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“I am going to find us some kind of therapy,” I tell her. “But before that happens, I am going to whip you for what you did last night. I watched bullets fly over your head…”

“It was fun, wasn’t it.”

“No. It was not fun. It was dangerous,” I growl the words while secretly agreeing, yes, it was fun. It was fun in the way things that can never happen again are fun.

She smiles at me sweetly, almost innocently. I really feel that she did what she thought was right. But we almost died. And it was reckless, stupid, and it could have been handled in a sane way.

“I don’t even know where to begin disciplining you for almost getting us both shot,” I snort.

“Maybe don’t? Maybe I’ve learned my lesson?”

I walk around the desk, sit back against it, then lean forward and run my fingers under her chin. “Have you, Trixie? Have you learned anything? Did it frighten you when you heard those bullets?”

“No,” she says. “But it scared me when I saw you dropping back, trying to save me. That scared me a lot. I am sorry. Really. I never want you to be hurt. I don’t care what happens to me, but you are you, and you have a whole pack and…”

“Beatrix, you matter as much as I do! I feel for you as you feel for me, do you understand? If anything was ever to happen to you, I’d be ruined forever. My life would never be the same.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, her face crumpling. “I just wanted… he was going to… I didn’t know you were there. I didn’t think you’d be in danger.”

I believe her. I stayed hidden. She did not know she was almost getting me killed. One way to look at this would be that I almost got the pair of us killed by letting her go into town. I should have stopped her when she started breaking the rules, not once she had already killed someone.

“In the future, when you hear something like that, you come to me. You let me handle it. I will ensure justice is done as it should be done. You have seen me do it, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” she whispers. “But I wanted to do it myself. I wanted him to… I wanted to be the one who made him feel like prey. I wanted his last moments to be knowing in his bones that he is not the one who decides what happens to others. I wanted revenge.”

I kiss the top of her head. Who am I to say that any of these impulses were wrong? We cannot have a village full of bits of people, but her reasoning is impeccable.

“Talk to me first,” I say. “Please. So I can keep you and the pack safe.”

“I’m sorry I almost got us killed. You shouldn’t have come for me. You should have let whatever was going to happen, happen.”

“Absolutely not.” I grip her chin and force her to look at me. “I would die a thousand times for you on your worst day, do you understand? There is nothing more important to me than protecting you, no matter what you do.”

Tears well in her eyes. “I don’t deserve you to love me like this.”

“Yes,” I say. “You do.”

CHAPTER11

Armand

It takes some time to find the right person to provide us with some kind of mental health guidance, but I believe I have done it. Beatrix has been confined to the chateau since the murder, and she seems to have abided by her grounding with relative grace, though one never knows with a girl like her what she’s really thinking, planning, or even doing.

We are roughly three weeks into our mate-ship when help arrives in the form of a massive wolf shifter from the far north. I greet him with more than a little relief, get him settled, and go and retrieve my mate from the corner of the library where she has ensconced herself.

“Beatrix,” I say, making her look up from her book.

“Hmm?”

“There’s someone I’d like you to meet. Someone who is going to help us with our communication issues.”

Her eyes widen a fraction. She shuts her book.

“You didn’t actually get a therapist, did you?”

“I did. And you’re going to talk to him.”

“You got a man? Why?”

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