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CHAPTER 2

A rmand

I want to be as far away from this place as possible. My men are with me, moving in easy concert. Packs are good like that. I may not have a man right by my side, but they are spread out across the area and ready to intervene if necessary. I act with the knowledge that I am never alone.

The car is already open and ready for us. All I have to do is get her in and get the hell out of here. This is a bad place, and nothing good happens here.

“Can we get my friends?” She asks the question as I put her in the car.

“Your friends?”

“Yes. They’re stupid, but they don’t deserve to be bought by random men.”

I look down at her. “You are aware that you have also been purchased?”

“Yes.”

“And you want me to buy all your friends too?”

“I don’t know where they will end up.”

“You don’t know where you will end up, little one.”

I don’t care about the others. Maybe I should, but all I really care about, all I am capable of caring about at this moment, is her. My mate.

“ Monsieur de Lune!”

The director of the orphanage comes down the stairs with one final interruption.

I think about killing him. I don’t know why, yet, but I am almost certain that this man should be dead. He takes girls and he sells women, and though I will not be leaving with a gaggle of unfortunates tonight, I will do something about this place.

“What is it?”

“After your most generous purchase offer, I feel the need to give you fair warning, Mr. de Lune. Don’t fuck that one until you’re in a secure location.”

I shut the car door, so she does not hear his vile comment, though it is likely too late. I have to wonder why he already has her in silver, cutting her off from her wolf nature.

“Why? She seems small and biddable enough?”

“She’s got more animal in her than any of us.”

“Not more than me.”

“More than you and then some,” he says, enjoying frustrating me. He is a fool. “Trust me, what emerges from that one when you mate her is not going to be small or biddable. You have in your possession one of the old blood.”

“Old blood?”

“Siberian original,” he says. “She looks like a mutt, but she’s…”

“If you say another word, I will rip your throat out.”

“You are from slower, warmer climes, Mr. de Lune. And yes, you have your reputation for aggression and passion, but believe me, that female you have tucked up in your vehicle is going to make you regret the moment you ever laid eyes on her.”

He pauses, as if he knows he should not say what he is about to say, but men like him always talk. It would kill them to know that there was a parting shot they could have taken and yet did not.

“Your impatience may very well prove to be your undoing. You should have waited for another auction to run. We have many sweet, pretty young orphans, mothers and fathers destroyed in various tragic ways. You have paid the most for the worst, and, sir…”

He pauses dramatically.

“There will be no returns.”

I turn and I get in the car.

My mate is cowering in the far corner, feral and terrified. I wish I could offer her some comfort, but thanks to that asshole’s crude comments, she is now very aware I could be the worst-case scenario she feared.

I can still smell her arousal, but it is mixed with anguish, and it turns my stomach.

She is my mate. She should not fear me. Ever.

She asked me to save the others, but it is not possible. None of the girls will escape what fate has in store for them tonight. None of us ever really escape our fate.

I let her have her moment. Her fear won’t be assuaged by words. It will be tempered by actions. I am not going to hurt her. I will not hurt her.

“Come here,” I say, reaching for her neck. “Let me get that cheap silver thing off you.”

She allows me to remove it. I open the window and toss it out, hoping that the gesture of freedom will help her feel better about her predicament. I am, in some respects, a hypocrite. I am not here to set her free. Not entirely. I am here to claim her in a new way, one that will see her made into a creature she does not know exists inside her as yet.

“Let’s go,” I tell the driver. “To the station, quick as possible.”

“Yes, Ma?tre ,” he responds, sending the car into the night, away from the scene of all these crimes.

I cannot take my eyes off my mate. She is the most beautiful creature in the world. Every line of her face, every curve of her body, every breath she takes enchants me.

The dress they put her in—I have the sense she would not have chosen such a thing for herself—is too short. Not in an alluring way, simply in a way it was clearly cut for a shorter woman. The waist is too high, the hem too short and tattered. There are scratches along her legs.

“What happened to your legs?”

“I tried to run,” she said. “Before it happened. I got caught in the brambles. My mistake. I should have gone through the river. They wouldn’t have been able to scent me then.”

“You knew there was an auction?”

“They tell us it is a ball. They tell us we will meet handsome suitors, maybe the loves of our lives. But we’re really just slaves.”

“You’re not going to be my slave.”

“You bought me, beat me, and are taking me…”

“Home. I am taking you home.”

She gives me a dark look.

“How did you know about the auction?” I ask her. “The others didn’t know?”

“I was in trouble again,” she says. “They sent me to see the director. He wasn’t there, so I was in the director’s office. I started looking around and I found the files. I tried to tell the others, but they didn’t believe me. They never listened to me. Not since they put me on the pills.”

“The pills?”

She falls silent, and the fact that we are two strangers who do not know anything about each other begins to assert itself in the rear of my car.

I am discovering a lot about her with these questions. I know she is independent, rebellious, smart. I know she does not play by the rules or respect authority. I know she is prepared to suffer for freedom. I know she is a wild thing yet to be unleashed.

“What else do you know?”

She shrugs. It could be that she doesn’t want to overplay her hand, but I don’t think so.

“Did the orphanage teach you that you were special, or different from other young women?” The director mentioned her Siberian heritage. I wonder if she knows what that means. I wonder if she knows why she had a silver collar around her neck to stop her from shifting. The director clearly knew, though I don’t think his use of it was appropriate or necessary.

She frowns. “No. It did not. They made it clear we are inconveniences fortunate to be fed.”

I have to assume she doesn’t know what she is. She doesn’t know where she came from. She doesn’t know what makes her special. She doesn’t know why she and I are so deeply connected. I will have to explain all of this to her at the right time. Now is not the moment to reveal something so monumental to a clearly traumatized young woman who wanted to flee.

“What did you want me for?”

I hesitate for a moment. I could say I liked the look of her, but that is not the half of it. I could tell her I was drawn to her, but likewise… My hesitation gives her the opportunity to fill the silence with her own theory.

“You look rich enough and handsome enough to get a girl the usual way. So I guess you’re going to eat me.”

“Eat you?”

“Eat me,” she repeats. “Or hunt me for sport.”

I narrow my eyes, confused. “What makes you think…”

She shakes her head and shrugs at the same time. “I don’t know. I know nothing good is going to happen to any of us. I don’t want to think about…”

“I did not pay ten million dollars to hurt you,” I tell her. “Even if you do not trust me, trust that nobody burns that much money for fun.”

“Is ten million even a lot of money for you?”

She’s smart and perceptive. I threw that money out there like it was nothing because it really is very little compared to what comes and goes through the businesses I own. The de Lune pack has been fortunate over the centuries, and under my care, our wealth has only increased.

“It’s more than I want to throw away.”

She gives a little shrug, almost as if she doesn’t care if she believes me or not.

Her long, dark hair falls over her face as she hides from me, but when she does risk a glance or a full stare at me, she is quite exquisite, with strong features, big brown eyes, a prominent nose, wide mouth. Her teeth flash when she speaks, the upper edges of her mouth curling up over canines she doesn’t yet understand the significance of.

She makes me feel alive inside, my beast surging for her. I remember how she felt over my lap, her body pressed against mine, taut with desire and resistance in equal measure.

“What is your name?”

She looks at me with an expression of mistrust. “It will be on the paperwork, I guess, assuming you get any when you buy a person. Do you get a license? There’s got to at least be a receipt, no?”

This young lady is not going to be forthcoming with personal information. I can already tell this is going to be a struggle in many ways. I did not come to this auction to take an unwilling mate. My expectation was always that when the bond was felt, both parties would be equally affected.

I never banked on having my mate be a young woman straight from what seems to be to be one of the most traumatizing situations one can be raised in, not to mention buying her against her will, being seen as a part of the ongoing horror, not a release from it.

I will be patient with her.

It does not come naturally to me, but I can be patient, sometimes.

I will be everything I am not used to being—for her.

“I will not harm you,” I tell her. “Your life is going to be very different now.”

She looks at me skeptically. “You already hit me.”

“I spanked you because you made a scene in front of dozens of people who I have to keep up appearances in front of. An alpha who cannot…”

“Alpha.” She rolls her eyes and makes a small, but unmistakable jerking off motion with her hand. I almost smile at her rudeness. She thinks I am someone who listens to too many podcasts and believes in a pack of wankers who define themselves by abusing women.

“You’ll understand why I use that term in due course,” I tell her. “But I don’t mean it the way you think I do.”

* * *

Beatrix

My captor is very handsome. Charming. Rich. Contained. That last word comes to my mind, flashing through it in neon. I don’t know what he has inside, but I know he is accustomed to hiding it.

He’s very, very attractive. Dark curling hair, expressive silver-gray eyes just light enough to reflect the light. He has elegant bone structure, a long, lithe body with plenty of power behind it. He looks like he was bred by royalty. Given he was just in a modern slave auction, I suppose there’s some chance he is royalty of one kind or another.

I felt his power when he handled me, when he spanked me like a little girl, when he made it clear that there was no choice for me to do anything other than submit to him. My ass is still tingling from his punishment, and other unspeakable parts of me are tingling and pulsing and… I am so physically confused right now.

He is a mystery. I have to hate him, because he touched me roughly, not to mention bought me. He is the final act of the hellish play I’ve been trying to avoid since I worked out what the orphanage really is—a front for human trafficking.

He was there to buy someone.

He bought me.

He’s not a good guy. I can’t let myself think that he is just because he makes my heart race and my lower belly and inner thighs squeeze instinctively together when I look at him.

This is what men do. This is what they are like. Matron warned us plenty of times not to be caught in the company of men outside the orphanage. She told us that they are capable of terrible things, and would likely defile us, take our virginity. I didn’t really believe her, right up until I did.

This man is a cathedral of confusion. I do not know how to interpret him. He wants me to trust him, but that’s impossible. It would require me to stop thinking entirely.

Aside from my youth, I can’t see any reason for him to be interested in me—and everybody on sale at the orphanage was young. He could have picked one of the nicer, prettier girls. The ones who had done their hair and whose makeup wasn’t hastily inflicted upon them.

I know I don’t look my best, and I know my best is not the best. So why me? Why am I here in this car with this man whose scent alone makes me want to do things I’ve never wanted to do before? Every breath I take is filled with him. He is taking up the entire field of my vision. I am absolutely fixated on him.

I tell myself I am just getting to know my newest enemy, but the truth is I am struggling to avoid falling into whatever trap is obviously being set here. I can feel wetness between my legs. An arousal that I don’t want to be feeling, but can’t seem to help.

When he smiles, I feel myself melt.

I am being hijacked by my libido. Hormones doing hormone things with no understanding of how much danger I am in. There is no good reason for good men to show up to an orphanage to buy girls who have just aged out of the system. Whoever this man is, however attractive I might imagine him to be, he is a predator.

“Don’t you mean sigma? Isn’t that the new term for douchebags with too much money? Don’t tell me, you’re the best at video games in the world, too.”

“I don’t play games,” he says, his lips quirking at me with a little amusement. “And I don’t mind attitude either, but you might want to keep a few things to yourself, because there’s more going on than you understand.”

“Right, you showed up to a barely legal teen auction because you’re a good guy alpha dog.”

I think about throwing myself out of the car. It would probably hurt, but it would get me out of the danger I can feel I am in. There is an intensity about this man that makes my stomach do flips.

“I came because I was searching for something. And I found it.”

“You were looking for the craziest girl in the orphanage?”

He tilts his head slightly. “What makes you say you’re crazy?”

“Everybody has told me I am crazy since I was taken there when I was seven. I insisted on telling them that I was a wolf. They laughed at me at first, then they punished me for saying it. Then, when I got older, and still wouldn’t let go of the delusion, they gave me pills that stopped me from saying or thinking anything.”

I see his fingers flex, then curl into a fist. He covers it with his other hand, tries to force the tension out of his jaw. He forces a smile that is more like a snarl. He seems genuinely angry about what he is hearing and he is trying to hide it.

Strange.

“Are you still on the medication?”

“No. I refused to take it anymore, once I got big enough to make it hard for them. They tried to make me for a while, hid it in my food, tried to deny me food at all unless I took it, but it was too much work. I don’t make it easy. Besides, after a while, I knew what I was.”

There’s warning for him in that sentence. He won’t find me an easy captive. I don’t care if I want him. I don’t care if I need him. I won’t ever give myself to him. I have been starved of everything that matters. He cannot take anything from me that someone else has not already tried to take—and failed.

“I would like you to try to remember events and the people who were involved,” he says.

“Why?”

“Because I’d like to know.”

He smiles again. He’s very bad at smiling genuinely when he wants to kill someone. His silver eyes flash with anger that I can feel because it touches something inside me. It finds the rage that has been propelling me all these years and somehow soothes it just by existing.

* * *

Armand

The expression on the director’s face flashes in my mind. The satisfaction. The smugness. The sense that he was so right and she was so wrong.

Patience , I remind myself.

There is a temptation to turn back to the orphanage and kill everybody who had anything to do with this state she is in, but that is not compatible with a sensible decision. So much about being a wolf is resisting those animal impulses when they come in human form. I like to think I am very controlled. It is important for me and my entire pack that I am.

I turn my attention back to my mate. From now on, she is the only thing that matters. I try to ground myself, notice physicalities because they are infinitely distracting.

I am a very tall man, six foot four. A lot of women are significantly shorter than me. My little mate is quite tall for a woman, five foot nine at least, maybe five ten if she is not stooping or crouching. I see not only youthful beauty, but elegant potential. She has a presence, too, even in this state. I can imagine how she will be years from now, when she and I are celebrating the anniversary of this night. I imagine her happy. I imagine her relaxed. I imagine her surrounded by love and family that right now she does not understand are even an option. I will show her all these things.

For now, I have to deal with the mess that has been made of my mate. I have to make up for the years she spent being told that her instincts are wrong, that she is trouble, that she is bad. It is going to be hard to get her in line and not be mistaken for those beige monsters.

She looks at me, so beautiful and so mistrusting.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Armand de Lune,” I say. I’d already told her my first name, but a full title is better. I refrain from telling her that I am the alpha of the ancient de Lune pack. Better to explain that to her when she knows what she is. The fact that she once understood she was a wolf and had it beaten out of her makes me incandescent with repressed rage.

“French,” she says.

“Yes.”

“Is that where we are going? France?”

“Yes, to the countryside,” I tell her. “I have a home there that I think you will find comfortable. It is the seat of my…”

“A home,” she says. “One of many?”

“Yes.”

“Must be nice.”

“And your name, little one?” I try the question again now that some of the tension is thawing a fraction.

“Beatrix.”

“A gorgeous name. What’s your last name?”

“They don’t let us have last names,” she says. “A last name is a family name, and we are orphans with no family.”

“Your full name will be Beatrix de Lune soon enough.”

She stares at me, her eyes dark in the low light of the car. “Are you going to adopt me?”

The question is designed to throw me off, I suspect. Could she be so innocent, or think me so old that she would be my child? She is eighteen, and I am ten years her senior. I see her smirk as I look at her, and I know it is a joke. Good. She has a sense of humor. That is an excellent sign of a lively mind and a capacity for healing.

“I am going to marry you, little one.”

“No,” she says, the word carrying a sort of finality and weight I would not have expected from a young woman in a car with a rich and handsome man.

“No?”

“To marry a woman, you must ask for her hand. She must give herself to you. You’ve purchased me, Armand. That is more binding than a marriage.”

* * *

Beatrix

I am young, but I am old enough to have learned that men like to tell you they will marry you before they defile you. They like to tell you that they love you, too. They will say whatever they need to in order to crawl between your thighs. Men are consummate liars and charmers. You can trust nothing they say.

I spent too many nights trying to comfort girls who had unpleasant interactions with local men to trust one of them. The matrons told us to stay away, but not everyone listened. We were red-blooded young women with no families and a yearning to be loved. That went very wrong for quite a few of the girls.

I don’t understand why this man is bothering to lie to me. He has already spent his millions on me, already has me in his grasp, and obviously has no intention of letting me go.

The game between us is over. I know what he will want from me. I see the knowledge in his gaze when it runs over me, inspecting me. He tries to hide his lust, but the air in this vehicle is so thick with it I feel as though I am drawing it deeper and deeper into my bloodstream with every breath I take.

He smiles, his dark eyes flashing with amusement. This man is a brute, but he is an intelligent one. Not just smart in the matter of books and such, but with a brain that clearly enjoys challenge and chaos. I find myself warming to him in that little look, even though I do not want to.

He is my owner, my oppressor, my captor. He, and men like him, are the reason the orphanage is able to run the way it does. They now have ten million more dollars to hold girls captive—if the director doesn’t steal it all.

“Matrimony is traditionally a transfer of property. You’re right about that. But the modern interpretations of both marriage and law mean a wedding is in order. You need to be mine in every sense.”

“You mean you want to launder me. Dirty money turned clean. Illegal trafficking turned legit ownership.”

“You are a beautifully cynical little thing,” he says, his eyes meeting mine as the moon breaks through the night clouds. I see the lightness in them, feel a jolt deep in the pit of my stomach as his look hits me in some nearly physically tangible way. He is so handsome it verges on supernatural.

How am I going to escape him?