Page 49 of Purchased

No! I want him to run. I want him to escape.

He slows more.He falls back behind me.

I know instinctively what he is doing, and why. He’s not tired. He’s a lot fitter than I imagined.

He’s sacrificing himself.

For me.

When you’re running from a predator, you don’t need to be faster than the predator, you just need to be faster than your friends. Except Armand is going to let himself die. For me. For a girl he’s known for a week, for someone who won’t even talk to him about her past and keeps flinging herself off trains.

I didn’t know it was possible to feel guilt while in wolf form. That has never happened before. Suddenly I am absolutely flooded with it.

I want to tell him to stop, but without the benefit of speech all I can do is get slower as well, and that will make him slower still, so really what I have to do is run like hell so that him being behind me does not mean he is caught.

I’ve never really thought of myself as lucky before, but that changes as Fate steps in to spare us.

I hear the hiss of a radiator impaled on a branch, and a crunch of an axle breaking over a rock within seconds of each other as the two cars come to an untimely end with their cargo of incensed villagers.

We continue to run full tilt all the way back to the chateau, arriving exhausted, muddy, and somehow against all odds, alive.

I fall into my human form at the foot of the stairs, and Armand does the same, his hand grasping the back of my neck as he ushers me up the staircase.

I know he’s very much furious with me, but he does not say a word.

* * *

Armand

I shouldn’t ask. I shouldn’t bother to even form a question. I should remain silent and simply…

“What the Hades…”

I can’t help myself. It’s impossible, after such an experience, to not ask a single question or say a single word.

“You said you weren’t going to ask,” she says, her voice a low whisper, as if she doesn’t really want to be flippant, but that phrase was preloaded in her brain.

“Go to bed, Beatrix. I cannot deal with you tonight. Bed. Now.”

She slinks off without another word, knowing she’s created the kind of mess very few people could ever hope to emerge from unscathed.

I can imagine the argument that will ensue in the morning. I’ll lecture her for killing someone, she’ll tell me that she saw me murder someone first. I’ll say I had a good reason. She will say she did too. Then she won’t explain why she did it and I’ll have to accept that because I promised not to ask any questions.

I am not ready for bed. I am exhausted, but keyed up.

I pull on a robe and go to my favorite lounge, where a good cognac awaits, as well as a good friend. The best friend, I mentally note with some irony, because he will not ask too many questions.

“I almost died tonight, Daniel.”

“Oh?” He looks up over his book with mild interest.

“Yes.”

“Glad you didn’t,” he says.

“Me too.”

“Was it anything to do with your mate?”

---