Page 42 of Purchased

We take the train into Fontlune. I had tracks run there because the journey is so picturesque, running as it does along the cliffs of the area that look out over rolling hills dotted with ancient buildings. This is one of the oldest parts of the world, where humanity has made its home since the stone age. The villagers are happy enough for the tracks as they allow for some freight to be brought that would otherwise be stuck on trucks that rarely like to rumble through the crumbling country roads.

Fontlune is a medieval village set on a cliff side, much the same way the chateau is, but older still. The buildings here have not changed measurably since the founding of the town. Red-roofedcolombagebuildings made of graying yellow stone and half-timbered walls straggle along the cliff face, and the center of the town is tucked in under the tall church tower.

It is a place in which time has been assiduously banished, and it is one of the places I feel most at peace in the world. The villagers have been under the protection of my pack for generations.

“Here we are,” I say, offering her my hand to help her alight.

She looks very different than she did when we first met. She is bathed, and dressed in calico white linen, her hair sleek and shiny and falling in loose curls down past her shoulders. The ladies of the pack have made it their mission to ensure she looks the part, offering various cosmetic services, hair trims, nails, even a little trimming of her brows.

I forget, sometimes, how young she is. Not yet nineteen, and yet she has a pack looking up to her. I am familiar with the unseen weight of that sort of responsibility. I wonder if she feels it. I wonder if she knows how important she is.

“I had no idea there were people so close,” she says. “We run as wolves so near this town.”

“It’s a small town. Only two hundred inhabitants, and far enough from civilization that there’s very little likelihood of running into visitors. These people have lived alongside the pack for generations. Their local legends speak of wolves who become men, so any sightings are considered part of the local reality.”

“Seems reckless, but okay, if it works for you.” She looks around at the scenery. I wonder if she sees what I see, if she feels a certain pride at being part of this incredible beauty that can only exist where man has been in concert with nature for hundreds of years.

“There’s wolves everywhere,” she says.

She’s referring to the decorations, little wolves painted under windows and under doors by hands long passed on, refreshed by more recent ones. This is one of many traditions arising from the unique relationship between supernatural and typical.

“Everybody born here is natively considered part of the pack. They’re human, of course, but they’ve provided cover for us for a long time and now we return the favor. I am on the council, of course, and there are plenty of economic…”

“Can we get ice cream?”

“Better. We can getgateauBasque.”

We eat the sweet pastry treat, and for an afternoon we are a young couple in love, simply and completely enchanted with one another as slow liquid sun makes its way over the ancient stones.

“It could be like this every day for as long as we live,” I tell her. “Our children playing in the square, us enjoying local baking. This is what I want for you. For us. Happy ever after.”

She snorts into hergateau. “Sometimes you talk like a cheesy romance novel.”

“Someone has to hold hope when others cannot. That is half the job of an alpha.”

She doesn’t say anything to that directly. She finishes hergateauand looks around at the various sights and draws in the sounds and finally musters a response.

“Thisisbeautiful,” she says, her tone half-annoyed, as if admitting that the place is pretty is something of a chore. She is enjoying herself more than she wants to. That is the problem. Life had become one series of terrible events for her, and now I am showing her that it can be good.

It would be easy to regard her tone as petulant and tempestuous, even childlike, but I see more than simple bad behavior. She is out of her element, and I know all too well that being shown good, happy things won’t necessarily make her feel good or happy.

I imagine it brings up feelings of loss, perhaps even rage when she realizes that all the suffering she went through was unnecessary. There were happy lives to live all along. People were cruel to her not because the world is cruel, but because they were.

For now, I am pleased to see her enjoying the village as much as I do, even if she’s fighting against it.

“There are caves nearby where ancient men daubed paintings on the walls, beasts and creatures lost to modernity,” I tell her. “We can go and see them if you like.”

She gives me a smile that is only fifty percent forced. “I would like that.”

* * *

Beatrix

He is doing his best to make all of this nice, and I wish I could feel it on the inside the way I can observe it on the outside. I know intellectually that this is a beautiful village. I know this food is incredibly tasty. And I know that his imaginings of a marriage and children running barefoot around this ancient town square could very much be real.

It just doesn’t fill me with hope the way it does for him. And of course, I know why. He has lived a life in this world, in the chateau, and in this town, and with more money than he knows what to do with. Everything has always gone Armand’s way.

Nothing has ever gone my way. Every time I caught sight of a sliver of hope it was either snatched away, or worse, ended up being some kind of trap. I didn’t notice my ability to believe in good things leaving me, but I notice that it is gone now.

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