Page 63 of Purchased

Armand

“Murder brats,” Mr. Volkov notes. “A couple of killers on a rampage through the picturesque French countryside.”

He’s standing on the balcony of his office, smoking. He seems unfazed by all I have just told him, which I appreciate. What I do not like is his summary of events with regards to my character.

“I am the alpha of this pack. I will thank you not to call me a brat.”

“You think an alpha cannot be a problem?”

“I think the alpha is almost always the problem,” I say. “Packs live and die on their alpha. That is why mine pushed so hard for me to find a mate. They weren’t content with me being a single younger male. They wanted to see me settled down with a family. It was what they needed to feel safe.”

I snort as I think how misguided they were with that idea. I’ve never been less settled. There’s been more deaths in the past week than there have been in decades. The pack is only really aware of one, maybe two of them. We’ve kept the matter of the gendarmes quiet.

I buried them personally while Beatrix slept, and showered again afterward before crawling in bed next to her. She was dead to the world, entirely peaceful. She feels safe with me, in my house, with the pack. She trusts me and us. I enjoy that, even if it means I am left dropping bodies.

“And what did you need?”

“Hm?” His question interrupts my memories.

“When the pack needed safety, what did you need?” Volkov asks the question. I find it pointed, but I think about it.

“I don’t know.”

“I think you do,” he says, knocking the ash off his cigarette.

“I really don’t. I needed to be a good alpha.”

He turns toward me, flicking the cigarette into an ashtray without looking. “What. Did you need?”

Is he trying to intimidate me into answering?

“I don’t know.”

“You do. Say it. Get the balls to verbalize what you need, or there’s no way your mate will ever be able to do it.”

He’s badgered me into a corner, not raising his voice, not overtly intimidating me, but I feel pressure of the kind that makes the polite parts of my mind give up and let me become blunt.

“Fine. I needed freedom. I needed time to become who I was going to be. The alpha position was always going to be mine. I was literally born for it. But I never got to consider who I might be outside it.”

I’m half surprised to hear myself say those words. I’d never have claimed them if they hadn’t come out of my own mouth. They sound resentful, of the pack, of my role in it, and I’m not. I love the pack, and it is an honor to serve as alpha. Somehow this wolf is making me say things I don’t recognize, things that don’t fit. He’s making me inconvenient to myself.

“So you went out to find your mate, and you found someone who had gone out of her way never to meet an obligation in her existence. Someone who had no pack, and therefore no pack obligations. You found a creature who was entirely free. Isn’t that interesting.”

“Are you suggesting the mate bond activated because she’s… unhinged?”

He gives a little shrug, his massive muscles moving infinitesimally. “I believe the fated mate connection is not set in the stars. I believe it is a primal connection based on some amounts of genetic suitability, but more than that, it is about the needs of the two wolves involved. I think you both had intense, directly opposite needs. That initial dynamic is still playing out. The pair of you are pulling each other in opposite directions. There is some risk that she will not be a stabilizing force on the pack as they’d hoped. It is possible she will unmoor you entirely, because deep down you don’t really want to be here at all.”

It is a hell of a thing to have your deepest fears verbalized by a complete stranger. I don’t want to hear anymore. I don’t want to think about what he’s saying, or what it means.

For a second time, I find myself storming out of Mr. Volkov’s presence. He says things that nobody should ever say, and he says them in a way that makes me absolutely terrified that they are probably true. He is the manifestation of all my fears, and I’d rather be driving through the countryside covered in blood and thinking about how to hide two bodies than talk about this.

He is up in a flash, pushing the door closed ahead of me, one tattooed arm preventing my leaving.

I should kill him for this.

“I don’t need to see your mate, because your mate knows who she is. There is nothing broken inside her. Yes, she has suffered, but she has the temperament that adjusts to such circumstances, and she is the one now experiencing pack life for the first time. Her needs are being met. You’re the one who needs to do the work,Maître.”

“Don’t call me that. The title feels mocking falling from your lips.”

---