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CHAPTER 13

A rmand

“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, Ma?tre .”

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

His tone softens a fraction. “I am not here to mock you, Armand. I am here to do what you paid me to do.”

“You’re supposed to fix the girl who drags men from their beds and slaughters them.”

“No. You’re supposed to be her alpha. You’re supposed to have control of her, and you would have control of her, if you had control of yourself.”

I surprise myself again.

I punch him in the face.

I’ve actually punched him before I even realize I’m going to do it. My fist is in motion, meeting flesh and skin and bone in a hard blow that makes my knuckles crack open and start bleeding instantly.

He’s already glaring at me furiously by the time I realize what I’ve done.

“I’m sorry,” I apologize instantly.

He opens the door. “My mistake, Ma?tre . I should not have cornered you.”

“I’ll send for the doctor.”

“No need. It’s just a bump.”

I look at his face, and see that I’ve barely marked him. My knuckles have come off worse. They’re bruised already. I can feel it. Flexing them hurts like hell, and I’ve managed to take the annoyingly thin skin off them.

I walk out of the room at a quick clip, not entirely sure where I’m going or why. There will be some pack business to attend to, I am sure, something to take my mind off all the failings the therapist I got for my traumatized mate won’t stop bringing up.

By sheer chance—or maybe not by chance at all—Beatrix intercepts me. If I did not know better, I would say my feisty young mate has been guarding me ever since Mr. Volkov’s arrival. Her concern for me is very sweet.

She grabs my wrist and pulls my hand toward her face, her eyes going slightly crossed as she inspects the damage.

“What did he do to you?”

“Nothing. I punched him.”

She smiles broadly. “Good for you!”

“ Ma?tre! ” It seems Antoine has returned from his reconnaissance mission. He is standing in the hall behind us with what I can only describe as a stricken expression on his face.

I definitely want to hear what he has to say, but I don’t want Beatrix to be a part of that conversation just yet.

“I have to attend to this,” I tell her. “We can talk more about this later, okay?”

“Okay,” she smiles. “I’m so proud of you.”

She’s adorable when she’s happy. I don’t know that I have made her as happy with anything else I’ve done. I briefly consider punching Antoine in case that makes her smile, but obviously choose not to.

* * *

Beatrix

Armand is busy, and now, so am I.

There’s something going on between the therapist and my mate. For Armand to have punched him, he must have been upset. That means Volkov upset him, and that, I will not fucking stand.

I don’t like this interloper. I don’t like what he does to Armand. I don’t like how he makes him unsure of himself. Armand is the alpha. He is my mate. Everybody he meets should bow to him. That is the natural order of things.

Mr. Volkov is an anomaly. I don’t like him. I don’t like the way he looks. There’s something about him I just can’t trust.

Armand is trying to do everything right, and that’s making him vulnerable. I’m not defenseless that way. I already know that it doesn’t matter if you try to do things right or not, things go to hell anyway.

I sniff Mr. Volkov out, following my nose. I don’t like the way he smells, either. His wolf scent is laid atop something colder, deader. Something like the scent of corpses. Sometimes one scent is stronger than the other, but nobody else seems to notice how gross he is.

I find him in the library, out on the balcony. The sun has started to set, and he is standing under the rising moon sucking on his cigarette. Disgusting habit. Maybe that’s where the dead scent comes from.

I’d push him off the balcony, if not for the fact that we’re on the ground floor and it would barely inconvenience him. I wonder if I can get Armand to move his office to the roof.

“Hello, Beatrix,” he says coolly, greeting me before I want him to know I am here. I needed a bit more time to decide what I wanted to do to him. Murdering him seems a bit much given Armand’s current feelings on the matter of me killing people. I don’t want to upset my mate. I know I’m pushing him to his limits as it is.

“I should kill you,” I hear myself say.

Shit. I opened with a murder threat. I was going to try so damn hard to stay away from going zero to a hundred that quickly, but it just feels like I can’t help myself. I want very much to kill him. It’s an imperative pounding in my blood. Death to the interloper.

“You’d find it harder to kill me than most,” he says, unconcerned. “And unlike your mate, if you were to try, the result would not be a spanking. You would suffer badly for a long time.”

He says all that very casually, but something about his tone makes me believe him. It makes me think twice. It doesn’t make me any less desiring of hurting him for hurting my mate, but it does make me think I’m going to need to do it carefully.

“I like a challenge,” I say.

“You are a perfect little predator,” he says. “Made entirely for your environment. But I am not from your world and you will only hurt yourself in trying to hurt me. I know that this won’t be enough warning to stop you from trying, but when you do inevitably try, and you do inevitably suffer, you will remember this warning.”

“Don’t upset him again, or I will make you regret it. There. Now we’re both threatening each other.”

He smirks at me. “Your session isn’t until tomorrow, but I feel as though we are getting an early start on it.”