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CHAPTER 15

A rmand

“You cannot tell anyone what I tell you, right?”

“Yes,” Volkov says. “You have complete confidentiality in this room.”

“I have information that suggests my mate is from an ancient line of wolves. These wolves did not breed out the way most lines did. They remained primitive in some respects, more primal in their desires and in their deeds.”

“So you’re putting her behavior down to genetics, not the experience of being abandoned and growing up without context in a cruel human world that was incapable of tending to her needs even if it had been interested, which it was not. Interesting.”

“Now you’re making me sound…”

“What?”

“My researcher was very disturbed by what he discovered about her heritage. He claims that breeding with her could contaminate our bloodline.”

“What you’re describing is racism.”

Those words hit me like a blunt hammer. I have no desire to think that way, or to discriminate.

“Wolves believe in pack lines because they are, well, you know, significant in property matters…” I start to say, because I know he is right. But I am skirting around the edges of the problem, and I know it.

“He said she’d be violent, and she is. He said her shift was not precipitated by love, but by killing, which it seems to have been. She is different than we are. If we have children, they might have the same tendencies. They might lean toward killing. If they’re female, they might not be able to take their wolf forms until they off someone. And that’s just impractical on many levels…”

“Why?”

“Because falling in love with your fated mate and being transformed by the act of love is beautiful. And having to kill someone is not.”

He nods and makes a note.

“But it doesn’t matter,” I say. “Because come what may, she is my fated mate. She was made for me. I love her more than I love life. I have never bonded with anyone the way I have with her. I have never loved so deeply, been so frustrated, cared so much, felt so protective… and so protected. She would do anything for me.”

“The devotion of a strong woman is a powerful thing,” Mr. Volkov agrees. “I am glad you can see that. Being able to appreciate her is an important step toward resolving this ambivalence.”

His words carry an accusation couched in gentle therapist speech that makes me want to rip his throat out. Smug fucker.

“The last thing I have ever felt about Beatrix is ambivalent,” I declare. “I don’t actually care where she comes from, or what her bloodline is, or even if she was intimate with someone before me. I just want to know her truth. That’s it.”

I get up to leave the room, before I give into my urge to hit him again.

I am about to open the door when it is kicked open. I find myself pushed around behind it as Beatrix bursts in and throws the file that was on my desk at Volkov. It hits him in the chest and bursts open, showering papers everywhere.

“I’m an evil psychopath!” She makes the declaration. “They have a whole file on me. My mate has a whole fucking set of research on me that I didn’t even know he was doing.”

“And how does that make you feel?”

“How does that make you feel?”

She’s not aware that I am in the room. All her attention, all her anger is focused on Volkov.

I feel as though I am intruding, even though she is the one who barged in on my session. As she rants, I back toward the door and leave without her noticing I was ever there, though I can still hear her as I retreat.

I want to give her the chance to process her rage with Volkov. He’s the one she went to. Not me. She didn’t ask him where I was. I assume she will come looking for me soon enough, though.

* * *

Beatrix

“Why doesn’t he love me?”

“What about this makes you think he doesn’t love you?”

“He sent a man to go and get dirt on me. He found out all this stuff about me, and he didn’t tell me any of it. He was keeping this a secret from me. All this information about me.”

“How long has he had it?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. He should have told me right away.”

“Your mate wanted to know more about you.”

“And everything he found out is bad. I’m a psycho from a long line of psychos, and the person who made these notes said I should never be bred with.”

“That’s a hurtful statement.”

“Yeah, it is. Just because I kill people and have to be prevented from eating them, and because I assaulted him viciously the first time we met, and because I’ve been killing since I was fourteen, it’s, like, what, I’m a bad person now?”

Volkov’s lips twitch in a way I haven’t seen them twitch before. I think he finds it somewhat amusing, which only serves to piss me off.

“What? Is this funny to you?”

“Your indignation at imagining being considered a bad person just because of a bit of murder is pretty funny.”

“Well. I mean. I have good qualities. I care about people. I try to keep them safe when I can. I was trying to keep Armand safe when I… wait… do you know about the gendarmes?”

“I’ve been made aware.”

“If they hadn’t done what they did, I wouldn’t have done what I did. I solved a problem.”

“Yes, and the fact that you were trespassing in the first place was hardly your fault.”

“Exactly. Armand let me do it.”

“Armand is too much of a permissive mate.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I’m saying it.”

The problem with this man, aside from everything, is the fact that he doesn’t actually know everything. He thinks he does, but there is much of my experiences he knows absolutely nothing about. Like what Armand did to me the night we met. Nobody who saw that would ever call him permissive.

“If you knew the things he did to me, you wouldn’t call him permissive.”

“I’m sure he’s capable of discipline from time to time, but it is when he feels like it, not when you need it.”

When I think about that, I suppose it could be true.

“Well, don’t tell him that. I like him indulging me.”

“Do you?”

“Of course!”

“I don’t see any of course about it. It leaves you to get into trouble and take care of matters your own way, which nobody appreciates.”

“Exactly. I’m not appreciated. It’s all very unfair.”

“I think this would be a good time to bring Armand in,” Volkov says. “Do you object to that?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.”

“I’m going to bring him in. You can pick up the file.”

He’s subtly giving me a task, telling me what to do. And that is why the file remains strewn across the room when he returns with Armand.

I am so angry with him I don’t want to look at him. I definitely don’t want to hear his excuses for why he did all of this without telling me. He’s been working so hard to get me to trust him, but he’s never trusted me.

“I see you found the report,” Armand says, looking at it scattered all over the room, horrible sentences of betrayal and judgment on every surface. “I’m sorry, Beatrix. I meant for you to find out, but not like this. I wanted to talk to you about the contents of it when I’d had a chance to think.”

“Fuck you.”

“Okay, fuck him for what, Beatrix?” Volkov interjects.

“Fuck you for getting that report made, and double fuck you for making it sound reasonable.”

“Alright,” Volkov says. “Now, Armand, Beatrix would like you to double, or perhaps triple fuck yourself. How does that make you feel?”

Armand gives the man a death glare, and the memory of what he did to that man who was rude to me at my first dinner comes swimming back. Volkov should be more careful. Armand has an edge to him as well. People forget that.

“I don’t think we need your interference,” he says.

“You pay for my interference, Mr. de Lune.”

It is so weird to hear someone call Armand Mr. de Lune. It feels disrespectful even though it isn’t really. Most people call him alpha or ma?tre , but I suppose he’s not Mr. Volkov’s alpha or ma?tre .

“So you don’t want to breed with me now?”

“Of course I want to! I want a family with you, Beatrix.”

“The file says if you breed with me, it’s the end of your pack as you know it. And it says I’m young. And I might get worse.”

“You are young,” Armand says. “And I choose to believe that means you’ll get better.”

“So you’re acknowledging the inappropriate nature of this…” Mr. Volkov opens his mouth and I want to make him regret it. There’s nothing inappropriate about how Armand has handled me. He’s the first man in my life to not only make me feel safe, but to actually ensure my safety.

“Inappropriate?” I burst out.

Volkov ignores me, keeps going for Armand instead.

“You purchased her, did you not?”

Armand’s eyes narrow, and I get the feeling he might seriously hurt Volkov before this is over.

“She was up for sale. What should I have done? Stolen her?”

“You could have reported the entire matter to the proper authorities.”

“And in the meantime God knows what would have happened to her, and the odds that the authorities did not already know are next to nothing. The director general of the National Police was there. Sometimes the best way to navigate a corrupt world is to play the game. I don’t keep her prisoner. There are no chains on her limbs.”

Volkov is really giving Armand shit, and not for the reasons I want to talk about. It feels more like he has his own agenda right now, like he disapproves of this entire relationship. Is he trying to split us up? It’s quite literally not possible.

I came in here wanting to scream at Armand, and now I want to defend him.

“He didn’t do anything wrong, and if he did, I don’t care. I do more wrong than anybody else, and I want him. Nobody else could handle me. You couldn’t handle me. Armand is the only person I’ve ever felt loved by, and nothing you say, and nothing he does is going to change that.”

Armand is smiling at me. “Beatrix, I…”

“Shut up, I am still angry at you. That was still fucked up.”

“It was,” he agrees. “And I am sorry. In my defense, I didn’t think you’d find out.”

I stare at him for a moment, then laugh. “That sounds like something I would say.”

“Yes, it is,” Volkov says. He sounds disapproving. Good. I hope he fucking hates our relationship.

“What’s in there, it answers a lot of questions,” Armand says. “Did you read it? I don’t know how much you remember about your past, but it’s all there.”

“I read some of it, and then I got too angry.”

“There was a lot in there about where you come from, and what happened back then. If you ever have questions that you want answered, those pages answer it.”

“You shouldn’t have done it without telling me.”

“I know.”

I look at him, long and hard. “You’d do it again, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” he admits. “I would.”

A laugh bubbles up in me. We are cut from the same cloth, he and I, both unapologetic about doing what we feel needs to be done.

“I love you,” I say.

“I love you too,” he says. “And honestly, the information we have now is going to help. I know it is.”

“What’s so useful about knowing why I was fucking abandoned, Armand?”

“For starters, you weren’t abandoned. You were hidden in the orphanage. It was an attempt to save you, and I’d say it worked.”

“Maybe. Maybe my parents just wanted to get rid of me.”

Armand shakes his head vehemently.

“You were one of the last of your line, and your pack was under attack. There is absolutely no chance you weren’t wanted, and they didn’t try to keep you safe. My guess? They planned to come back for you, but couldn’t. I doubt they knew what happened to the girls when they aged out.”

“Do you really think so?”

I have never allowed myself to feel hope that anybody cared about me. The girls at the orphanage all had stories about the reasons they ended up there. I heard a lot of theories about absent parents who were coming back at any moment. I never believed them. I always felt, deep down, that I’d never see mine again.

“Do you remember your parents?”

I don’t know the answer to that question. Memory requires consent. You can’t remember things if you don’t want to, if you think about something else whenever it tries to surface, if you shove it down really deeply.

“I don’t want to talk about myself,” I say. “My memories are for me, not for anyone else. And not for people who ask me and assume I have to answer them. You might have paid for my body, but you didn’t buy my brain.”

Mr. Volkov is making notes feverishly.

“How do you feel when Beatrix shares nothing with you?”

“I feel great,” Armand says, his tone dripping sarcasm. “Brilliant. I enjoy being shut out of her internal world and having to guess at the forces that formed her, and being unable to understand where she is coming from, or what I can do to make her happy.”

“You want to make me happy?” I ask him the question, not because I didn’t know that, but because I’m setting a conversational trap.

“I would die to make you happy.”

“I’m still not going to tell you about my childhood, but I will tell you that you dying won’t make me happy,” I tell him.

He narrows his eyes at me for a moment, then relaxes a little as he gets the joke, somewhat against his will. He doesn’t want to think this is funny. He wants to be annoyed, because I’m not giving him what he wants, but he’s too good-natured and he likes me too much to stay mad.

“Alright, so I know you don’t want me dead. I know one thing.”

“You have a binder full of things you know about me,” I say. “A whole stack of Beatrix facts. What else do you want?

He looks at me deeply, seriously. “To know you as you know yourself.”