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CHAPTER 9

A rmand

Beatrix settles in with the pack quite well, but of course I cannot let the mystery of her provenance lie. I send Daniel to scrounge up all the information he can find about her. He’s a solid man, and I know if he finds something scandalous he won’t use it against us.

A week passes, and life begins to somewhat settle into its new routine. I am a busy man, splitting my time between never-ending pack business and time with my mate.

I have avoided bringing up anything to do with her past, because it makes her uncomfortable, and she has deftly avoided talking about anything that happened outside the orphanage itself.

Daniel returns with tidings of his investigation, but I know the moment I see him I am not going to like what he has to say. He has a particular hangdog look about him that suggests failure.

“Bad news, Ma?tre ,” Daniel says, slinging himself into the chair in front of my desk.

“Yes?”

“The orphanage is gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?”

“Not the building itself of course, Ma?tre , but the inhabitants. The structure, as it were. There are no more orphans, and no more staff. There’s nothing besides the shell of the place. Looks like the director took your money and ran.”

“Did you find any records?”

“No. I found nothing. The place has been stripped bare.”

I find myself pacing. The notion that he took the money and did God knows what to the girls who were too young to be adopted bothers me. I might have inadvertently made some lives very miserable.

“They didn’t disappear. Track them. The director. The records. Search registries of storage facilities. I want to know who my mate is.”

“A DNA sample might be helpful. There’s a database held by some parties…”

“You mean the Americans?”

“No. I was thinking the Russians.”

I let out a sigh at the prospect of attempting to get information in or out of Russia at this point in time.

“From what I last heard, the Russian packs are overrun with…” I don’t even want to say it. The cold ones are rampant in the northern climes. They were run out of France many years ago, and I hope that I do not have to do it again in my time. Vampires are like rodents. They creep in under cover of darkness and they suck the life out of a place.

“Yes. I know. But at this point, if we want information…” he says. I know the Russian packs have been dealing with vampires. I’ve heard rumors of marriages and worse. We won’t be stooping that far.

“Let’s look for the director first.”

“Or perhaps you could convince the young lady herself to be forthcoming.”

“I don’t think she knows very much. She was young when taken to the orphanage. Whatever happened to her after that is clearly unpleasant and nothing she cares to remember, let alone recount. No, this is a task for you, Daniel.”

“Very well, Ma?tre . But I think you should send Antoine. He’s older. People respect him more. He can walk into any official building and look like he works there.”

“Not a bad idea,” I say. “Is that what you want, to be off the hook?”

“I just think Antoine would do a better job.”

“And you miss the cooking at the chateau.”

“And I miss the cooking here,” he admits. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.”

* * *

A week later…

While the mystery of her heritage is being resolved, I focus on Beatrix. I want to show her how good life can be with us, and I want to show her the world she now inhabits. A visit to the local village is, therefore, essential

We are beginning the happiest days of our life. I am determined they will be such. I may not know everything about Beatrix, but I know enough to understand she has had precious few nice moments in her life. That is something I can and will remedy.

The local village is a treat I have been saving for her, waiting until she seemed settled and ready to be out among the general public. A week has gone by without major incident, and she has been relatively controllable. She has been practically civilized in most respects.

We take the train into Fontlune. I had tracks run there because the journey is so picturesque, running as it does along the cliffs of the area that look out over rolling hills dotted with ancient buildings. This is one of the oldest parts of the world, where humanity has made its home since the stone age. The villagers are happy enough for the tracks as they allow for some freight to be brought that would otherwise be stuck on trucks that rarely like to rumble through the crumbling country roads.

Fontlune is a medieval village set on a cliff side, much the same way the chateau is, but older still. The buildings here have not changed measurably since the founding of the town. Red-roofed colombage buildings made of graying yellow stone and half-timbered walls straggle along the cliff face, and the center of the town is tucked in under the tall church tower.

It is a place in which time has been assiduously banished, and it is one of the places I feel most at peace in the world. The villagers have been under the protection of my pack for generations.

“Here we are,” I say, offering her my hand to help her alight.

She looks very different than she did when we first met. She is bathed, and dressed in calico white linen, her hair sleek and shiny and falling in loose curls down past her shoulders. The ladies of the pack have made it their mission to ensure she looks the part, offering various cosmetic services, hair trims, nails, even a little trimming of her brows.

I forget, sometimes, how young she is. Not yet nineteen, and yet she has a pack looking up to her. I am familiar with the unseen weight of that sort of responsibility. I wonder if she feels it. I wonder if she knows how important she is.

“I had no idea there were people so close,” she says. “We run as wolves so near this town.”

“It’s a small town. Only two hundred inhabitants, and far enough from civilization that there’s very little likelihood of running into visitors. These people have lived alongside the pack for generations. Their local legends speak of wolves who become men, so any sightings are considered part of the local reality.”

“Seems reckless, but okay, if it works for you.” She looks around at the scenery. I wonder if she sees what I see, if she feels a certain pride at being part of this incredible beauty that can only exist where man has been in concert with nature for hundreds of years.

“There’s wolves everywhere,” she says.

She’s referring to the decorations, little wolves painted under windows and under doors by hands long passed on, refreshed by more recent ones. This is one of many traditions arising from the unique relationship between supernatural and typical.

“Everybody born here is natively considered part of the pack. They’re human, of course, but they’ve provided cover for us for a long time and now we return the favor. I am on the council, of course, and there are plenty of economic…”

“Can we get ice cream?”

“Better. We can get gateau Basque.”

We eat the sweet pastry treat, and for an afternoon we are a young couple in love, simply and completely enchanted with one another as slow liquid sun makes its way over the ancient stones.

“It could be like this every day for as long as we live,” I tell her. “Our children playing in the square, us enjoying local baking. This is what I want for you. For us. Happy ever after.”

She snorts into her gateau . “Sometimes you talk like a cheesy romance novel.”

“Someone has to hold hope when others cannot. That is half the job of an alpha.”

She doesn’t say anything to that directly. She finishes her gateau and looks around at the various sights and draws in the sounds and finally musters a response.

“This is beautiful,” she says, her tone half-annoyed, as if admitting that the place is pretty is something of a chore. She is enjoying herself more than she wants to. That is the problem. Life had become one series of terrible events for her, and now I am showing her that it can be good.

It would be easy to regard her tone as petulant and tempestuous, even childlike, but I see more than simple bad behavior. She is out of her element, and I know all too well that being shown good, happy things won’t necessarily make her feel good or happy.

I imagine it brings up feelings of loss, perhaps even rage when she realizes that all the suffering she went through was unnecessary. There were happy lives to live all along. People were cruel to her not because the world is cruel, but because they were.

For now, I am pleased to see her enjoying the village as much as I do, even if she’s fighting against it.

“There are caves nearby where ancient men daubed paintings on the walls, beasts and creatures lost to modernity,” I tell her. “We can go and see them if you like.”

She gives me a smile that is only fifty percent forced. “I would like that.”

* * *

Beatrix

He is doing his best to make all of this nice, and I wish I could feel it on the inside the way I can observe it on the outside. I know intellectually that this is a beautiful village. I know this food is incredibly tasty. And I know that his imaginings of a marriage and children running barefoot around this ancient town square could very much be real.

It just doesn’t fill me with hope the way it does for him. And of course, I know why. He has lived a life in this world, in the chateau, and in this town, and with more money than he knows what to do with. Everything has always gone Armand’s way.

Nothing has ever gone my way. Every time I caught sight of a sliver of hope it was either snatched away, or worse, ended up being some kind of trap. I didn’t notice my ability to believe in good things leaving me, but I notice that it is gone now.

I can enjoy the cake for what it is, experience the day for what it is, but trust this place to be what it seems? Absolutely not. Just because things look happy doesn’t mean they are. Just because things seem good doesn’t mean they are. People are liars. They can’t help themselves.

Thanks to my better-than-average-even-for-a-wolf hearing, I can hear the bustle of the town around me, conversations taking place behind what people think are closed doors. My hearing has always been better than most. Animal senses are. I wonder if Armand has his closed off, or if he just doesn’t care, but I hear discord all around us. I can hear couples bickering. I can hear children yelling in frustration. I can smell the bitterness behind some of these smiles.

A small family wanders in front of us. Man, woman, baby in a push chair. They’ve been at the bakery.

A woman shows her husband a cute little wolf-shaped pastry. He smiles at it briefly, then rolls his eyes as she turns away and tends to their baby, sharing the treat with its grabby little hands. He pulls out his phone and opens a text. I can’t see the message, but I can smell the pheromone release he gets from it. He’s cheating right in front of his wife and baby, and I’m sure both mother and child believe implicitly in the happy family they don’t actually have.

“Beatrix?”

“Hm?”

“You weren’t listening,” Armand says, a slight note of accusation in his tone.

He’s wrong about that, of course. I was listening. I was listening to the myriad domestic scraps of all kinds going on around us. I was listening to parents telling their children to pick up their toys. I was listening to football games being turned up just that little bit louder to cover the sound of a vacuum cleaner. I was listening to dishes being done, and beers being poured, and I was listening to the bright and cheery voices of visiting couples that slipped back into dour and unhappy tones the moment they thought they had privacy.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

He gives me a patient look, his eyes fixed on mine, as if looking at me could keep my focus. Who knows. Maybe that is how that works. Maybe if I just look into his eyes, I’ll stop noticing how the world has remained more or less miserable in spite of all the beauty in it, how many cruelties are hidden away in the plain sight of mundane day.

“And you’re gone again,” he says. “What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing,” I say. I’ve shared thoughts like these before, and nobody likes to hear them. People want to hear nice things, cheerful things, the kinds of things that pour from his mouth without effort.

“I can feel the weight of that nothing, Beatrix.”

His question probes and finds me raw beneath its point.

“Sorry, I should rephrase. None of your business.”

He lets out a barking laugh of surprise, but he’s not actually offended. I do like that about him. Armand is very centered in himself. He knows who he is and what he thinks and he does not need others to be thinking the same things in order for him to maintain his opinions. It’s a very attractive quality. It almost makes me trust him. Almost.

“You are… certainly not what I am used to,” he says. “The notion of anybody in the pack telling Ma?tre what they are thinking is none of his business…” He laughs again, entirely amused. Then his expression turns intense, his eyes more silver as he crooks a finger at me. He can’t let this slide. He has to fix me. A tingle of excitement makes its way down my spine as I realize I might very well be in trouble with him. That’s more interesting than the veneer of happiness he’s been wanting me to buy into.

“Come here.”

He gets up, takes me with him, and draws me into an alcove in an alley where he runs his hands up the sides of my body, squeezing and soothing me with his grounding touch until they settle on my hips. He looks down at me, and I look up at him, the several-inch disparity in our height creating a dynamic of imbalance I will never shake.

“You,” he says, “are retreating into the recesses of your own mind, and coming out sassy.”

“You’re describing thinking. Is thinking banned in your pack?”

He lifts a brow at me, that finely shaped, elegant flock of hair signifying so much. He likes my attitude, but he knows he shouldn’t tolerate it. I’m sure he’s tempted to respond to me in kind, but he knows he has to be the alpha his pack groomed him to be, so instead of companionship there is authority.

“You have to speak with respect,” he reminds me. “I like your fire, but there are limits to what I can tolerate without having to discipline you. You’re a bad little girl sometimes.”

If only he could stop his voice from getting so thick and lustful at that last part.

“I am?”

“Mhm.” He slides his hand around and taps my ass. “And I would have it no other way.”

“Is that why you’re trying to beat it out of me?”

“Hardly,” he snorts. “I have not beaten you, Beatrix.”

“You whipped me when we first met.”

“That was different. We were strangers, and you were making a terrible scene. Besides, I had appearances to maintain.” He pauses. “I did not know you then.”

“You thought I was some other girl to be purchased for your amusement.”

“Not my amusement, for the rest of my life.”

“Mhm.”

“So cynical,” he says, taking my chin in his hand and pressing his lips to mine. “So beautiful. So brave. So bold.”

For a week, we have avoided discussing the part where he purchased me and dragged me out of the orphanage. He is so civilized in his everyday life. Like now, in this village. Pretending we are normal people enjoying a normal day. He wants so badly for me to play along with him.

But I can’t.

I won’t.

Because I see what he is underneath the veneer. I’ve seen him kill a man. I’ve seen him abduct a woman. The woman was me, and it was a week ago. So.

His kiss ignites that animal chemistry we always have, but my mind is not entirely dulled by it. He’s dangerous. I know that. It turns me on, but I’m not blind. I’m not going to believe in his happy little world when I have already seen and felt so much darkness.

That’s why there’s tension between us, a battle of wills that never really ceases. We put the hostilities aside for cake, or sex, but I think we both know that my status as purchased captive is never going to result in anything happy or healthy.

He kisses me again, more roughly, with more desire. He wishes I would just submit and be happy. He wishes this could be easy, the same way everything has always been easy for him.

I might be his first big, bad problem. He’s not ready for me. Not really. He still thinks I’m a helpless broken little orphan. I am all of those things, but I am more besides. Does he know that? Does he even begin to sense it? I don’t know.

I play small, because that’s what he wants right now.

I melt into him, because that’s what I want right now.

We play pretend together, that he is in control of me, and that I am controllable. We pretend that he knows me, and we pretend that I am known.

In the alley of a picturesque French town, we make love. Sweet, passionate, romantic, almost human love, rutting secretively against the wall of the ancient building in a quiet little alley that sees no foot traffic. Armand pins me against the wall, picking me up and holding me in place, pulling my panties to the side and sliding his cock in and out of me with devastatingly slow, gliding strokes that make me want to moan except for the knowledge that we have to be quiet. The world is going on all around us, and we are stealing pleasure and connection in the middle of its mundane play.

All the while he is fucking me, his cock swelling into the knot that will trap us together until nature declares me good and properly bred. I feel orgasm building inside me every time his hips surge up and the hard mound of his pubic bone grinds my hungry clit for a second or two before sliding away so he can slide inside me again.

Faster and faster, harder and harder until there are almost no breaks and he is just deep inside me, cock thick and knotted, his seed pumping inside my pussy and my clit grinding against him as I submit to him, to orgasm, to the impromptu afternoon breeding.

“You are such a good girl,” he praises me, dropping kisses all over my face as he holds me in place afterward, the knot slowly deflating between us. I am stretched lewdly wide, my inner walls forced to take the unnatural girth of him as my clit continues to tingle, lubricated with sweat and seed as I stay in place against that wall.

“I’ve never been a good girl,” I breathe back between his kisses.

“You’re perfect,” he says. “You are everything I ever dreamed of and more. I love you, Trixie.”

He shortens my name, makes it smaller, cuter, sweeter, all while my well-fucked pussy soaks in his seed. I like it. I like him. Alright, I love him too.

“I love you too,” I tell him. “But I’m not perfect.”

“Quiet,” he says. “ Ma?tre has declared you perfect, so you are perfect. I will not brook any argument on that front.”

His cock slides from me, a gush of our desire runs down my thighs, and he slides my underwear back into place, the gusset instantly soaking with cum that I will have to wear.

“I’m so messy,” I say.

“Yes, you are.” He rubs his hand between my legs, pressing the wet fabric against my still sensitive clit. “You’re going to feel that, aren’t you, Trixie. You’re going to remember how it felt to be claimed by your alpha. And later, when I breed you again, you’re going to be wet and ready for me, aren’t you?”

I know exactly what he wants to hear.

“Yes, Ma?tre .”

His eyes flash as I use the pack term for him, he pats my semen-soaked pussy with a possessive tap and settles my skirt back into place. “Good girl,” he says. “Very, very good girl.”

* * *

We have dinner at a little restaurant in the village, having worked up an appetite. The food is good here, simple and fresh and cooked by someone who takes pride in it. I have been spoiled for dinners since I was abducted. I have been spoiled in many ways, some could say every way.

I hear a couple of men talking about the waitress. She’s pretty and not much older than me, and I see the way she’s forced to smile at some customers when she’d probably rather drop a tankard of beer on them.

“She’s a hot little piece of ass,” says the older man behind me.

“She’s mine, she is,” his companion comments.

“Thought she told you she wasn’t interested.”

“Said she doesn’t want me, but she’ll have me, whether she likes it or not.”

I stiffen.

I don’t think Armand heard them, but I did, and the rage that fills me as a result is extraordinary.

“We have to go,” I tell him.

“We do? Why?”

“Because I am going to turn into a beast and kill the man behind us if we don’t go now.”

Armand does not ask any more questions. I think he hears the urgency in my voice and realizes that I am not speaking metaphorically. I really will kill that man. It is taking all my self-control not to slide into the form of a wolf right now and tear him limb from limb. All my life, the girls I know have been preyed on by these useless, fleshy, corpulent, stupid creatures. I myself…

I take a deep breath and try to force the memories away even as they come flooding back of their own accord.

It happened about a year ago. I had snuck out of the orphanage in the attempt to find something approximating a life. I’d run away before, but this was the first time I’d been in a city at night rather than the local town…

* * *

A year ago…

The bus back to the orphanage is late. Actually, it’s so late I don’t think it’s coming. I wonder if I read the schedule wrong, or if there’s some reason it’s not running to Burniecrag, the town where the orphanage is located.

Sitting at the bus stop with an all too thin coat pulled tight around me, I think about how angry the matron is going to be when I do finally get back. She’ll send me to the director again, and I’ll get another lecture about roaming.

A man pulls over, looks out the window of his sedan.

“The bus has stopped running. Do you need a ride?”

He looks like an average man. He has graying hair and a mustache and a work jacket that makes him seem responsible. He probably has kids my age.

“It’s cold,” he says as I get up. “And you’re out late. Your parents must be worried about you.”

“I don’t have any parents,” I say, getting into his car.

“Oh? Where are you living?”

“Burniecrag,” I say.

He sets off along the road, and for the first little bit of the journey I do not notice that anything is wrong. I am too focused on worrying about what will happen once I get back to the orphanage. A beating, probably, or worse, confinement. They will surely notice I am missing at dinner. I was rostered to wash the dishes. Perhaps I can convince them I merely shirked the dishes, rather than left the place entirely.

My thoughts are pulled from that set of concerns when I feel a large, ham-like hand settle halfway up my thigh.

I look at the man. He looks—no, leers—back at me.

My heart starts to beat faster as I realize his intentions are not what I thought. It is not the first time a man who has made me feel uncomfortable, but it is the first time one has touched me so forwardly, and in such a contained space.

“What are you doing?”

“We could get to know each other better,” he says.

“No, thank you. I’m late home. My father will be worried.”

He looks at me with the beady eyes of a lesser predator, not one who focuses on blood or meat, but one who senses weaknesses of another kind altogether. “You don’t have a father,” he says. “You would have called him if you did.”

“He’s…”

I don’t get to finish the lie because the man has pulled off the road and is trying to pull me across the car to him. He smells bad. Sour. Unwashed.

I kick him, I curse at him, and I push him away, but my struggles only make him laugh. He’s a lot larger than me, and a lot stronger. He gets out of the car, comes around to the passenger side, throws the door open and tries to pull me out that way. Kicking only gives him the chance to grab me by the ankle.

“Stop being a stupid little bitch. You’re out here on your own looking for trouble. Girls like you need to be taught what they’re good for.”

He starts ripping at my clothes, and that’s when I grab the knife he has at his waist. He thought it would function as a threat, I’m sure. He must work at the slaughterhouse, because the hilt is caked with old blood, but the blade is clean.

I punch him with it, plunging the knife into his chest. It goes in deeper than I thought it would. I figured it would be stopped by his ribcage, but apparently that’s not actually as good at stopping hard blows from a knife as you imagine.

I pull it out as he reels backward.

“You little…”

I can’t believe he’s still talking, let alone standing. I thought you died when someone stabbed you, but apparently it takes more than the one time. I do it again. And this time it is less of a desperate act and more aggressive.

I am beginning to feel very… inhuman. The sight of the blood, the smell of it, it’s all very… moreish. There are things happening inside me, tectonic shifts of flesh and being. All my life I’ve been told I can be fractious and grumpy, but now I realize it was more than that. I am furious. I am enraged. And those feelings are not bad, or any indication of weakness of character. They are entirely necessary for the transformation that is taking place now.

I stab him again. And again. I make sure that the job of protecting myself is very thoroughly and properly done, and that nobody else will ever be hurt by him.

In the aftermath of doing what had to be done, I am covered in blood. Moonlight makes it look black against my skin, and I am absolutely coated along my hands and arms. I barely recognize them. Were my nails always so long? Was there so much hair, no, fur on the back of my hands?

I find myself on all fours, my body arched in release. It feels like orgasm, like unfolding in a way I had no idea I could unfold. I have been all bunched up my whole life, pretending to be something and someone I am not.

I no longer feel fear. I certainly do not feel guilt. In their place, I feel freedom and strength. I no longer need a bus. I can run home.

Of course, that’s how I ended up naked in a field, but that’s a memory for another time.

* * *

“Did something upset you?” Armand asks the question on the way home. The train is chugging merrily through the countryside

I struggle for an explanation, something that won’t require me to actually tell him anything. “Sometimes I don’t feel like I can control myself. It feels like I’m going to come out of my skin.”

I don’t tell him what I heard, or why it upset me so much, or what I intend to do. I know he wouldn’t approve. Nobody ever approves of the way I like to fix things.

“You’ve not been shifting long, have you?” He sighs. “I wish you would tell me how you came to find your wolf self. It would help us bond.”

“Why?”

“Well, it usually comes after mating, as I mentioned…”

I am not in the mood for talk about mating, or questions about my past, or anything. I wish he’d just stop. I turn on him, angry, teeth flashing.

“You think because I have power usually bestowed by some man’s cock, I must have taken a man’s cock?”

“I’m asking questions, not making assumptions.”

“Liar. You keep asking me if I was a virgin when we met. You think I’ve fucked someone else. This is all about where my pussy has been. You know what? Fuck you, Armand. Fuck you, and your castle, and your pack, and your village, which is filled with assholes, and fuck your fucking train.”

I take my wolf form and I jump off the train.

This time I am not tired. This time I am not scared. This time I am furious and I am running from the horrific prospect of having to share one of the worst moments of my life with someone who I actually like even though I’m fighting with him right now.

I know he’ll hunt me down, but part of me hopes he won’t. I don’t want to have to share these horrible bleeding parts of myself. I don’t want to feel examined and exposed. I just want to be, and if he won’t let me exist, then…