Page 58 of Purchased

We stop outside an old church in the ancient part of the city. It is not busy at this time of day, because it is late and the bars and restaurants are located elsewhere.

“It is said there are catacombs here that contain the remains of ancient shifters,” I tell her, watching as her face lights up.

“Really? Shifter bones beneath the cathedrals?”

“Yes. They’re interpreted as wolves, of course. But there is no reason for wild animals to have a den beneath a major human hub of activity. There’s also no evidence of prey, no small animal bones, etc. Humans assume that the space was ritually filled with wolf bones, but I believe it’s where those who died in their wolf forms were taken.”

“I want to see it.”

“It’s all shut off, I believe.”

We walk around the church and find the entrance to the undercroft, quite obviously located in the rear, two large doors located at a forty-five-degree angle and surrounded by a stone frame. They are blocked off by large gates, padlocked closed.

“We should go in there,” Beatrix says.

“We shouldn’t. There are gates for a reason.”

“They don’t apply to us. We’re above the law.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Laws are for people. We’re not people. We’re wolves. We’re animals. And animals don’t have to obey the laws of men.”

That’s a dangerous thought process, but I don’t know that I entirely disagree. We are not the same as those around us. We look the same. We are treated the same, but fundamentally we carry an animal consciousness that can never respect what humans respect.

“Boost me up,” she says. “The top isn’t that barbed.”

“Not that barbed,” I sigh. “I brought you here to educate you, not contribute to your delinquency.”

“You brought me here because Volkov made you so angry you thought you might kill him and you had to get out of the chateau before you did something that might be an even worse example to me.”

I look at her, quite surprised at how insightful she is.

“Was it that obvious?”

“The way you looked at him, you wanted to rip him apart,” she laughs.

“He was disrespectful, and I was disappointed. I wanted him to help you. Help us.”

“Therapists are pointless,” she says.

“Are they. How do you know that?”

She rolls her eyes. “Imagine thinking that talking about things makes them better. Crazy. Sometimes bad things happen, and you let them go into the past and you never think about them again, and if you happen to remember them by accident, then you think of something else instead. That’s how it’s done.”

She really needs therapy.

She’s started to climb the damn gates too.

Before we can continue this conversation about the value of not having conversations, and before I can pull her back down, we are interrupted by swinging torch lights and the arrival of two gendarmes.

“What are the two of you doing?”

I don’t like their tone. It is officious and domineering. I don’t do well with that kind of approach. My being an alpha means less than nothing to these humans. They are looking at us with the hard authoritarian expressions of men who have the right to put others in cages.

“He was trying to stop me from doing something I shouldn’t,” Beatrix says. “He never can, though.”

The gendarme looks at me. “Is this your wife?” He asks me the question in a tone that tells me he suspects she’s not my wife. If anything, he’s implying that I’m paying for her company.

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