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CHAPTER 11

A rmand

It takes some time to find the right person to provide us with some kind of mental health guidance, but I believe I have done it. Beatrix has been confined to the chateau since the murder, and she seems to have abided by her grounding with relative grace, though one never knows with a girl like her what she’s really thinking, planning, or even doing.

We are roughly three weeks into our mate-ship when help arrives in the form of a massive wolf shifter from the far north. I greet him with more than a little relief, get him settled, and go and retrieve my mate from the corner of the library where she has ensconced herself.

“Beatrix,” I say, making her look up from her book.

“Hmm?”

“There’s someone I’d like you to meet. Someone who is going to help us with our communication issues.”

Her eyes widen a fraction. She shuts her book.

“You didn’t actually get a therapist, did you?”

“I did. And you’re going to talk to him.”

“You got a man? Why?”

“Because the number of shifters who are also therapists and who will agree to live in a remote chateau in France is close to one. So close to one that it is one.”

“I don’t want to talk to some shifter man.”

“We’re both going to talk to him. Separately, and together.”

“Have you ever seen the TV show Hannibal ?”

“Yes. Why?”

“That guy was a therapist. He ate people.”

“Beatrix, you eat people.”

She laughs, then rolls her eyes. “Okay, sort of, but also no. I don’t eat them. It’s just wolves can mostly kill by biting. I’m stuck with biting adjacent killing techniques. I only eat people when I have to.”

That statement could do with some unpacking, for starters. I hope our therapist is up to the task.

* * *

Beatrix

I knew he would punish me for murdering the man in the village and almost getting us both killed. I thought he’d spank me, fuck me, breed me, the usual. I never suspected he’d go this far and make me actually talk to somebody about my feelings. This is cruel and unusual punishment.

“I really don’t want to talk to anybody.”

“I know, that’s why you need the therapy. He won’t report to me. You can tell him anything. It will be a place for you to come to terms with what has happened to you, and maybe you’ll feel less like murdering every man you meet.”

“I don’t want to murder every man I meet. Besides, won’t I just murder him?”

Armand snorts. “It would be interesting to see you try.”

“You think I can’t kill your little therapist? The pack is scared of me, Armand. They know what I’m like. They defer to me.”

“You’re right. They do. I don’t think you’ll intimidate this wolf.”

I put my book down and stand up. “We’ll see about that.”

Armand is smirking as he leads me to an office on the same floor as the other important rooms. His office is down the hall, but not so close he’ll be able to hear.

“You’re really not going to listen in on this? Bug the session?”

“No, Beatrix. Our problem is a lack of trust. That’s not going to be solved by invading your privacy. Whatever you say to Mr. Volkov stays with him.”

He taps on the door.

“Come in!” The words issue from behind the door. They sound a little deep and a little gruff, but I’m not afraid.

“Go on,” he says. “I’ll be in my office afterward if you want to talk.”

“Talking is about the last thing I want to do,” I say, pushing the door open and flicking it shut behind me.

“You’re Mr. Volkov?”

I meet my therapist with my neck craned back because he’s standing near the door, apparently on his way over to open it, and he’s very fucking tall.

“I’m Mr. Volkov.”

Mr. Volkov is six and a half feet of muscle and tattoos. He has heavyset dark brows, bright blue piercing eyes, and a massive jaw. He has to be forty something, he’s gnarled, he’s worn, and he’s scarred. He does not look like a therapist. He looks like an executioner. He has an accent, too. Not quite Russian, but somewhat Russian. I’m not good at picking accents.

“I’m in the wrong room,” I say.

I turn to leave, but as I go through the door, I find myself face to face with Armand, who gently, but firmly nudges me back in and shuts the door behind me again.

“Apparently I’m not free to leave.”

Mr. Volkov says nothing. He just lumbers across the room and seats himself, making the chair he’s sitting in seem small.

I look around the room. We’re on the ground floor. That’s handy. I go to the window—the chateau has lovely old windows that have leadlight tracing across them in a sort of grid and are more than large enough to open and step out of. I do this, only to find that Armand has moved around the house in time to snap at my feet as they exit the window. He’s in his wolf form for the snapping part, but he slips back into his human form to lecture me. I do like the sight of my mate standing naked in the garden looking stern. Maybe I can convince him to take me upstairs and not force me to do this whole ridiculous charade.

“You’re staying in there for the hour,” he says. “Stop trying to run away.”

I huff and sigh, and put my leg back in.

“There’s no point, this psycho doesn’t say anything anyway. I think you got a dud,” I say.

“Back inside. Do therapy.”

I go back inside and lean up against the wall, as far from the so-called therapist as possible, staying at right angles to him so I can keep him in my peripheral vision.

He just sits there.

Time ticks by.

He sits there.

Until I lose my mind and start hammering him with questions.

“What is the point of you? Why are you here? You want to cash a check for occupying a chair? You think you’re scary because you’re covered in tattoos? I’m not scared of you.”

He moves his eyes to me. Nothing else. Just his eyes. I notice again that they’re blue. Solid, boring, generic blue.

“Fuck, you are the worst therapist anybody has ever heard of. Worse than Hannibal. At this point I wouldn’t care if you tried to turn me into creme fra?che , it would be more interesting than this.”

His brow moves a fraction. He makes a note.

“It’s fancy sour cream,” I say. “I learned that here. What did you write down?”

He doesn’t answer.

Oh, this is fucking hilarious. We’re both playing the not talking game.

I know how to deal with it. I sit down too, may as well be comfortable. I choose the chaise by the window because it’s the seat furthest from the man, and the light coming in from behind me will help silhouette me against the window. He won’t be able to see my expression as well.

I settle in for an hour of silence. I figure we’ve burned five, maybe ten minutes already. And judging by the way other girls used to talk about therapists, I know the hour session is only fifty minutes. So I reckon there’ll be forty-five minutes of silence to contend with. Easy.

The stretch of time keeps extending out. He just sits there like he doesn’t care. I look at the clock on the wall, which I suddenly realize is there. It’s been three minutes. God, this is going to take forever.

I start singing to myself to pass the time.

“This is the song that does not end, oh it goes on and on my friend. Some people started singing it not knowing what it was, but I will go on singing it forever just because this is the song that does not end…”

I trail off after a few rounds of that.

“You’re not going to talk? You’re not going to say anything?” I ask the question in salty tones. He’s really starting to annoy me.

“How does it feel when people won’t talk to you?”

“I don’t care. But when I’m locked in a room with them, not great. You’re kind of an asshole. A huge asshole. And you’re a terrible therapist.”

He doesn’t respond. I restrain myself from throwing things at him. Eventually, the hour is up, and I leave.

“Asshole,” I say as I exit the room, swiftly shutting the door and running down the hall to Armand’s office, where I burst in practically seething with rage.

Armand looks up at me, brow raised because yeah, it’s rude to throw a door open, but his expression quickly turns to concern as I lay out my complaints.

“He didn’t fucking say anything! He didn’t fucking do anything. He just sat there, charging God knows what per hour, wasting everyone’s time. It was bullshit. It was a complete waste of time. I won’t be going back. I hate him.”

Armand frowns. “He didn’t say anything?”

“He said his name was Mr. Volkov, and he asked me how it felt when people don’t talk to me, and that was it. That was the whole session.”

“Let me talk to him.”

“Good luck with that, Ma?tre !”

Armand throws a look at me that tells me using his pack’s term for him might very well backfire on me later. I grin. At least I can still get a reaction from him.

* * *

Armand

I find Mr. Volkov on the balcony outside the library, smoking a cigarette. He has shed his jacket and is down to shirtsleeves that are rolled up to his elbows. He is leaning over the railing, but stands straight up when I get closer.

“ Ma?tre ,” he nods.

“Mr. Volkov. How was your first session?”

His thick brows rise just a fraction, as if he finds the question surprising, or as if he expects me to feel as though the question was out of place. He is still facing the garden, not me.

“I cannot discuss private sessions.”

“I see. Well. From the sounds of it, there’s not much to discuss. You sat largely in silence, doing nothing, saying little. Beatrix was confused and concerned. Why did you antagonize my mate?”

Mr. Volkov glances at me briefly then responds in a slow drawl tinged with a Nordic accent that makes him sound simultaneously superior and disinterested.

“Why does the fact that your mate is unhappy with me, though unharmed in every way, make you so defensive? Why can’t she be annoyed without you coming to her aid?”

“I paid you to help her, not piss her off.”

“You paid me to help establish healthier dynamics. I have my own methods for doing that. You agreed, at the outset, to try these methods. Now that your mate is complaining, you want to fix the problem, and you’re furious with me.”

“I’m not furious. I’m curious.”

He offers me a sidelong smirk, still not giving me the courtesy of looking at me directly. This man is arrogant. He was more pleasant when I initially interviewed him, but that was over Zoom, and he had to look at the camera.

“If you don’t feel able to offer services, we are happy to host you at the nearby town…”

“You mean the one where your mate murders people?”

Blunt. Rude. And not something that should ever be said out loud. We have managed to keep Beatrix’s murderous outburst quiet. The villagers believe it was a freak wolf attack, and the distance of police means that there was no investigation.

“You may pack your things, Monsieur ,” I say.

He turns to me, a smile on his face.

“You really don’t like the truth, do you, Ma?tre ? Too used to dealing with people who have to submit to you in conversation and deed?”

“This is not about me. I retained your services because I want help for my mate. I will participate because you told me that it would help her. But I did not consent to be spoken down to by…”

“Yeah! Kill him!”

Beatrix pops up behind us, having apparently been listening in. She heard me getting heated. She felt my energy shift. She caught me just before I got to the verge of… I sigh inwardly. I have to manage myself better, or I will never manage her.

“I’m not going to kill him, Beatrix.” I turn to her, where she is smiling hopefully, her long, dark hair flowing in the breeze. She is beautiful when she is vengeful.

“You’re not?” She pouts. “Why not?”

“He’s annoying, not deserving of murder.”

“Well, I can’t kill him by myself. He’s too big.”

“Beatrix, go and do something else. Anything else.”

She smirks and turns away, causing me to rethink my instructions immediately. “Wait! Not anything else. Everybody needs to remain unscathed.”

I turn back to Mr. Volkov once she is gone, unsettled with half my mind now wondering what she is doing.

“As you were saying.”

“Yes. As I was saying. You two are a good match,” he says.

“Oh, you think so?”

Is he trying to suck up to me now? Some kind of psychological head game?

“The pair of you have one thing in common with each other. You both like to lie to yourselves about what you are feeling. You’re furious. She’s hurt.”

“I’m not furious.”

“You ooze with repressed fury, Ma?tre .”

“I do not.”

“Of course you do. That is why you have done very little to restrain your mate. Why you delight in her viciousness. She is what you wish you could be. She’s more free than you are.”

“I have no interest in controlling my mate, because I want her free to love me. I have seen males who control their mates in ways that crush their spirits. I want to bring hers out of her, not be another person in her life she has to hide from.”

He looks at me keenly, and I am sure what he considers to be perceptively. “Are you hiding?”

Oh, fuck off.

I turn on my heel without saying those three little words that are absolutely pounding in my brain, and I leave.

I, ma?tre , alpha of the pack, abandon my balcony because the man on it makes me think things I do not want to think and feel things I do not want to feel.

She’s right, he is an asshole.

“Are you sure we can’t kill him?”

Trixie slides out of the shadows in the hall as I pass. She hadn’t gone far. The likely interpretation is that she was spying on us, but I get the feeling she was keeping an eye out for me. I think we both feel a certain kind of threat from Mr. Volkov.

“We could, but we’re not going to,” I say, taking her hand in mine. “Come with me. We’re getting out of here.”

“Where are we going?”

“The garage.”

It feels like we’re escaping the chateau as we slide into my sports car and gun the six-cylinder motor in all its old world, dinosaur sputtering charm. I push the pedal to the floor and the acceleration throws us back in our seats as we race down the driveway.

“No train today?”

“No train today,” I shout back over the rushing wind that demands I put the roof up.

We are both wind-swept when it slides into place. We look at each other, grinning.

“He got under your skin, huh? I bet he barely had to say anything. He just looks at you and he knows what to say. It’s creepy. And I say that as a murderous she-wolf.”

I snort.

I start to wonder if I overreacted when I got Mr. Volkov to come in and help us. Maybe she doesn’t need therapy. I certainly don’t.

I don’t think anybody actually cares if Bea wants to go about killing men who deserve it. The police will not like it, but the police rarely like anything.

Besides, we all know that newly shifted females can be a handful. Most are not overtly murderous, but the way the sudden influx of animal temper pervades the body can certainly affect more than mood. Also, to be absolutely fair to everybody involved, I was warned. The director’s words ring in my ears . No returns.

I would never return her, but it is clear I will have to tame her.

Without Mr. Volkov.

“So did you fire him?”

“I don’t know.”

She cocks her head and gives me a look that I know, even out of my peripheral vision, is a special kind of withering. “How can you not know?”

“I told him to pack his bags, but then he just kept talking. I’m not sure if he considers himself fired or not.”

“Is that how that works? People get to decide how fired they are?”

“Not typically, no. I did cut a man’s head off not that long ago; that should still count for something.”

“Sure,” she says, grinning broadly. “You’re resting on your old murder laurels. You have to keep things current, you know. You’re only as good as your next horrible death scene.”

“You really need therapy,” I laugh, shaking my head. “I think we will have to keep Mr. Volkov on.”

“I don’t like that guy.”

“Neither do I, but he might have a purpose. Even if we hate him.”

We drive through winding country roads, putting distance between ourselves and the chateau. Beatrix doesn’t ask where we are going. She doesn’t care. She just wants to go with me.

Our bond is growing by the day. Not in the way I imagined it would, but it is growing. In spite of Volkov’s antagonism, I already feel closer to Beatrix. Maybe the therapy is working, just not as I imagined it would.

I take her to the city, to a place of sacred shifter history. I want her to feel grounded in herself, and with us as a pack. I want her to know she belongs, even though she was raised among humans and doesn’t remember her history very well.

“There are legends of wolf shifters and werewolves dating back to the 1600s and beyond in Bordeaux,” I tell her as we wind through the narrow streets. “Our kind has always roamed this place, and not always in civilized ways. Humanity has been kind enough to turn a blind eye where it could.”

“You mean they know about us, but pretend they don’t?”

“In the 1600s a young man was caught eating people in this very city,” I say. “He told them he was a werewolf, created by a mysterious figure in the forest, and was sent to a monastery where he lived out his days as a werewolf among the monks.”

“What?”

“The monastery was in fact a bachelor pack. I don’t know if the magistrates at the time were aware, or if it was an act of diplomacy on the abbot’s part, but yes, the story ends well for him. Not so well for those he ate beforehand.”

“Is that why I’m here? To learn that a pack can reform a wild wolf?”

“That would be an improving lesson, wouldn’t it?”

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.

I suppose this could be one of the places one would take a lady of the night to if one had no other place to go.

This could go quite badly if it is not handled well. We were on the verge of trespassing, and with Beatrix being on the gate, they could argue that we had trespassed.

The penalty is likely a fine, but we could be arrested. Given what we have both done on our pack lands, this little crime feels like nothing, but that doesn’t mean anything in this tight historical alley.

“She’s my fiancée,” I explain.

“No, I’m not,” Beatrix pipes up at precisely the wrong time. “He hasn’t asked me to marry him.”

“I haven’t?”

“No!”

“You’re right. I forgot. I’m so sorry.”

I go down on one knee before the gendarmes.

“Beatrix, will you marry me?”

There’s a brief moment of confusion and excitement and then I see her expression clear.

“No,” she says. “Of course not, not now I know you’re a criminal.”

The gendarme curses at me.

“Get up, idiot. The two of you are trespassing. Name and address, please.”

“Armand de Lune, Chateau Loup de Lune,” I say.

They exchange looks. They see the way we are dressed, the way we speak, especially the way I speak, that there is some money behind us. That could go either way in terms of their thinking. Some gendarmes are noble beings, but others take full advantage of their authority.

This again starts to feel like a potentially concerning situation. The pack does not know where we are. I brought no retinue. I brought no backup of any kind.

“And your name?” he asks Beatrix.

“None of your fucking business.”

“Her name is Beatrix de Lune,” I say with a glare to her as I will her not to make this worse.

“You said she’s not married. Where is her ID?”

I feel the interaction sliding sideways at a pace I am absolutely not comfortable with.

“I can show my ID, and…”

“No, we need her ID.”

I am not worried about myself, but I am absolutely worried about Beatrix. They have her backed into a corner.

And that is when all hell breaks loose.

This time I see her capacity for killing up close, near enough to feel the blood spatter. I feel arterial sanguine essence splash my face, my neck, cover my clothes, saturate my shirt.

Stopping her is impossible. The second gendarme tries to run, but she bounds to him and dispatches him by grabbing him by the neck and shaking him as hard as she can. There is less blood this time, but he is just as dead.

She flows into her naked, feral human form and grins wildly. “Historically accurate, no?”

There isn’t time to panic or even chastise her. “We’re going to need to dispose of these bodies.”

“I can eat one, but two is a stretch.”

“Stay here.”

I go to the car, open the trunk and retrieve the blankets and towels kept there in case a picnic should ensue, or a swim should happen. There are spare clothes, of course, because a shifter never knows when he is going to burst out of his attire.

“Put this on,” I say, tossing her my spare clothes. I wrap the bodies up as best I can, knowing we are leaving a bloody mess, knowing that it will be found, certain that this is a mistake that will echo throughout time.

The drive back to the chateau is heavy, and without the gaiety that the drive away contained.

“Are you mad at me?” Beatrix has the nerve to ask the question while wearing my shirt and blazer, sitting in the passenger seat with her legs tucked up under her and an expression that I can only describe as serene on her beautiful face.

Meanwhile, the blood on my skin has started to itch, and my shirt sticks to it whenever I move, creating an unpleasant sensation of fabric and blood sucking away with every motion of my chest or arms.

“Yes,” I say. “I am mad at you.”

“I thought so,” she says, satisfied, as if that makes her feel good to know she read my expression right.

“It was a mistake to stop beating you,” I sigh. “I got soft and now we have two dead gendarmes to deal with.”

“That’s your fault. The bodies part.”

“How could it possibly be my fault?”

“You wouldn’t let me eat them. We could have taken them back down to the crypt and fed on them and left their bones with the rest. It would have been a poetic and romantic end for them.”

There is something wrong with my mate, something psychologically darker than I could have imagined. She looks innocent because of her age and her pretty features, but she is the most fearsome of our kind I have ever encountered.

“You don’t agree?”

“I think eating people whose only crime was trying to make sure nothing untoward was happening to you is not the proper way to reward them.”

“Is that what they were doing?”

“Yes. They probably thought I was taking advantage of you. Older man with younger woman, out late at night, she has no documentation, but does have an English accent… they probably thought you were being trafficked.”

“Oh,” she says. Then she repeats it more softly. “Oh.”

“And that is why they are going to have a proper burial and why their families will be receiving a stipend from an anonymous source for the rest of their lives.”

“So you’re really mad,” she says with a sigh.

“For killing going on three men now? I’m not pleased, Beatrix. That much is certain.”

“I just wanted them to leave us alone. They were being rude and invasive.”

“That was their job.”

“Well, they should have done it more nicely. Besides, you don’t know what their intentions really were. They might have been trying to help me, or they might have been trying to take advantage of a teenager from another country with a weird accent and no ID.”

She’s not wrong. She’s not right, either.

The sun shines. The wind whips through the open windows. The car handles a little worse than it did before because it is light and the rear is around four hundred fifty pounds heavier than before.