Page 15 of Purchased

“She took her wolf form,” he observes, stating the obvious.

“Stop the train!”

I pull the emergency cord. Even this customized vehicle has the same one as the one in many public passenger vehicles. It bypasses all other controls and immediately applies the emergency brakes.

The sound of metal on metal at this speed is deeply unpleasant. It sounds like something being ripped from the very core of the earth, a scream from hell.

It takes less than a minute for the train to slow enough, but that minute is an eternity in my world. I watch her run in wolf form, feeling everything I thought I knew melt and fall apart.

She should not be able to do this. She is my mate. I know it. I know it to my fucking marrow. We did not consummate our connection, so this should be impossible.

Nobody else will understand the problem. They will assume a hasty consummation preceded these events. They will think she is claimed. Is mine.

They will assume that my horror is to do with the fact that my mate has fled, has leaped from a fucking moving train. The fall could have killed her quite easily, but not only did she not die, she does not seem injured.

It shouldn’t be possible.The thought keeps running through my head, torturing me with circular logic. The only way a female shifter is able to make the change is if she has been mated by her fated mate. But I am her fated mate, and she and I have definitely not ever had sex. I would certainly know if I had ever been inside her.

I am confused. Horrified, actually.

A dozen thoughts crowd my head all at once, coming thick and fast in the few seconds we have before it is safe for us to give chase.

Could I be wrong? Is she not my mate? Did I fall for some hot, broken, not-so-innocent girl in a shitty situation? Am I so lonely, so desperate, that the smell of a fertile female is enough to confuse my senses? Did I fundamentally settle for the first young woman to cross my path on this particular journey? Have I given up on myself? Was the pack right to force me to seek a female, or have they pushed me to bond with a ruined girl? Or is it the blood that the director mentioned, some Siberian heritage? Is that what spoke to me? Have I been drawn to a foreign lover that has confused my senses?

All these thoughts amount to nothing.

The blunt truth of it is that by all laws of wolf nature, I know she is not truly mine. She cannot be.

If I were to let her run into the wilderness, it would be proper and right. Some would say that I should let her run. I should let this evening be an expensive, humiliating mistake.

But she’s fuckingmine.

I leap from the train, my suit shredding from my body as I take my wolf form. I am fast, but she is also fast, and she has a head start of a good quarter of a mile. She is running at full speed, and has been all this time, while I questioned myself, questioned her, questioned all I know about nature and the pack itself.

My paws find the ground, propelling my powerful self in chase.

It would be easy to lose her if sight was the only sense I had to fall back on, but I have scent, and hers drives me wild. I pursue her at full speed, giving chase like the wild thing I am.

She won’t escape me.

I won’t allow it.

I will claim her.Reclaimher, if I have to.

The train recedes in the distance as we run from it, leaving behind comfort and all pretense of natural humanity. The ground is slightly wet. It must have rained earlier today. Not surprising, given the climate.

Our paws will be leaving deep tracks. They’ll spur hunts if we’re not careful.

What the hell am I thinking. We are not being careful. We are being wild.

Hot breath and pounding paws soon draw up alongside me.

I am not running alone. My retinue has followed me, and we are able to do what wild wolves do, taking turns in the lead, running our prey to the ground, but allowing ourselves to slow and store our strength while another pack member takes the lead and shapes the direction of the prey.

It is an unspoken process. The second I took my wolf form, they took theirs. They follow me without question. Not out of loyalty, but because they always follow me. I am what I am, and they are what they are. This is all instinct.

Beatrix has lost the protection of personhood. We are beasts, and she is our prey.

In spite of all of this, our inherent advantage in numbers, our greater male strength, our determination and practice at hunting, if she was not exhausted, I do not think we would be able to catch her. She is fast and light, not carrying near the muscle most of us are. At first she sets an impossible pace, but over time and distance, she starts to flag.

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