Tangled Innocence

Tangled
Innocence

A
Dante’s Circle Novel

By
Carrie Ann Ryan

Tangled
Innocence

A Dante’s Circle Novel

By: Carrie Ann Ryan

Published by Fated Desires Publishing, LLC.

© 2014 Carrie Ann Ryan

ISBN: 978-1-62322-045-7

Cover Art by Scott Carpenter

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like
to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for
each person or use proper retail channels to lend a copy. If you’re reading
this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only,
then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the
hard work of this author. To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text,
please contact the publisher at [email protected].

All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the
author’s imagination.

To my two Charities. One holds my sanity; the other holds
the reason I get to do this every day. Thank you both.

As I write each book, it seems my group of people grows.
This book could not have been written without Lia, Michelle, Charity, Devon,
Kimberly, Saya, Kate and so many more. Thank you for helping me with the random
questions and needs an author has when they’re writing a book about a bear, a
dragon, and a woman who needs them both.

Thank you Lillie for saying “bear shifter body shots” and
telling me to do it. No questions asked.

This bear shifter is for you.

And Delphina?
Dante might be claimed, but I’m sure he has a special place in his dragon heart
for you.

Thank you
readers for wanting Dante’s story so much that he’s the #1 requested character
of all my series.

Love you guys!

With an ever growing list
of characters in each book, I know that it might seem like there are too many
to
remember.
Well don’t worry; here is a list for you so you
don’t forget. Not all are seen in this exact book, but here are the ones you’ve
met so far. As the series progresses, the list will as well. A special thanks
goes to my
FAN CLUB
(https://www.facebook.com/groups/CarrieAnnRyanFanClub/)
for helping with this list.

Happy reading!

Agda
—Brownie council leader.

Agnes
—Sole
female on the Angelic council.

Alec—
Nocturne Pack
council member. Friends to Hunter and Becca.

Amara Young
—One of
the seven lightning struck women. Works at an inn. Has a past that is very
secretive.

Ambrose
Griffin
—Warrior angel, Shade’s mentor. Father to Laura
(deceased)
and Nathan
(deceased)
,
husband to Ilianya
(deceased)
. Mate
to Balin and Jamie, story told in
Her
Warriors’ Three Wishes
.

Azel
—Black-winged
angel. Striker’s third in command.

Balin
Drake
—Non-soul devouring demon, son of Pyro.
Mate to Jamie and Ambrose, story told in
Her
Warriors’ Three Wishes
.

Becca Quinn
—One of
the seven lightning struck women. Works as a bartender at Dante’s Circle. Mate
to Hunter Brooks, story told in
An
Unlucky Moon
.

Bryce
—Lily’s
ex-fiancee.

Caine
—Angelic council leader.

Cora
—Shade’s
ex-fiancé
(deceased)
.

Dante Bell
—Dragon
shifter. Owner of Dante’s Circle. Story told in
Tangled Innocence.

Eli
—Bakery Owner.

Eliana Sawyer
—One
of the seven lightning struck women. Works as a welder.

Faith Sanders
—One
of the seven lightning struck women. Works as a photographer.

Fawkes
—Demon,
son of Lucifer, friend of Balin. Mate of Leslie. Story told in
His Choice
(Found in the Anthology
Ever After)
.

Fury
—Leader
of the demon council.

Glenn
—Lily’s
sleazy ex-boss.

Hunter
Brooks
—Wolf and Beta of the Nocturne Pack. Met Ambrose, Jamie, and Balin in
hell during the demon games. Mate to Becca, story told in
An Unlucky Moon
.

Ilianya
—
(deceased)
Sister to Shade, wife to
Ambrose.

Jace
Goodwin—
bear shifter and Mediator for all realms. Story told in
Tangled Innocence.

Jamie
Bennett
—One of the seven lightning struck women. Bookstore owner and lover
of romance. Mate to Ambrose and Balin, story told in
Her Warriors’ Three Wishes.

Kobal
—Old
djinn council member, ally to Pyro.

Laura
—
(deceased)
Daughter of Ambrose
.

Law
—Gray-winged
angel, Striker’s second in command.

Leslie—
Pack member
of the Nocturne Pack. Mate of Fawkes.
Story told in
His Choice
(Found in the Anthology
Ever After)
.

Liam—
Nocturne Pack
council member. Friends to Hunter and Becca.

Lily Banner
—One of
the seven lightning struck women. Worked as a lab chemist in solid-state NMR.
OCD and quirky. Mate to Shade, story told in
Dust of My Wings
.

Lucifer
—Infamous
demon from hell and Fawkes’ father.

Nadie Morgan
—One
of the seven lightning struck woman. Works as a school teacher. Story told in
Tangled Innocence.

Nathan
—
(deceased)
Son of Amborse.

Pyro
—Demon
from hell, father to Balin.

Shade Griffin
—Warrior
angel, ex-fiance to Cora, brother to Illianya, mate to Lily Banner, story told
in
Dust of My Wings
.

Striker
—Angelic
council member, leader of the rebels.

Temperance
—New
Djinn council leader.

Thad
—Co-worker of
Lily’s. Had a crush on her.

Timmy
—10 year old
brownie.

Humans aren’t as alone as
they choose to believe. Every human possesses a trait of supernatural that lays
dormant within their genetic make-up. Centuries of diluting and breeding have
allowed humans to think they are alone and untouched by magic. But what happens
when something changes?

As one of the seven lightning struck women, Nadie Morgan has
known for a while now that her fate would be forever changed…and revolve around
a certain dragon. From the first time Dante Bell saw Nadie, he knew she was the
one for him. There's just one problem--there's another in his life he's waiting
on as well.

When Jace Goodwin, a bear shifter and Mediator, finally
comes back to the human realm after years away under circumstances out of his
control, his first stop is to Dante's Circle where he not only finds his
dragon, but the woman they both have been waiting for.

Once secrets are told and the sparks fly, Nadie's new life
becomes something she never thought possible. However there's another realm at
play and Jace and Nadie's dragon will have to fight harder than he's ever
fought before to keep the life he's waited eons for.

Warning: Contains one not-so-innocent human, a bear known
for his bear-hugs, a tattooed and pierced dragon with a fiery temper, and a
connection so explosive, you'll be fanning yourself from page one.

“I’m done with men.”

Nadie Morgan barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes at
her friend Faith’s proclamation. She was pretty sure the woman had said
something similar before in the exact same exasperated tone. Faith usually said
things like that, considering she was trying to find a man to match who she was
and who she wanted to be.

Not an easy thing when Nadie wasn’t sure Faith knew who she
wanted to be in the first place. Well, Nadie probably shouldn’t be casting
stones, considering she stood in an eerily parallel place.

Faith ran a hand through her blunt black bangs, leaving them
in their perpetual disorder, then curled her lip up in a snarl.

“Don’t you roll your eyes at me, Nadie Morgan. If you’d ever
get off your virgin ass and actually tell him you want him, maybe you wouldn’t
be in the same predicament as me.”

Nadie froze, the sounds of the bar slowly faded away so she
couldn’t hear her friends’ reactions—if there
were
reactions. An odd numbness settled in, tunneling her vision so
all she saw was Faith and her wide eyes set in a pale face.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the rest of their
friends stiffen as well, then turn toward Faith, their mouths opening, most
likely to defend Nadie where they thought she would never be able to defend
herself.

In most cases, they’d have been right.

“Well, that was blunt,” Nadie finally said, her throat dry.
What else was she supposed to say? She was surprised she could speak at all. It
wasn’t as if Faith was saying anything untrue or far from Nadie’s mind. It just
hurt to hear it in the first place.

She’d rather have buried it forever and not looked back, but
she knew that would have been weak.

Weaker than she’d been acting already.

“Oh crap, I’m so sorry, honey.” Tears filled the normally
strong-willed woman’s eyes, and Nadie immediately forgave her. There hadn’t
been any true damage, and all Faith had done was tell the truth.

“It’s okay.” She raised her hands at her friends, and they
quieted whatever words they were about to say. “No, really. You just got
dumped. It sucks, so you lashed out, and I’m a pretty good target at the
moment.”

Faith shook her head then got up and walked around the
circular table where they always sat when they came to Dante’s Circle.
Normally, it was a place that had become a sort of home to them, and right
then, it was nice to have that familiarity. Faith wrapped her arms around Nadie
and Nadie hugged her back. Hard. “No, it’s not freaking okay. I’m hurt and in a
pissy mood, but that doesn’t give me the right to act like a cruel bitch.”

“Just a normal bitch then,” Becca, deadpanned, then flipped
her fiery red curls over her shoulders.

“Hey, don’t call Faith a bitch,” Lily added in then came up
to wrap her arms around Nadie’s other side. “Well, she might be one, but we’re
trying to change that. And Nadie honey, I love you. Don’t listen to what Faith
said.”

Soon, Amara, Eliana, Jamie, and eventually, Becca moved to
join the group hug. Nadie could feel Faith’s tears seep into her shirt and knew
that her friends weren’t there to comfort Nadie, but Faith. The woman wouldn’t
accept the comfort otherwise, and everyone knew it.

Sometimes she and her friends just had to be sneaky about
things like hugs and showing Faith they loved her just as much as they loved
the rest of the girls.

“Okay, break it up. I can’t breathe under all of you,” Faith
snapped.

Nadie just shook her head as Faith wiped her tears,
straightened her shoulders, and then sat back in her seat on the other side of
the circle.

“So, we hate Chadwick,” Amara said as she pulled her auburn
hair into a ponytail. She smiled prettily at Faith who rolled her eyes.

“His name was Chad, not Chadwick,” Faith answered. “Stop
making him sound like some dweeb who loves his mom and the country club.”

Nadie tilted her head then took a sip of her lemon drop.
“Um, but he
did
love his mom and his
country club. Wasn’t that the whole point? That he wanted to be with mommy and
her money rather than stand up for something more? I thought you said something
about the snooty mommy and her leech of a son.”

Faith narrowed her eyes. “You’re not supposed to throw my
words back in my face.”

“On the contrary,” Amara put in. “We’re you’re friends. If
he’s a right bastard with mommy issues, that’s our job. You’re the one who told
us that dear Chadwick was a limp neck—and probably had limp other things too—mommy’s
boy. Or should we call him
mother’s
boy. He seemed like the guy who would raise his eyebrows all haughtily and call
for his
mother
.” Amara tried and
failed to use a British accent—which Chad, not Chadwick, did not possess, and
the girls fell over in giggles.

“Oh sweet baby Jesus, stop making me laugh like that. I
think I’ll start leaking,” Lily said as she pressed her hands to her breasts.
The new mom had control issues sometimes. Lily. A mom. So weird yet perfect at
the same time.

“Oh God, you leak when you laugh?” Becca asked, her eyes
wide before she turned to Jamie. “That’ll be us in a few months.”

Nadie just smiled and took another drink of her lemon drop
as her now-mated friends talked about babies, leaking, and growly mates. She
didn’t want to feel jealous, but the little green monster wrapped its spindly
arms around her, and she winced. It wasn’t Becca’s, Jamie’s, or Lily’s fault
that they had met their true halves and something like a perfect life had
actually stuck.

So much had changed in the short time since the world had
grown around them that sometimes Nadie couldn’t run fast enough to catch up.

She frowned and thought about the date then sat straight up.
“Well, hell.” The other girls stopped what they were doing and looked at her.

“Did you just curse?” Jamie asked, her hand on her baby
bump. “You never curse.”

Nadie snorted. “I curse, you just never listen. That isn’t
the point though. Think about what day it is and where we are.”

Amara’s eyes widened. “Well, hell,” she repeated.
 
“It’s been two years, hasn’t it?”

Nadie nodded then sat back as she watched the reactions wash
over her friends’ faces. It had been two years since the seven of them walked
into Dante’s Circle like they normally did, but they’d left with something much
more.

Something most of them
still
didn’t have a handle on.

Lightning had hit the building, or at least
inside
the building, on that day. Nadie,
her six friends, and the owner of the bar…Dante, were struck by that same bolt
of lightning. She could still remember the screams, the feel of her body rising
from her chair then slamming down to the ground, and the heated sensation of
something…else…flowing through her in an arc. It still haunted her nightmares
sometimes.

After all of that, none of them had been the worse for wear,
just a few cuts and bruises and, of course, Amara’s broken arm, but that was
it. Amara had healed quickly, as had the rest of them. Too quickly, in Nadie’s
opinion.

They had been forever changed though.

Lily had been the first to notice—though they all had in a
way considering it was weird that eight of them had been struck by lightning
and hadn’t been killed or injured beyond falling to the ground.

They’d discovered that their human world wasn’t quite human.

Every human who called themselves human, Nadie included,
were diluted versions of supernaturals, and most weren’t in the know about the
fact that hundreds of realms existed near and entwined with their own realm.

“I can’t believe it’s been two years since I met Shade,”
Lily whispered then gave a little smile.

Shade was a warrior angel and Lily’s true half. Apparently
supernaturals had another part of their souls out in the world, and they were
lucky when they found it. Or at least they were lucky when they found it, and
the other half actually
wanted
it,
but that was another story altogether.

“And I met Ambrose around that time, though it took another
year to meet Balin,” Jamie put in.

Jamie had not just one mate, but two. Nadie held back a
blush at that thought. What on earth would she do with two men? She hadn’t even
been with one let alone two. Oh no way, too much for her. That didn’t mean she
couldn’t have her own fantasies though.

“That means it’s almost been a year since I met Hunter,”
Becca said as she frowned. “It seems like so much longer, you know? I mean,
Jamie and I are pregnant, and Lily just had Kelly. We’re bonded with our mates
and have seen so…much.”

Nadie nodded, knowing what she meant—at least when it came
to what they’d seen. That was the other part of being struck by that particular
bolt of lightning.

Each of them had a new energy within themselves. It was as
if the lightning had altered their DNA, which the scientist Lily said was
possible, considering the paranormal worlds were so much different than the
human one. Now, apparently, once one of them met their true half—or the other
two-thirds in Jamie’s case—they started to grow weak, as if their body was
rejecting itself. Then once they made love with their true half, they turned
into a paranormal creature.

It was as if she were now in some sci-fi movie that she
couldn’t quite wake up from. Lily had turned into a brownie; Jamie, a djinn;
Becca, a leprechaun. Each of them had met with others of their realm and, in
some cases, fell right in step with that part of their lives while others had
fought for their right to live—at peace and in general. Not everyone in the
realms was happy about the turn of events.

Frankly, Nadie wasn’t sure she was either.

The others were talking about how much had changed and how
the rest of them still needed to find their true halves. Nadie, though, knew
she was in a different place than the rest of them. While the others had hope
for a future or were on the bliss side of happiness, Nadie knew she had nothing
like that. No, she had nothing. She had a feeling she’d known her true half
longer than the rest of them, longer than they’d even known what true halves
were, yet he’d done nothing about it.

She closed her eyes, a sudden rush of something more
powerful than herself seeming to wrench whatever energy she had left from her
bones. Pain arced across her body, bile filling her throat as something clawed
at her, her body growing weak. Her hand shook as she set down her lemon drop,
but she didn’t think anyone noticed. Life was moving on for the rest of them,
yet Nadie didn’t think she’d move on with her friends.

She swallowed hard, the truth slapping her in the face.

Again.

Her dragon didn’t want her.

Well, not
her
dragon, as he never would be hers. He’d seen to that. The tattooed, sexy bar
owner, Dante, had known her for years and yet hadn’t taken one step toward her
beyond being her friend. And he’d started to move away from even that since the
lightning. They weren’t the friends they’d once been and the loss was almost
too much to bear.
 
She’d had a crush on
him ever since she could remember and
she’d
never done anything about it, either.

He was a freaking dragon, meaning that even when she’d been
human and ignorant of all that went beneath the surface of the human realm, he
would have been able to feel her as his true half, would have been able to feel
that pull, that deep desire not only to have the other person in his life for
eternity, but to have them in all ways possible.

Yet he’d done nothing about it.

Well, that was just fine then. She didn’t need him anyway.

Another wave of pain drenched in power washed over her, and
she closed her eyes, willing it away. Damn that dragon. No, damn her as well.
If she’d had the courage to actually speak her mind, maybe she’d have been able
to see what he wanted from her or, rather, what he didn’t want from her.

Now she was alone and too scared to do anything about it.

Honestly, she had only herself to blame for it.

She wasn’t weak, but she sure as heck was acting like it.
Her fingers slid over the smooth wood on the table as she tried to regain some
semblance of control. She didn’t want this to be the last time she came with
her six girlfriends into the bar that had become their getaway, but it was
looking more and more like that was what would have to happen.

She couldn’t come into the place that called to them and not
think about the dragon who filled her dreams. Not that she’d ever seen him in
his dragon form, but his human form was exactly what she wanted.

“Hello, ladies,” Dante said as he walked up to them. His piercing
blue—not that blue was a good enough word for the pools of color she saw—eyes
met hers for a moment before moving on to the rest of the girls at the table.

His attention elsewhere, she could do what she loved
best—study her dragon. While she was the plain Jane with straight blonde hair
and a way-too-innocent face, according to Faith, Dante was the exact opposite.

He’d tied his long black hair in a ponytail so the blue
streaks stood out even more. She wasn’t sure if he dyed it that way or if black
and blue just came naturally. Since he was a dragon, it could just be who he
was. He’d chopped off a lot of it recently, something she wasn’t sure about,
but she thought he was sexy no matter what. So it settled in the middle of his
back. She knew that if he didn’t keep on it, though, it would grow so long that
it touched the floor again.

God, she envied his hair.

He was built, but not too bulky, and wicked tall. At five
foot three herself, everyone seemed a bit tall to her, but Dante was a couple
inches over six and a half feet. She felt like a tiny fairy next to him, but
she liked it.