you can talk to who knows about this kind of shit, and won’t blow it up out of all proportion,” Erik said simply.

  “Rosa,” Dante said aloud, wincing as he thought about the conversation that was to come.

  Chapter Nine

  The light of the growing dawn illuminated the patch of garden in front of Rosa’s house beautifully. Dante never quite understood how she found the time to keep her garden flourishing when it felt like the majority of her time was spent chasing after Dante and trying to keep him in line. He couldn’t deny that she had a talent for it however, having found a balance between letting nature grow as it would, and making it conform to her wishes. The effect was a beautiful array of flowers and herbs, growing together with a kind of symmetry to them. It lent a peaceful aura to the outside of her tiny cabin, welcoming and homey.

  Dante was feeling everything but comfort when he approached her front door with a great sense of trepidation. Rosa loved him, having been both mother and warden to him since he had been orphaned. If there was anyone who would give him the information he needed, it would be her.

  She had always been fair with him, even if that meant having to punish him when his mischief-making caused too much mayhem. Rosa could be a hard woman when it called for it, and one of the few people whose anger could stop Dante and Erik in their tracks with a simple glance. It was her almost constant warmth and boldness that came to mind when he thought of her. Though she often had to be a disciplinarian with him, she always carried an air of pride about her when she spoke of him. She’d never tried to make him fit the mold the Elders wished he would conform to, only curbing the worst of his behavior.

  She’d spent a majority of his life trying to take care of him and raise him so he would be ready for the day Noah would arrive, with the intent of taking Dante away to be his mate. It had been her duty, and while it sometimes seemed she was exhausted by the task, she had continued to try to fulfill it. Dante could never quite discover what she thought of the arrangement, but he admired her determination to see it through. Raising him had been her life’s work for a decade and a half, and he was afraid of saying anything about him and Liam that might make her think that work was at risk. He’d spent the majority of the night before, practicing exactly what he would say to her when he came to visit. He’d come for information, but he didn’t want to give too much away and risk upsetting her.

  Rosa opened the door shortly after he knocked, eyeing Dante with surprise. “Well good morning, Dante. You’re here willingly?”

  Dante nodded, smiling. “I have a free morning, so I came to spend it with you.”

  Rosa’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “I have it on good authority that Erik is back in the sept until the afternoon, but you chose to come here? What did you do?”

  Dante shoved a pang of guilt away, hoping it didn’t show on his face. “Rosa, I only have a couple of weeks left in the sept. I want to spend some of that time with the people who are important. Erik was over last night.”

  It wasn’t a total lie, but he still felt guilty that it wasn’t the complete truth either. He’d been so busy worrying what he would do about both his situation with Noah, and the newest one with Liam, he’d completely forgotten there was a deadline hanging over his head. Everyone expected the courtship between him and Noah to last for a couple of weeks before Dante announced his acceptance as Noah’s mate. He really did need to worry about spending time with the people he cared about, but the thought hadn’t occurred to him until the words had left his mouth.

  Rosa’s face softened, and she stepped back as she opened the door. “Sometimes you can be so sweet, Dante. Come on in. I’ve just started br
eakfast.”

  If there was anything to be excited about, it was Rosa’s cooking. There was no one, in Dante’s opinion, in the sept that could cook better than Rosa. It was no surprise to him that she was generally the one selected to cook for feasts and celebrations within the sept. Erik had always moaned and complained about how unlucky it was that Dante had been raised by the woman who cooked the best. Which was exactly how Erik usually ended up showing up at Dante and Rosa’s home when Dante was younger, coincidentally around mealtime.

  As if sensing his thoughts, Rosa glanced behind him as he entered. “I’m surprised Erik isn’t following close behind. I swear that boy would do better if he learned to feed himself once in a while.”

  Dante shut the door behind him with a chuckle. “It’s not his fault that you cook so well.”

  “His mother cooks just fine. He’s just lucky the sept made sure I was well-stocked. I didn’t know I was going to be feeding two teenage pups when I volunteered to watch over you,” Rosa huffed as she marched into the kitchen.

  Dante paused as he went to sit down, surprised. “You…volunteered?”

  Without turning back to him, she nodded vigorously. “Well of course I did. How couldn’t I? The Elders had been discussing what to do with you after your pack fell in that final battle. My mate was gone before that, so it was just me, living in this little hut, doing what I could. I never wanted another pack after Luke died. Seemed like too much work. Then I see this little runt of a pup, sitting away from the men and women, who were talking about him like he was some prize to be taken care of instead of a little boy whose entire world had just been shattered. I took one look in those big ol’ eyes of yours and that was it for me. I couldn’t leave you in the hands of a bunch of people who wouldn’t know the first thing about raising kids.”

  He had never known that she’d volunteered to take care of him. As far as he’d known, Rosa had simply been assigned to take care of him. He’d known she had been packless before, managing to contribute to the sept through both her cooking skills and the herbs that she grew. It had always been his understanding that the Elders had assigned her to care for him as another way for her to contribute to the pack.

  “I never knew that,” he admitted quietly.

  She waved a wooden spoon over her shoulder in his general direction. “Well, now you do. I never had any pups with Luke and didn’t think about having any after he was gone. Foolish man, always willing to go into enemy territory too early. Always had to be the first one to do anything, which is exactly why he left his pack to make a two-person one with me. Thought he was going to build himself a nice pack with our kids and anyone else who would join us. Went and got himself killed before any of that happened, and I couldn’t stomach the thought of starting all over again.”

  Dante smiled, hearing affection in her voice as she chastised the late memory of her mate. “I guess you have a thing for difficult men.”

  She snorted. “I must. I chose you just as surely as I chose him, but with him, I knew what I was getting into. I suppose I must have sensed the trouble you would cause one day when I offered myself up to care for you. Didn’t know how much your scrawny butt would run me ragged, at least not consciously. My mother always did tell me I liked to take the hard road.”

  “Funny, I remember you telling me that more than once,” he said with a smile.

  She glanced over her shoulder, winking at him. “You’re damn right I did, and I stand by that. You’ve been a little troublemaker from the start, and I don’t think you’re gonna stop anytime soon. You might have the Elders and that poor man Noah fooled into thinking you’re a well-behaved little wolf, but you’re not fooling me. You ask me, I don’t think you’re capable of behaving for too long. You’ll watch yourself for a little bit, but eventually some idea will pop into that fool head of yours and you’ll be off raising hell again.”

  Dante laughed. “I don’t cause trouble that much.”

  “No, you don’t. Sometimes, it seems to find you instead. My mother said some people just attract trouble, both good and bad,” Rosa said as she stirred the contents of the pot before her.

  “There’s a good kind of trouble?” Dante asked.

  “Some people use the word ‘trouble’ when they mean ‘change.’ And change ain’t always a bad thing. Actually, it’s usually a good thing. People just don’t like change though, so they call it anything but what it is,” Rosa shrugged.

  “So, am I making things change or causing trouble?” he asked with a smirk.

  “Depends on the day,” she chuckled.

  He laughed again, feeling the familiar sense of warmth that he had long since associated with time spent with Rosa in private. It left him smiling to know she had chosen him. He could just see her, in her very blunt way, telling the Elders she would be the one who would be responsible for Dante’s care. There was no doubt in his mind that she left no room for argument.

  “With your late mate, were you going to just lead the pack with him, or were you going to be doing something else?” he asked.

  “Oh, we never got that far. I suppose I would have led it right there beside him, as best as I could. My mother and grandmother taught me everything they knew, in the hope it would come in handy when I was old enough. My mother was a skilled herbalist and talented in the kitchen. If you think I’m good in the kitchen, you’d think I was second rate compared to her. My grandmother was a Loremaster in her time, though she had retired from it before my first Change,” Rosa explained.

  Dante perked up at that, remembering why he had come to see Rosa in the first place. In septs that had shamans, spiritual advisors to a sept, the keeping and telling of lore fell into their hands. Shamans typically took care of growing and tending herbs and crafting the remedies that could be made from them. For septs like the Sept of the Emerald Wood, who had no shaman, those roles were passed onto designated werewolves. There was no current Loremaster within the sept, which meant that with Rosa’s grandmother having passed, Rosa would be the closest thing.

  “They taught you everything? Including your grandmother?” he asked curiously.

  “As best they could. I wasn’t always the best student, but they did try,” Rosa said.

  He fidgeted with excitement. “Does that mean you’ll be the Loremaster for the sept once your job with me is done?”

  “Boy, I’m never going to be done taking care of you. Don’t matter if you’re off in another sept or not, I’ll walk my butt out there and make sure you’re still eating right. Those Elders will probably try to find somewhere to stick me, since I won’t officially be your caretaker anymore. I sure as hell hope it won’t be as Loremaster though. The last thing I want is to be sitting around telling stories to people and having the Elders come bother me more than they already do,” Rosa said with a huff.

  “Yeah, but then you’d get to tell people what to do, and we both know how you love doing that,” Dante grinned.

  She looked at him with narrowed eyes, pointing the wooden spoon as a threat. “Don’t start.”

  “Do you even remember the lore after all this time?” he asked.

  With her free hand, she pointed at her head. “There’s not much that I forget.”

  “So that means you remember even the most off the wall lore? Stuff like the Joining?” He hedged, knowing it was a clumsy attempt to broach the topic.

  “The Joining? That’s not all that strange a topic, since every wolf with a romantic bone in their body hopes to experience it at some point. That’s a strange topic for you to choose though. Are you telling me you think you went through it with Noah?” she asked pointedly.

  He answered honestly. “No, not at all. It was just the first thing that popped into my head, since I don’t really know that much about it. I’m not exactly the romantic type.”

  She snorted. “Ain’t that the truth? It’s a shame, since the Joining would certainly make things with Noah simpler.”

  “Why’s that? Isn’t it just two werewolves liki
ng each other really fast?” he asked, knowing it was more than that.

  “If it were just that, everyone would have had a Joining when they met their mate. I can’t tell you exactly what it is, as I never felt it myself. All I know are the facts that people who lived and died a long time before I was thought of, pulled from the stories of people who did experience it,” she said as she pulled the pot off the fire.

  “Thought it wasn’t that common of a thing?” He asked as he watched her work, knowing it was better to stay out of her way than to offer his help.

  She nodded, “It’s not terribly common, but not so rare that ain’t no one heard of it before. Even you, who doesn’t pay much attention to the old stories, have heard of it. Gaia doesn’t interfere too much in the world, but the Joining is one of those things where she does. Two people meant for one another will always find their way, somehow, to one another. The Joining is just the moment when the two of them know they’ve been looking for one another the whole time, even if they didn’t know they were looking in the first place. It’s the moment when Gaia’s will is expressed so completely that the two werewolves know it, in that instant.”

  “So, what, the two werewolves just…are around one another and suddenly they know they’re supposed to spend their lives together?” Dante asked.

  Rosa dug through her cupboards for a couple of earthenware bowls. “It’s not like some voice pops into their head to tell them. Far as I can tell, it requires the two people to at least touch one another. What happens at that point is hard to understand, because it’s something that has to be felt. Anyone who’s been through it has always said they can’t fully explain it. They can try, but words don’t fit for what they went through. After that, the bond between the two werewolves begins to grow, whether they want it to or not.”