Page 99 of Purchased

I look down the length of the table and I see Jenny smiling with a new, younger man. I barely recognize her at first because of how much happiness has transformed her. She no longer looks pale. She no longer seems to be apologizing for her existence with every breath. I feel a sense of satisfaction, knowing that the fight I started my first night here has led to her happiness.

Volkov is sitting opposite me. Armand is at the head of the table, to my left. To my right, one of the ladies who seems so overwhelmed every time she looks at me picks at her meal while hanging on my every word. Her name is Svetlana, and she tells me she has dreamed of finding the lost little ones of their pack.

“It wasn’t just me?”

“Six,” she says. “All the little children who were too small to shift were sent away, scattered across the world. We thought we would find them later, when the war ended. But the war didn’t end. We did. The pack now, the one Volkov leads, it is not really a pack. It’s a collection of strays held together by tragedy.” She speaks elegantly and with great depth and loss.

“I am sorry,” I tell her.

“I should be the one apologizing to you. I was one of the ones who failed you. I am sorry you grew up without a mother or father, without a pack, without anything but the hunger that hollows us all out if it is not sated. I am glad you were found. I am glad you have fed.”

She’s referring to my various crimes of vengeance and justice. There is no judgment besides approval in her tone. She does not have the same values that Armand does. Hers are the same as the ones that live in me.

“So, do you all kill people, or…”

“We have learned to tame our wilder instincts. We cannot survive a modern world with a hyper-violent approach. The civilized will not tolerate it. They hunt us down and eradicate us. We have to at least pretend to be good people.”

“Have you met people? Almost none of them are good. That’s why killing them is so moreish.”

Armand runs a warning hand over my shoulder.

“I mean, wrong,” I say, refinishing the sentence. “Deeply, deeply wrong.”

Svetlana smiles. “We are all beings in a changing world,” she says. “We must adapt, or die.”

I’ll take that as a yes. I sit among my people, feeling the coiled animal instincts in us all. Yes, even in Volkov. I am starting to think I hated him so much not because he didn’t feel like family, but perhaps because he did. Because I saw myself in him. Felt myself in him. Because his proximity made my yearning all the worse, ignited all the pain in me, and made me want to hide in a dungeon, kept like a monster, rather than feel any of it.

That’s gone now. The sadness, the angst. I feel belonging. I feel like I am home.

EPILOGUE

Beatrix

Armand and I are married in a beautiful ceremony at the old medieval church in Fontlune. My dress is handmade by the women who came to live with us, the survivors of the wars that took my mother, my father, my family, my sense of self and safety. They have worked on it tirelessly while telling me stories of the days gone before, the horrors they endured, and the love they held onto.

They rely on us now, on Armand and me.

As we make our vows, I feel the weight of responsibility settling on my shoulders. We are the alphas of the de Lune pack. We are the progenitors of a new generation… I can feel the squirming of life inside me even as the pastor performs the ceremony.

I am not only promising myself to Armand. I am promising myself to the future, to our babies. To those who will come after us. I am promising that we will never allow the same kinds of war that broke my pack and destroyed my family to come to ours.

It’s all very serious. I never imagined a wedding day would have so much weight to it. I never imagined a wedding at all; even when Armand would talk about it, it felt like something for other people, not for me.

But here I am, a bride, surrounded by her family. True family. People who love me, care for me, want me to be happy, and are excited for the future generations yet to be born.

* * *

Armand

Beatrix is beautiful, radiant in the white lace gown that was stitched by hand by the ladies who constructed every part of it, including the veil, over long nights.

I do not think she understands her beauty the way I do. But I think she understands her power. There is some solemnity in my mate, a ferocity that burns even here, at the altar.

She does not take these vows lightly, nor does she take impending motherhood with anything other than the utmost seriousness. She is young, but she is clear-eyed. I have heard her quizzing the ladies, asking them what happened in the terrible nights of war that took her from her family forever.

Le curéprompts us for our vows, and looks on approvingly, along with all of our family, as we promise ourselves to one another.

“I promise to defend you, to possess you, to love you, to cherish you, to own you, to protect you, and to have and hold you every day of my life,” I vow.

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