Page 51 of Purchased

“Thank you, Antoine,” I say. “I will handle this.”

“Yes,Maître,” he says, bowing out of the room.

“Beatrix, you have to stop doing that.”

“Stop doing what? Murder?”

“No. You have to stop going inside and locking yourself away. There is nothing you have to hide from me. I need you to understand that. You cannot disappoint me, or anger me, no matter what you do.”

“That’s not true,” she says immediately. “There are plenty of things I could do if I wanted to make you angry.”

“Do you? Want to make me angry?”

She doesn’t answer that. She just looks at me with that impenetrable expression, half-blank, half-ominous. There is power in this young woman. She is young, but what she draws on is ageless. The energy in the room does not emanate from her alone. I can feel her unknown ancestry with us so keenly I can practically smell it.

“You can’t publicly kill people in the village,” I say. “It will cause terror among the people.”

“Good. I want them to be afraid. If they are hurting others, I want them to stop. I want them to know that there is a consequence. Not something that might happen once they die, but something that will happen to them here and now, something that will take everything from them.”

“What did the damn man do that warranted a public mauling and execution?”

“He wanted to take a waitress against her will. He was talking about it in the tavern. I decided to kill him.”

I try to hide my reaction, and fail. I am deeply impressed. I like where this impulse comes from. I like how strong she is, and how obsessed she is with bringing justice. Most I know are eager to offload that responsibility to anybody else. It is a very good trait for an alpha’s mate, or it would be if it could be tamed into something a little more civilized.

I try a new tactic, impressing on her the very real stakes I do not think she has considered, even under a hail of gunfire.

“You could be hurt. We could both have been killed.”

She gives a little shrug. “If it happens, it happens. I’m sorry you were involved. I didn’t know you were there. But I don’t care what happens to me.”

“I need you to be safe,” I tell her. “I did not wait all my life to meet you, to finally love you, to lose you in a matter of weeks because you don’t think your life has value unless you are protecting someone else.”

“What are you? A therapist?”

“No. But that might be a good idea for you,” I say. “I should look into bringing one to the chateau.”

She groans. “I regret saying that.”

That makes me laugh. She doesn’t regret the murder. But she regrets the notion of getting help. I can’t imagine a therapist who would be able to handle her, if I am to be honest. It would have to be someone capable of defending themselves, mentally, emotionally, and potentially physically.

“You’re putting more people at risk than just yourself, or me,” I tell her. “The villagers will defend themselves from what they think are wild animal attacks. You put the whole pack at risk of being shot if they are seen in their wolf forms. And then what? Then more rumors of wolves being shot and dead men being found. I won’t have you die because you’ve decided you are an avenger of the downtrodden. And I won’t have the pack becoming hunted on their own land. If you insist on sneaking out and murdering people, I will have no choice but to shackle you in the dungeon.”

She smiles. She tries to hide it, but it is there. I get to see her genuine smile so rarely, it is hard not to enjoy it, even though it comes from a rebellious place.

“That was a real threat, Beatrix. You will always be my mate, but you do not always have to be free if you cannot control your impulses.”

“The same way you controlled yours when you spent ten million on me and then dragged me out of the orphanage? Or the same way you controlled yours when you killed that man the other night?”

“That was different.”

“Why?”

“Because neither of those actions had any risk to my life or anyone else’s, Duplante’s aside and he forfeited his.”

She shakes her head. “No,” she says. “You’re just as bad as me, but you grew up wearing fancy suits and you think you’re better.”

We have reached an impasse that I can tell will not soon be bridged. I love my mate with all I am, but I cannot seem to get through to her. I need help. We need help.

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