Page 6

Armand

After my wailing, shrieking, writhing mate reaches climax under my hand, I take her to bed where she sleeps in my arms. The barrier of propriety between us has been broken. She is mine, and she will only become more mine hour by hour, day by day.

In the past, a female in my bed has always been more like a warm obstacle to a comfortable night’s sleep, but it is different with Beatrix. She feels as though she belongs with me, lying on my arm, taking up too much of the bed, stealing the sheets, moving in the middle of the night, all habits I would usually find absolutely insufferable. I do more than tolerate them from her, I enjoy them. They are reminders that she is here with me.

We wake with the train still rolling, not far from our destination. We have moved from public to private tracks, and so we are moving at a clip through countryside where most have no right to be. Some call it a farm. We call it our territorial lands. They are open and they cover hundreds of miles of rolling fields and forests, all surrounding a palace that belongs to my family.

“Good morning, Beatrix.”

She opens her eyes and I see the bolt of consternation in their deep brown gaze.

I roll out of bed, giving her some space as she gathers the sheet up over her breasts.

“So that all really happened.”

“Yes,” I smile. “It did. Are you hungry?”

“Starving,” she says.

I toss her a shirt. “Try not to rip this one up,” I tell her.

She gives me a little smirk. Not quite sorry. Not quite unrepentant either. She shrugs the shirt over her head and pulls her hair out from the collar. Her beauty is natural, dark, and wildly worrisome for a man like me who needs to maintain control for everyone’s sake and safety.

She slides out of bed, looking slightly tousled and quite adorable. I wrap my arms around her and draw her into an embrace. I want her to know that my affection endures in spite of our rough start.

We are still some way from the train platform as we wake and breakfast. The dining car has plenty available. I notice she goes for the croissants and brioche again. My mate likes her butter-rich baked goods.

I take the opportunity to introduce her to Daniel and Marcel, the latter of whom is a man older than me by ten years, a sleek, smart member of the pack who I suspect may already know what concerns me. He might have put two and two together. He might not.

“Daniel, Marcel, this is Beatrix. My mate.”

“I had the honor of biting your ankles last night,” Marcel says with absolutely nothing in the way of refinement.

“You were one of the many who had to give chase?” Beatrix replies in kind. “How many did it take to bring me down? Four?”

“Five,” Daniel says, butting in. “You gave us a good chase.”

“I was just getting started,” she says. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

“Alright, that’s enough. There will be no more running.”

Marcel, Daniel, and Beatrix exchange looks that suggest they all know better. I too, know better, but it is my job to enforce order.

I put my hand on the back of her neck and squeeze lightly. Does she remember what it felt like to have my teeth sinking in last night? I hope so. I hope this triggers some semblance of obedience.

I feel her tense under my fingers, then relax as a wave of submission runs through her. I lean in and speak in a low growl next to her ear.

“Better,” I say. “Daniel, we’re almost home. My mate will need a complete wardrobe…”

“Already organized, Ma?tre ,” he says. “The message was sent ahead not long after she boarded. There should be an array of clothing waiting when you arrive.”

“Good.”

Beatrix looks slightly confused, or perhaps embarrassed, as if she doesn’t know how to react to such plans being made in front of her. She will get used to it, and in time will make her own orders. She will never have to want for anything again.

“Is there anything you would like, my mate? I can have the order sent through.”

“No, thank you.” She shakes her head. “I can’t… I mean…”

“In time, you will become accustomed to asking for what you need, and getting it each and every time,” I promise her.

I am not only talking about clothes.

The train is moving smoothly through ancestral lands now, approaching the seat of my family, the place the de Lune pack has called home for centuries.

“You’re almost home,” I tell her.

“Home?” She cocks her head, as if she doesn’t connect the word with herself, as if the very concept of being somewhere she belongs is so foreign she cannot quite fathom it.

“My home. Our home. And now yours.”

The station is set back from Chateau de Lune by some distance, mostly because the pack and the local heritage foundation would have collectively lost their marbles if I had turned the actual building into a train station. I thought it could be rather charming, but I was convinced by the many arguments against having a big steam beast throwing coal dust over centuries of architecture.

This means that there is a short walk from the train to the house proper. As we disembark the train, I sweep my mate up into my arms, sparing her the need to walk on bare feet across the stony ground.

The chateau is inarguably a grand place. Much attention has been paid to the details in terms of marble work, carved sconces and trims, not to mention crystal light fixtures, statues, and works of great art.

It is a living piece of history, and the pack tend to it with great fervor. Sometimes we host historians and other students of art who appreciate all that is stored here.

“Oh, my…”

She is awed, and I am not surprised. Craftsmanship almost always inspires. I set her down on her feet inside the doors, meaning to let her explore, but she stays close to me, like a child who has been chastised one too many times for breaking things in a fancy store.

“This is all yours?”

“This is all ours. It belongs to my ancestors, to the pack, and to the future generations yet to be born. We have the use of it for now, and it is our responsibility to preserve what is here and add to it for the future.”

She nods slowly, as if the words make sense, but do not quite touch her. I am sure she never expected to enjoy anything so fine, let alone bear some responsibility for it.

This will be a good distraction from what she has regarded as being abducted. She will become accustomed to this lifestyle and understand that she has been elevated from her desperate circumstances into ones that ensure she never need worry again.

* * *

Beatrix

He expects me to be impressed and excited, but everything I am seeing is only leading me to feel more fear. This place is full of pretty, rare things, and I can see in Armand’s eyes that he considers me just another one of those pretty, rare things. I am to be kept here, away from the world, producing for his line, for the pack, whether I want to or not. My future stretches out ahead of me in a terrible flash. I see the trap of domesticity and comfortable wealth.

I come from poverty. I know that sitting here, in a place like this, while others have absolutely nothing is disgusting. To think that I spent years languishing in the orphanage, rarely getting enough to eat, having no chance at a life I got to choose.

I have access to it now, because the man who has had it all along suddenly decides I am his mate. Does he really expect me to be grateful? Excited? This house of riches may as well be a house of corpses. I cannot imagine all the people who could have been fed and clothed if this were not being hoarded.

He looks at me as if he expects me to be excited, to celebrate my good fortune. But I am young, not stupid. I know that the price I will pay for enjoying all these things is my freedom. I know that my youth will slowly wither in this palace and I will emerge one day, many decades from now, an empty version of what I was, and nothing of what I could have been.

He thinks this makes me want to stay.

It makes me need to flee.

But I do not run out the front door, even though I very much want to. I can tell he is so impressed with his gilded cage he will not expect me to have a problem with it.

He leads me through the place, pointing out what he thinks are items of note. I look with wide eyes and stay quiet and that is something that appears to make him think I am interested.

Armand is rich and powerful. He has always been rich and powerful. There are paintings of him as a child with his parents, a dark-haired boy with big silver-gray eyes. There is not so much as a photo of me in existence that I am aware of.

Blissfully unaware of the effect this display of wealth, privilege, and familial attachment is having on me, he sweeps me upstairs where I am confronted with a massive bedroom complete with the wardrobe he spoke about in the train. Gown after gown awaits, along with an array of jewelry that comprises a treasure trove in its own right.

Apparently I am going to spend the rest of my life either naked or at a ball. This is the way one outfits a fairytale princess.

“What do you think?”

“It’s all very nice, thank you.” I choke out the words, not wanting to seem ungrateful, but ingratitude is the least of my emotions. The real feeling is something closer to rage. Why do I have a tiara today, when yesterday I was locked in a closet so I could not run before being sold?

“It is overwhelming, I imagine. Don’t worry. You’ll have maids to help you dress if you like.”

“Oh, good. I was worried I’d have to dress myself.”

I try not to be sarcastic, but it seeps through, earning me a concerned look from Armand.

“You’re tired,” he says, unable to even consider the notion a young woman might be anything less than wildly impressed by being festooned with finery.

I’m living the dream, but I know that it overlays the misery of the rest of my life, and the reality of the world outside these walls. It can’t be real, and if it is, it shouldn’t be.

“Yes,” I say. “I think I am.”

I try to force a smile. It doesn’t feel natural, but it seems to satisfy him.

“Do you want to eat, or nap, or…”

“I don’t know,” I say.

“I’ll have some food brought to the bedroom,” he says. “And we can talk.”

“What are we going to talk about?”

“Everything,” he says.

Nothing , I think to myself.

* * *

“You knew you were a wolf when you were young. You told the people at the orphanage, and they punished you, but you knew. Does that mean you have memories of being part of a pack?”

A bowl of grapes sits between us. I am not hungry. The question alone makes me nauseous.

I stare at him blankly. He might own me, but he does not own the access to my memories.

He pauses, then tries again.

“Last night, on the train, you took your wolf form. So you know how to shift.”

I can’t deny that, but I also don’t need to confirm it, so I stay silent.

“How old are you exactly, Beatrix?”

“They tell me I’m almost nineteen.”

“And how long have you been shifting?”

I shrug. I don’t like being asked questions at the best of times, and being interrogated puts me in a very bad mood. Who is he to simply demand knowledge from me? My secrets are the only things I have, and I have learned over painful years to keep them to myself.

I shrug. “I don’t know,” I lie.

“Can you tell me the first time you realized you could take the form of an animal?”

He rephrases the question, and I realize I am going to have to tell him something. He’s not going to stop asking if he doesn’t think he knows, and I don’t want to sit here in this fancy chair for hours while he grills me.

“I’ve always known that was possible. Since I was little. I don’t remember a time I didn’t know. Except for when they drugged me into not knowing, and called me a liar, and told me I was sick in the head, and I got confused about it, but…”

I see the tension in him rising as I tell him those things. He doesn’t like them. They make him feel sorry for me. I don’t want that either, so I stop talking.

“Someone told you what you were?”

“I don’t remember. I just know I knew.”

He nods. “So you must have had contact with someone who told you about yourself. Your parents, perhaps? Do you remember them?”

I shake my head. “I don’t remember anything before the orphanage. I was seven years old when I was taken there, and it feels like that was when my life started.”

“But you knew then you were a wolf.”

“Yes.”

“And at some point, you shifted for the first time.”

“I don’t remember that either.”

He frowns, as if he doesn’t believe me. He’s right not to. The first time I shifted is blazed into my mind and my body. I could never forget it, even if I wanted to.

“Why does the answer matter? How old were you when you first shifted?”

“I was rather prodigal, just seven years old, but women, female wolves, they tend not to be able to shift until they reach full maturity and meet their mate. It is part of the bond.”

“Huh,” I say, as all the ramifications of that statement kick in, this finely painted ceiling developing cracks around the chandelier, metaphorically speaking as all the obvious inferences and such come crashing down around us. This is why he cares. He’s not trying to get to know me. He doesn’t care about my terrible past. He’s trying to work out if I am a virgin or not. I’d laugh, if it wasn’t so tragic.

“You think I’ve been fucking other guys.”

“Have you?”

“None of your business.”

“I disagree,” he says. “It’s very much my business.”

“Why? How many women have you been with?”

“A number, but that is not important.”

I laugh at his open double standards. I wonder if anybody has disagreed with him in years. He is like the orphanage director, so used to being able to dictate reality to people who have no choice but to obey him, he has forgotten that it’s possible for someone to say no to him, or disagree with him, or otherwise defy him in some way.

I sit back in my chair and watch him as his eyes gleam with jealousy at the very idea of me having ever been touched by another man. He is possessive of me in spite of barely knowing me. That facade of elegance, education, richness, it’s turning to sand in front of me, falling away to reveal the animal who chased me down in the night and refused to let me up, who held me down in the dirt until he was certain he had me captured, and who fingered me into merciless orgasm afterward.

He hates the idea of me having ever been touched by anyone else. I think it would be better for him if I had just come into existence at eighteen years of age, fuckable for him and him alone, then come and joined the other pretty owned things in this big fancy house filled with wolves who are slavishly devoted to him.

I am the only one who sees him differently. I wonder if I am the only one who sees him at all. Is that because he’s not really my mate, or because he is? I am used to watching people build up notions of selves and such. The girls at the orphanage had to do it in order to survive. They had to tell themselves who they were because there was nobody else to do it. The teachers, matrons, director all told us that we were helpless waifs lucky to be fed or clothed or housed at all.

Some of the girls decided they were the product of famous men, sent away because their mothers represented disgraceful dalliances. Their mothers were actresses, singers, models, women more beautiful than these powerful men could bear to resist.

Others decided that they were the progeny of politically unfortunate royals. I knew at least five girls who imagined themselves to be the lost princess Anastasia, in spite of the fact they were born generations after her death.

We never told one another that we were making things up about ourselves. We all played into these little lies that made life feel bearable. It strikes me as being very funny that Armand is not immune to the same process of hiding behind a facade. His has more props. He has the house, the title, the followers, but when I look into his eyes I see the animal, not the man.

That animal is unhappy. Prowling. Sniffing. Wants to get to the bottom of my secret because he knows I have one, and I won’t give it up the way he expects me to.

“You are more intelligent than they’ve given you credit for, aren’t you,” he says. “The way you look at me makes me feel as though you’re looking right through me.”

So he feels me inside him. I like that. I like that he knows I have penetrated him, just as he surely intends to penetrate me.

I give a little shrug.

“I want to spank you,” he says, his lips turning up in a little smirk. “There is something about you that just begs to be spanked.”

“It’s not about me. It’s about you not getting what you want. You want to spank me because punishing me is easier than dealing with the fact that I won’t give you what you want. You’re spoiled.”

* * *

Armand

“Spoiled?”

I laugh, not because she’s wrong, but because I never considered the notion before. I was raised from birth to become alpha of this pack. I had all the trappings provided, and all the necessary attitudes installed by my parents, who have now retired to the Aegean.

“I suppose I could be described as spoiled in a certain light,” I say. “But the fact that I am your alpha remains.”

“And the fact that I’m not going to do what you want just because you’re alpha also remains.”

She’s eighteen, going on nineteen. Young to be this bold and sure of herself, but sometimes adversity breeds that quality, though in my experience it is more likely to create the opposite. I can only imagine what she’ll be like when she is more settled here. I suppose it’s down to me to train her to be as I want her to be.

“We will see about that, ma cherie ,” I say, remembering how she writhed beneath my fingers. She might be rebellious, but she’s never been handled by me before.

She smiles, and for the first time it feels like a genuine smile. Sitting in my shirt, in my bedroom, full of sass and butter, she is beautiful. I will remember this moment forever, just as I will remember chasing her through the moonlit fields and seeing her for the first time at the auction. Each of those moments revealed a different part of her, like a diamond twisting slowly in firelight with its various facets all gleaming.

“Are you still hungry? Is there a need going unmet?”

“I’m not hungry,” she says. “And I’m not tired.”

“Then you have some time to kill, to settle in. You’ll have a proper introduction to the pack tonight at dinner. They have been on me to find my mate.”

“Really? Why?”

“An unmarried alpha is a liability to a pack.”

“Why?”

“Well, for one, it means there are no direct heirs, which can cause an unsettled situation if something happens to him.”

“So I’ve been brought here to stamp out a few Armand de Lune babies.”

I try not to take offense to that assessment. “You are so much more than a bitch to be bred,” I tell her. “I hope that you can tell from the way you are being treated that you matter greatly to me. If all I wanted were babies, we would have already begun that process.”

She blushes deeply and adorably and that reaction, along with the topic of conversation, makes my cock immediately hard. Breeding her will be a pleasure. She has a hard outer shell, but she is tender and responsive, and I think when she opens up to me, giving herself fully the way one only can during lovemaking, she will be spectacular.

“You are most welcome here, Beatrix. The pack is eager to welcome you to the family. You are not merely a new member. You are going to be at the very center of our lives.”

She looks horrified at that statement, which I intended to be encouraging, but see how it might be overwhelming instead. For a girl from a terrible old orphanage, being made the center of pack life is probably, well, entirely ridiculous.

“But that will come with time,” I tell her. “Tonight is just an introduction. I’m trying to explain that you are very welcome, that people are excited to meet you, and that I am proud to call you mine.”

Her eyes meet mine, dark and wary and afraid. Deeply, deeply afraid. I really have to stop talking about the pack, it’s far too much. I have to remind her of what is between the two of us, her and me.

Or maybe that’s just my lust talking. Maybe I need to focus more on her, her family.

“Do you remember your pack? Or anything about your parents?”

Her face goes quiet and solemn again. Once again, I have chosen the wrong conversational path.

She does not want to talk about herself. I will not get information by bald questioning. I’ll have to get in touch with the director of the orphanage for information. I don’t even know her last name. Does she?

“What’s your last name?”

She shakes her head and utters something like a curse under her breath.

“You’re not going to tell me anything about yourself?”

She sighs and looks at me as if I am stupid. “I don’t know anything about myself. Everything I ever thought I knew, I got told was a lie. So there’s nothing I can tell you about myself, not that I know is true.”

I make another mental note to kill the director. The man clearly knew precisely what and probably who he had in his custody. He should have reached out to the relevant packs to find her an appropriate home, a place for her to be raised among her own kind. Instead, he hoarded her for money, denied her truth, had her drugged into submission, and caused potentially irreparable damage. He hurt my mate. He will suffer for it.

I want to fuck her.

Even in the midst of sympathy and defensive rage, I feel the need to be inside her. It feels wrong, to need her so deeply, to be so consumed with desire that the tragedy I see in her eyes and every line in her face cannot take priority in this moment.

But she does not want to talk about it. She cannot tell me more than she knows, and the truth of the matter is, if this mate bond is as strong as I feel it to be, she wants my cock far more than she wants my questions.

Our bond demands consummation.

She is lost. Adrift in the world. Separated from her kind. Separated from herself. Our mating will bring her back.

Perhaps that is why, in spite of all the human tendencies to treat someone like her as a victim who should not be touched, my only desire is to take her, to be inside her, and to claim her as my own. It is entirely natural for me to be consumed with need for this perfect creature who is the mate nature, in all her wisdom, made for me.

All my life I have been told how it feels to meet one’s mate, how it is to finally feel complete, to know that the search is over. We won’t entirely enjoy that feeling until we have mated, until this sweet but spicy thing has spread her thighs for me and welcomed me into her depths.

But still, I am restraining my most animal passions out of concern for the fact that they would probably frighten her if she had any idea how intensely I want her.

Her lips quirk into something faintly reminiscent of a smile.

“You’re looking at me like you want to eat me.”

“I do want to devour you, but you’ll stay intact.”

She shifts on the bed, looking at me with the wide eyes of prey. That is not the reaction I want to arouse in her. I want to see her anticipation, her need. I don’t want her to be afraid of being with me intimately.

It all raises the question yet again. The question I don’t think I can survive not knowing the answer to. The question that drives me, torments me, and commands me to find an answer to it no matter what.

How did she shift without having been mated by me?

I want to ask her again who she has slept with, but I know how that question will come across. It will seem like petty jealousy. It will diminish me in her eyes, and that I will not have.

It is a question only I am struggling with because for the moment, I am sure the pack assumes we consummated quickly. They do not know that she shifted on her own accord, that she fled me in a wolf form I had never seen before. Maybe the boys put two and two together, the fact that she was in her wolf form and I was not in the room, the fact that I hadn’t mentioned needing the painkillers immediately, and was talking about the whole thing as something that was yet to happen.

That doesn’t matter. What does matter is someone has been where only I should ever have been.

Jealousy sparks through me at the same time as concern. Something must have happened to her before I met her. Something terrible, perhaps. A lone wolf may have smelled her out, decided to take advantage of her. I can imagine her being loose in the Scottish wilds, roaming restlessly, eager for any acknowledgement of her true self.

A female wolf cannot shift for the first time until she has been mated. That is common knowledge. It is also widely regarded that it has to be a fated mate to trigger the shift, but that is where the whole argument starts to become gray. Some insist that only a true soulmate can bring out the beast in a female shifter, but nature is a messier creature than that. She makes a lot of spares. She revels in options.

It may be that we each have only one true fated mate, one who brings us the full joy of connection, the depths of animal soul connection, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy others to lesser degrees. According to nature’s design, it is always better to breed with a lesser option than to avoid breeding at all.

I look at Beatrix and am tortured by the notion of someone else putting so much as a finger on her.

“Have you been in love before, Beatrix?”

She shakes her head.

I breathe out a little and relax somewhat. She has not given her heart, even if she happens to have given her body.

I reach out and cup her chin with my hand, rubbing the pad of my thumb over her lower lip in a gesture faintly reminiscent of the way I handled her pussy in the orphanage. I can see by the blush on her cheeks she has put two and two together as well, and feels the same sparking of sexual intensity between us.

We have chemistry that cannot be denied, and whenever I touch her, it flares into intense, all-consuming life.

“Who are you… what are you…”

She asks the questions with her voice muted, but her tone intense. She is shaking. I don’t think she can help it. Her arousal is tinged with fear, and the combined scent is absolutely intoxicating.

She knows who I am, superficially at least. She’s not asking for my name. She’s not asking for my position. She’s asking for something deeper, something I am not sure I can answer now.

This should be so straightforward. She should be my virginal mate, she should submit to my cock, and she should be bonding with me as nobody has ever bonded before. There should be nothing even faintly resembling a question of anything in either of our minds.

This is the sort of nonsense reserved for humans, all the wondering and the worrying and the uncertainty.

It is my job to provide clarity and leadership. Sitting around wondering who took what should have been mine, if they took what should have been mine, and how such a thing happened, and all the other terrible questions that lead inevitably to terrible conclusions, is of no use to either one of us.

I shall have to do what humans do. I shall have to choose to love her regardless of what has come before, and what might yet come.

“I am your mate,” I tell her, sliding my fingers gently down her neck and wrapping them lightly around her throat. I feel her tremble as excitement courses through her. It is not so long since she was in her animal form, and then even less time since she writhed to climax on my fingers. Her body is craving my cock. That is simple instinct, and it will not be denied. She is as receptive as she is likely to be, and it is time to impress on her that she has a place with me.

“I am the one you will submit to for the rest of your life. I am the one who will own you. I am the one who will love you. I am the one who will take you and care for you and sometimes…” I hold back from saying the filthier, darker things: claim you, use you, breed you.

She is looking at me with a sort of feral innocence that makes saying such things far too inappropriate.

I want her to trust me.

But that might be almost impossible. She has been out of place all her life, and I know too well that those who have been out of place are vulnerable to exploitation. They are betrayed over and over by those they go to in the hopes of connection.

“Sometimes what?”

“Sometimes engage in intimacy with you,” I tell her, letting my thumb rub over her lower lip again. “Have you done that before?”

She draws back, bites her lower lip, and I see her expression go closed. My stomach sinks as I realize that likely means she has done something before. There is some experience lurking in her past. Her innocence has been taken, over and over.

“There is nothing you cannot tell me.”

That was the wrong thing to say. Her eyes go blank in a way that tells me she is locking herself away. Her secrets, for the moment, remain hers.

“You’ll learn to trust, in time.”

She draws away from me, as if using the word trust was more of a betrayal than bringing her down with my pack in a field. I have in my hands someone who would rather be beaten than understood.

I do not know if she is a virgin. I do not know if she gave herself willingly, or was violated. I know nothing. The urge to interrogate is supreme, but I know it will do more harm than good.

I could force the truth from her…

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Do you understand your position, your place with me?”

* * *