Page 57 of Purchased

“No train today?”

“No train today,” I shout back over the rushing wind that demands I put the roof up.

We are both wind-swept when it slides into place. We look at each other, grinning.

“He got under your skin, huh? I bet he barely had to say anything. He just looks at you and he knows what to say. It’s creepy. And I say that as a murderous she-wolf.”

I snort.

I start to wonder if I overreacted when I got Mr. Volkov to come in and help us. Maybe she doesn’t need therapy. I certainly don’t.

I don’t think anybody actually cares if Bea wants to go about killing men who deserve it. The police will not like it, but the police rarely like anything.

Besides, we all know that newly shifted females can be a handful. Most are not overtly murderous, but the way the sudden influx of animal temper pervades the body can certainly affect more than mood. Also, to be absolutely fair to everybody involved, I was warned. The director’s words ring in my ears. No returns.

I would never return her, but it is clear I will have to tame her.

Without Mr. Volkov.

“So did you fire him?”

“I don’t know.”

She cocks her head and gives me a look that I know, even out of my peripheral vision, is a special kind of withering. “How can you not know?”

“I told him to pack his bags, but then he just kept talking. I’m not sure if he considers himself fired or not.”

“Is that how that works? People get to decide how fired they are?”

“Not typically, no. I did cut a man’s head off not that long ago; that should still count for something.”

“Sure,” she says, grinning broadly. “You’re resting on your old murder laurels. You have to keep things current, you know. You’re only as good as your next horrible death scene.”

“You really need therapy,” I laugh, shaking my head. “I think we will have to keep Mr. Volkov on.”

“I don’t like that guy.”

“Neither do I, but he might have a purpose. Even if we hate him.”

We drive through winding country roads, putting distance between ourselves and the chateau. Beatrix doesn’t ask where we are going. She doesn’t care. She just wants to go with me.

Our bond is growing by the day. Not in the way I imagined it would, but it is growing. In spite of Volkov’s antagonism, I already feel closer to Beatrix. Maybe the therapy is working, just not as I imagined it would.

I take her to the city, to a place of sacred shifter history. I want her to feel grounded in herself, and with us as a pack. I want her to know she belongs, even though she was raised among humans and doesn’t remember her history very well.

“There are legends of wolf shifters and werewolves dating back to the 1600s and beyond in Bordeaux,” I tell her as we wind through the narrow streets. “Our kind has always roamed this place, and not always in civilized ways. Humanity has been kind enough to turn a blind eye where it could.”

“You mean they know about us, but pretend they don’t?”

“In the 1600s a young man was caught eating people in this very city,” I say. “He told them he was a werewolf, created by a mysterious figure in the forest, and was sent to a monastery where he lived out his days as a werewolf among the monks.”

“What?”

“The monastery was in fact a bachelor pack. I don’t know if the magistrates at the time were aware, or if it was an act of diplomacy on the abbot’s part, but yes, the story ends well for him. Not so well for those he ate beforehand.”

“Is that why I’m here? To learn that a pack can reform a wild wolf?”

“That would be an improving lesson, wouldn’t it?”

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