The Problem with Promises by Leigh Evans Read Free Book Online Page A

across twelve, fifteen years ago. Whitlock must really want this territory because he could have sold that bottle for a fortune.”
    “Couldn’t it have been Knox’s?”
    “He wouldn’t have had that type of money.” At the mention of Knox’s name, two blue comets began circling Trowbridge’s dark pupils. “No, this came from Whitlock. He knew that he needed to dose his man before he sent him into my territory.”
    “Why?” I said.
    “Whitlock timed your trial for a full moon. He wanted Knox to appear as strong as an Alpha. So he had to make sure he would be the last to change into his wolf.”
    Trowbridge reached for the bag, then tilted back in his seat and kept going, until the chair was balanced on its back legs. He fingered the bottle through the plastic. “Knox didn’t have Alpha in him—if he had, he would have gone after me, not my mate. Besides, he reeked of this shit.”
    I hadn’t noticed, being somewhat preoccupied by my imminent execution.
    My mate broke the bag’s seal. He closed his eyes and took a long, deep sniff. “A female handled either Knox’s wallet or the bottle.” His pupils moved under his lids. “A halfling.”
    Upon that pronouncement, the atmosphere in the room, already tense, tightened into a thick soup of emotions. There were battle-ready aromas streaming from Trowbridge and Harry and a spike in Biggs’s anxiety. But there … what was that? Deep disapproval. Coming from Cordelia.
    Why? Was she dismayed that they’d used the word “halfling” in front of me? I’ve heard worse. To my mind it was an improvement over “mutt” or “half-breed.” There was poetic fluidity to it. I tested it in my mind, breaking it into two distinct consonants: half-ling.
    “I’ve never met another halfling,” I said. “Are there a lot of us?” That question was greeted with as much enthusiasm as the trophy wife sashaying into the Old Wives’ Club.
    The lines bracketing Cordelia’s mouth turned into grooves. “You’re not one of them.”
    “I’m not? Then what’s a halfling?”
    Cordelia turned to my mate. “You need to explain this to her, right now. It’s obscene how she and her brother were kept ignorant.”
    I hate this. Being three steps behind everyone. “Trowbridge?” I asked.
    My mate rubbed his jaw, his eyes shadowed. “A halfling is sired by a Were and born of a human.”
    “So there’s a subrace of half Weres, half humans?”
    “No,” he replied.
    “Why not?”
    The fanwork of lines around his eyes deepened. “Because they die young.”
    “How young?”
    “For some seventeen, for others eighteen.”
    Before my mouth could shape the obvious question, he explained, “They die at puberty.”
    “Their puberty is delayed like ours?”
    He nodded. “They don’t have enough magic in them to survive their first change. That’s why it’s drummed into you. Don’t have sex with a human.”
    They died? That speculation took me to a whole other place. Son of a bitch. “You told me to change into my wolf.” I pointed an accusing finger. “Before you came back through the gates—when we used to meet in our dreams. You said, ‘You must change into your wolf.’”
    “I knew you could do it,” he replied.
    “You told me I had to try.”
    “You did,” he shot back. “You couldn’t run a pack without showing your fur. And I knew you could do it because your brother could.”
    “I am not my brother.”
    “There has been some—though very limited—interbreeding between some of the Fae and the wolf packs in Merenwyn. Half-Fae, half-Were kids can turn into their wolf.”
    But I can’t. That’s the malodorous statement that hovered over us like a stink bomb.
    Biggs’s chair squeaked as he shot to his feet. He went to the sink, turning his back on us to stare blindly through the window. His scent leaked angst and tragedy.
    “What’s up with Biggs?” I mouthed to Cordelia.
    She flattened a manicured hand over her heart. Brows raised, she mouthed back,