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Story: Purchased (Bound Mates #3)
CHAPTER 8
A rmand
My mate keeps her secrets, but our lovemaking is so passionate I had started to forget that they mattered. We are forging something between us, something out of blood and lust, not tenderness and trust. I will take the former if I cannot have the latter.
I would never have slayed Duplante that way if not for her influence. Not that she asked me to do it, or that she had any idea it was in the cards, but something in her eyes when she saw me with the sword, an intense approval, made his fate inevitable.
She liked seeing me violent.
She liked seeing me merciless.
She liked seeing me kill.
Many of the men in the pack have told me how finding their mate made them better. I am almost certain Beatrix makes me worse.
I relish it deeply.
Probably shouldn’t.
For too long I have been polite, controlled, passive at times. I have allowed life to flow by. I have let the pack do as they will, trusting in the forces of habit and propriety to manage their behavior.
I see now that life as I desire it to be requires more aggression, more forcefulness. The willingness to do what must be done.
* * *
“So,” Marcel says in the early light of morning as I attempt to get my affairs in order while being able to think of nothing besides my mate. “Killed a man last night, did you?”
“He was asking for it.”
“I’d say he was. He’s been sitting on one of our largest estates for years and funneling the profits into private accounts. I was going to talk to you about it, but you were knee deep in your new mate.”
“Knee deep?”
“I didn’t want to mention the actual body part, Ma?tre , at the risk of being disrespectful and losing my head.” He smiles to let me know he is joking about the last part.
The pack is having breakfast, but I leave my mate sleeping. She had a very big day yesterday and undoubtedly needs her rest. I need to see how everybody is reacting to the events. A death in the pack is an occasion, no matter how it comes about.
Breakfast, held in the conservatory, is busy as ever. The chateau contains thirty bedrooms and a good two-thirds of them are occupied at the moment. This is a place of respite for many, but not all of the pack.
Madame Foisin approaches me with a broad smile on her face. There is flour on her apron, and a little in her hair. She is a lovely woman who cooked for my father when he was a child, which gives some indication of her age. She is the most senior of us all, and the kitchens are her domain.
“ Ma?tre , I was wondering, do you think I should make a gateau or a tarte Tatin ?”
“For…”
“For the funeral. We will be laying Duplante to rest later today.”
I had not thought of catering the murder I committed, but I suppose that is part of the natural order of things.
“Ask his mate, perhaps.”
“Jennifer is in mourning and will not eat.”
I feel a deep pang of guilt at those words. “Don’t worry,” she says. “The man was terrible, and she will be better off for it. Sooner or later, every alpha makes his mark on the pack. Sometimes is it a terrible thing, but it is always necessary.”
I was concerned that the pack might react poorly to Duplante’s passing, but as a group they simply began to plan the funeral. His mate is in mourning, but not in a particularly deep way, I think. She has been relieved of a terrible burden.
* * *
Beatrix
I wake up, knowing exactly where I am because I have dreamed of it all night long. My mind has been working overtime to try to integrate everything that has happened since I last slept.
I was terrified that the auction at the orphanage would lead me to ruin, but so far I seem to have fallen on my feet. I have a handsome, incredibly passionate mate. I belong to a pack of wolves, which means I am no longer alone in the world. I am finally with my own kind. I have every reason to be happy.
I don’t know where Armand is, but that doesn’t worry me. I have the sense that in this place, he is everywhere. His essence fills every inch and corner of this ancient French castle, which feels like a true home for our kind.
I find myself shedding a tear of relief. This is everything I never dared dream of. I had come to expect life to hurt, and to be empty of everything I need. I never imagined there was a place I belonged.
Getting up and dressing in the simplest of the dresses in my new wardrobe, I go and explore the place. There are wolves everywhere, but the chateau is by no means crowded. It is full of little nooks and secret spaces, each of which I want to come to know.
As I wander, I hear the unmistakable sound of someone crying. I am drawn to it, just as I was when I lived in the orphanage. If someone is hurt, I want to help.
I turn a corner and stop, realizing who it is.
The woman from last night. The one whose husband lost his head.
“I’m sorry,” I say, apologizing for intruding on her. And maybe slightly for the other thing, but probably not.
She looks up at me with a tearful gaze.
“I’ve lost my mate,” she says. “He was a good man.”
I know you’re not supposed to argue with sad people, but I can’t help myself. I care, I really do, but I have a hard time talking like I do.
“He was demonstrably not a good man.”
“He was my mate,” she sobs. “He was all I had in this world.”
“You should consider getting more things. Maybe a hobby. Maybe stamp collecting.”
My words do not hit the way I want them to. They don’t help in the slightest. Actually, they make things a lot worse, because they turn her sadness into anger. Her face screws up and her eyes narrow with vicious anger, and she looks at me with true fury.
“You’re a little bitch. You’ll see. The alpha is sweet with you now, but over time he will treat you just like my man treated me. And maybe one day someone will kill him, and then you will know the pain I feel.”
“If he ever treats me the way Duplante treated you, I will kill him myself.” I pause, realizing that isn’t quite fair. “I might kill him anyway, you know.”
Her eyes widen.
“You’re a monster!”
“We’re all monsters. It’s our whole thing. We’re people who become wolves and devour human flesh.”
“We don’t devour human flesh!”
Another faux pas. I’m really racking them up today.
I try to reset the conversation a little.
“I am sorry you’re hurting. I really am. But that guy sucked, and if Armand hadn’t killed him, I think I would have sooner or later.”
“You?” She laughs bitterly. “You’re a female. You’ll be used to breed and nothing more. Me? I’ll never have another mate. I’ll never be bred again.”
“That’s up to you. Why don’t you try one of the younger males?”
She laughs, more out of shock than amusement.
“They’re a decade younger than me.”
“You could be a cougar as well as a wolf.”
She smiles weakly and shakes her head. “We get one mate.”
“I don’t believe that. I think we have special mates, but there’s nothing in life where there’s only one. I don’t believe your fated mate would curse at you in mixed company and get his head cut off.”
She starts to cry even more, and I slink away, feeling guilty and unable to help. Wolves put a lot of stock in fated mates and lifelong bonds, but I think sometimes a lifelong bond is better burned than endured. If I was talked to like a piece of shit and treated the same way, I’d rather be alone. I don’t care about the fucking mate bond. As much as I might be attracted and attached to Armand, I won’t be suffering for it.
Fuck that.
“There you are!” Armand steps around the corner, and his appearance makes my body flush with excitement and arousal. Looking at him is a chemical experience, like I’m doing a drug of some kind.
“Hi,” I say, instantly shy. This time yesterday, I didn’t know this man. Now, when I look at his handsome, angular, elegant face, I am internally set alight. It’s unsettling as much as it is exciting.
I wonder if Jenny felt that about the man who died, if she thrilled to him before he called her a curt name, or otherwise abused her.
“I wondered where you’d got to,” he says, with just enough concealed concern in his voice to tell me that he thought I’d run away. It’s not a ridiculous thought. Running away was my thing, for a while, until I realized that terrible things happen outside an orphanage, and sometimes awful walls can keep you safe.
“I was just looking around. Is that not allowed?”
“Of course it is allowed, this is your home. I am just cautious. I waited my entire life to find you, and now that I have found you, having you out of my sight creates a pain I didn’t know was possible to feel.”
I smile.
“Breakfast,” he says. “You must be starving.”
I am.