Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 87848 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87848 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
“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.