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CHAPTER 16

B eatrix

That night, I dream I am small. There is snow outside, but it is being painted black with blood in the moonlight. There is so much fighting happening, fighting that makes me excited, but I cannot participate.

My older brothers are fighting out there, and so is my father. I am curled up with my mother, who is in her wolf form. I am the only one who cannot become a beast.

The fighting is getting closer and closer. We hear bangs and whines and cries and shouts as shifters are forced out of their wolf forms by injury or something else. I do not know entirely what is going on. I can see a little through the window aperture that has been left open so my mother can keep her eyes out for a moment we all hope will not come—and that comes anyway with the inevitability of a story being told against my will.

My mother turns to me and nudges me up. I have been taught what to do in these situations. I grab the fur at the back of my mother’s ruff around her neck and I hold on tight as she runs out the back of the house. The moon is so bright it feels like it is daytime.

I love running with her this way, being carried across vast distances with her powerful body keeping me safe. The smell of her fur is so comforting, I cannot bring myself to be afraid. I know I will be safe, because she has always kept me safe. I know everything will be okay, because everything has always been okay. I even close my eyes as she runs. I’m not supposed to do that because of the risk of falling asleep and losing my grip, but it feels so good, like being rocked and comforted with the rhythmic up and down motion.

I don’t hear the bullet that hits her. One moment I am pressed tight against her powerful, furred body, and the next we are both skidding and rolling through the snow. She is no longer in her wolf form. She is naked and she is bleeding and she is making a sound that will forever be wired into my being.

She reaches for me, but her hands cannot grasp me. They are too weak. Other hands reach for me. Bigger hands belonging to tall men with long guns. They pick me up by a leg and dangle me in front of them.

They are arguing over whether to kill me or not. I know that, even though I do not understand a word that comes out of their mouths.

They speak a blunt and brutal language. It is foreign to me, and sounds harsh and cruel to my ears. Little do I know that one day I will think in it and speak in it and my native tongue will be lost to me.

“Beatrix… it’s okay, you’re safe. I’m here. Je suis là, tu es en sécurité, mon amour .”

I wake up to Armand reassuring me in his native tongue and the language we have learned to communicate in. I’m crying. I didn’t know that.

“It was just a nightmare,” he says.

But it wasn’t. It was a memory. One I had forgotten I remembered. I used to dream of that night a lot, but as I got older I stopped thinking about it. I made myself stop remembering it. And now it’s back. And it feels as present as it did the day it happened. I feel it viscerally, in my body, every bit of fear, horror, outrage, and sadness in me. I am shaking and I am crying, and Armand’s arms and voice are not enough to chase it all away.

He holds me tight and murmurs soft little comforting words to me until I start to calm down.

“That must have been such a bad dream,” he says. “I’m so sorry. Do you want to tell me about it?”

No. I do not want to tell him about it. I don’t want to think about this again, or anything even remotely close to it. I want to lock that shit away so I never, ever have to remember or feel it again.

“You have to stop digging up the past. You have to stop asking me questions about what happened. You have to fucking stop, or I am going to go crazy,” I tell him.

“Okay,” he says. “No more questions. Do you want to try to go back to sleep, or do you want to see what cake they have in the kitchen?”

“Cake in the kitchen, obviously.”

* * *

Armand

It has never occurred to me before that all this digging into her past could actually hurt Beatrix. I never thought about the fact that she’s not ready to share, or even think about what happened. I took all that information in the file because I decided it was mine, and I was entitled to know.

I have treated her like her past is a puzzle that can be solved with therapy and pressure, and nothing good has come of it. I have driven her to have a nocturnal breakdown.

To say that I feel guilty is an understatement. I have been so selfish, so demanding. I have insisted that her trauma is mine to know because I wanted to verify her virginity like some kind of medieval monster.

Strange that Volkov didn’t point that out along with all of my other faults, but the man obviously has his blind spots.

“I am sorry,” I tell her. “I’ll never ask you another question again.”

She nods with a mouthful of red velvet cake, her fork poised over a dark chocolate gateau . When she can speak, she says very little.

“Thank you.”

“And I’ll send Volkov home. I don’t think he is doing either one of us any good.”

She smiles. Her eyes sparkle, and the smile gets a little wider. “Can we…”

“No, we’re not going to kill him, no matter how satisfying that might be. You and I are going to take a break from slaughtering people for being inconvenient or annoying. We’re going to live proper lives. We’re going to get married.”

“You still haven’t proposed,” she says.

“I haven’t? It didn’t count in front of the gendarmes?”

“No,” she giggles.

It is good to see her feeling better, to know that I can make her feel better after having spent so long making her low-key miserable.

“I suppose I’ll have to get onto that,” I say.

“Yes,” she grins at me. “I suppose you better.”

* * *

The next day, I handle business as I promised.

“We’re not going to do therapy anymore, Mr. Volkov. I will pay out the rest of your contract.”

“I see, and what precipitated this?”

“She’s started to have dreams about the past. Nightmares, really, and I don’t want to contribute to them. Her past isn’t mine to delve into.”

“I didn’t come here to delve into her past. I came here to help the two of you…”

“We don’t need help. I’m going to propose and we are going to get married.”

“So you’re going to cover up all the unresolved trauma with a wedding.”

“Yes.”

“Sounds like a flawless plan.”

Sarcastic asshole.

“Listen, we can’t all spend all our time unearthing the horrors of our past for the amusement of some tattooed sadist who never has anything useful to say anyway.”

“Ouch,” he says flatly.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to be rude, I just don’t think this is helping us. If anything, it’s making it much worse.”

“Ah. So talking is making things worse, but commissioning reports that dig into your mate’s history that she discovers in your office, killing gendarmes, summarily executing your own pack members without warning, they’re all very helpful?”

“I didn’t say that. I just said we don’t need therapy.”

“Understood.”

I hate how smug he is. No matter what I say, he has the upper hand because he has the position of power. He has become our priest, the authority we go to for absolution, presenting our thoughts and feelings for his inspection. It’s humiliating and I will not miss doing it.

“I don’t want you talking to Beatrix again either.”

“Even if she tries to talk to me?”

“What do you mean? She would never.”

“She asked to speak this afternoon.”

“Why?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that.”

“I told her I was going to send you away. She seemed happy about that.”

“It’s almost as if she is a very confused young woman who does not know what she wants and needs,” he deadpans.

Jealousy shoots through me.

So Beatrix is going to talk to him about her past, and I will know nothing. I should be pleased she is addressing her problems. I tell myself that I am happy. I’m not at all offended that he is her confidante and I am not. That’s fine. That’s totally fine and very healthy.

This is good.

This is what should be happening.

* * *

We have a whole crate of stuffed wolves that we give out at the festival in the village once a year. It’s a midsummer full moon celebration, and it’s fun for the pack and for the people. I don’t know that this year’s will go ahead after the incident in the town square.

The air is full of fluff and I am full of rage as I try to work these feelings out without having to talk to anybody.

Daniel interrupts me, smirking at the chaos I’m causing on the rooftop. I didn’t intend for anybody to see this, but of course there’s no privacy in a pack.

“What are you doing, Ma?tre ?”

“Nothing.”

“It looks like you’re using a ceremonial sword to cut the heads off stuffed toys.”

“Does it?”

He picks up one of them and holds it out, headless.

“What did Mr. Fluffy do?”

“Nothing.”

He puts it down and looks at me with a kind of amused expression, which is pretty bold given the last thing I did with this sword.

“You know, having a mate can be stressful, as well as being the greatest joy.”

“Can it? Fascinating.”

“Don’t be snappy.” He nudges me. “Want to tell me what’s going on?”

“Should never have got a therapist. Now she has someone else to talk to instead of me. And she doesn’t talk to me to begin with.”

“She’ll talk to you when she knows what to say.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. Give her time.”

What the hell is happening to me? I’m supposed to be the alpha, the one who knows everything. The one everybody comes to for answers. Here I am, on my roof, getting the most basic advice from my cousin.

“You’ve been wound tight since she got here,” Daniel says. “I think you need to relax.”

“Really.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Just chill. What’s the big deal?”

“It’s just the future of the pack and the love of my life.”

“Right. Not worth worrying about it.”

I throw a stuffed toy at him.