Page 1 of Ancient Promises

Chapter One

What if I just went to the bathroom and escaped through the window like someone trying to skip out on the bill?

Diem smiled in what she hoped was an encouraging way as she listened to her date drone on about…something related to finances.Why the heck did I agree to this date?

Oh yeah, she was a sucker for a favor for a friend, and her friend Beth had suggested a dinner date with her cousin Markus.

Maybe I could fake a heart attack. Is it the left arm or the right that tingles?

“So how are your books looking?”

She blinked. Did she stroke out? Books?

“They’re…fine?”

“I mean, your bookstore’s accounting books. I can take a look at them after dinner.”

Oh, heck no he wasn’t coming back to her bookstore, which, since she lived on the second floor, doubled as her home. Besides, she was not even a little bit interested in him romantically.

“They’re great, actually, but thanks for the offer.”

Run for the hills before he tries to follow you home!

When the server appeared, Diem may have far too quickly saidnoto dessert, although what she wanted to say wasabsolutely freaking not. The date was a slow death, the minutes ticking by in a way that made her envy people in comas.

When the date mercifully ended an eternity later and they parted ways in the restaurant’s lot, she managed to avoid giving him a goodbye kiss by ducking into her car like she was being chased by something evil.

Yikes.

As she glanced in the rearview and saw him walking to his car, she breathed a sigh of relief. That was the last time she went on a blind date, especially one suggested by her friend at the discount stationary warehouse outside of Cider Falls.

Well, hewasa nice guy, he was just not her truemate and that meant she wasn’t interested in seeing him again or getting horizontal in any way, shape, or fashion.

She sent a text to her roommate, Arely.

On my way. Picking up ice cream.

Uh oh. Bad date?

The worst. I’ll share the gory details when I get home.

Grab me some mint chip, please.

You got it.

Diem and Arely had only been living together for a little while. Arely had been roommates with Cymbre, who’d recently found her truemate. Diem lived above her bookstore in Cider Falls, a town that welcomed exiled shifters of the purebred and hybrid varieties, as well as their mates whether they were shifters or humans.

Diem was a hybrid, a cross between her wolf father and her lion mother, which made her a wolf in her shift with fur the burnished gold of a lion. She was exiled as a teenager, and her father had planned to exile himself too, but she refused to take him along with her. He had a business to run and a pack to be part of. They got together on birthdays and spoke often on the phone.

She’d found a pack of her own in Cider Falls, led by alpha Rehlik, who was now mated with a baby on the way.

When she reached the guard station at the main road into Cider Falls, she greeted her friends.

“Hi, Rare,” she said. “Hey, Novak.”

Novak leaned out of the guard shack. “Hey, Diem, heard you had a date. How’d it go?”

She made a face. “How the heck did you hear about that?”

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