Page 31 of Purchased

If there is an ex, I need to know, so I can kill him. If there is not, how the hell did she have access to her wolf form?

I try to force myself to stop thinking about those problems. In the end, the breeze and the scent of the wild washes them away, accompanied by a soft snore as my darling mate falls asleep in the long soft grass beside the lake.

We nap together for most of the afternoon, but inevitably it comes time to go back to the house and prepare for the welcome dinner. I can smell it being prepared even from this distant lake.

I nudge her up.

She lets out a little growl, not wanting to go back.

I insist, getting up and ambling back toward the house. The message is clear.Follow me, or stay out here by yourself.

I am slightly concerned she will stay out there. I think Beatrix could easily survive out in the wild on her own. I am sure she could bring down a deer and feast on its flesh, find a den and curl up in it overnight.

My retreat is a calculated risk. If she follows, it will show willingness and connection. If she doesn’t, well…

She nuzzles up along my side and accompanies me back to the chateau. Everything that had been knocked over has been righted, and the two of us pad up the stairs together, no intention of shifting back until we are in the privacy of our chambers.

There, we slide back into our human selves, naked and relaxed in ways we have not been before.

“You’re lucky to have so much space to run,” she says.

“So are you. All of this is yours now. You do understand that, don’t you?”

“No,” she says. “I never even had a room of my own. Most of the time in the orphanage I shared a bed. I’ve never had anything, and now you’re telling me all of this is mine? No.” She picks up a little paperweight inlaid with gold and puts it down almost immediately as if it burned her. “I don’t dare touch any of this. It all feels like it belongs to someone grand and important.”

I wrap her in my arms and look down at her, understanding the words she is saying, if not quite the emotional weight of them. I was raised with all of this. It feels quite natural to me to have many nice things because they are my due.

“Beatrix, you are grand and important.”

She frowns, almost as though that statement was offensive.

“I’m not. I’m rubbish. I always have been. And I’m not going to be a good mate for you. I’m not… I’m not a good person, and I am a worse wolf.”

“Why do you think you’re not a good person?”

“I lie. I cheat. I steal. I do worse, too, sometimes.”

“And did you do those things because you had to survive in a place where very little was given to you?”

“Maybe. But I got good at them. They’re in my brain now. I’m not… your pack is not going to like me.”

“The pack is going to adore you, just as I do,” I reassure her. “And you will have help. There are many instructors here who can give you etiquette lessons and deportment classes and other lessons to teach you what you need to learn, history and mathematics and such.”

She looks even more uncertain now.

“Don’t worry,ma petite,” I say. “When you meet everyone, you will understand.”

* * *

Beatrix

Now he’s talking about lessons. I really am not going to be good enough for this place.

The orphanage had enough basic education that we could read, write, and function to a low level. I have never learned history besides what I picked up here and there through the few books that were passed around, and I don’t know how much of what I read was true.

What I do know, because my instinct tells me, is that I am out of place. I am too young, too rough, too stupid, too poor, too outcast, too alone. I wish I had just one friend from the orphanage, but Armand refused to take any of them with me. So now I am facing this strange situation without any support from anyone who has ever understood me.

I want to go and hide and cry.

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