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)
“You’re lucky to have so much space to run,” she says.
“So are you. All of this is yours now. You do understand that, don’t you?”
“No,” she says. “I never even had a room of my own. Most of the time in the orphanage I shared a bed. I’ve never had anything, and now you’re telling me all of this is mine? No.” She picks up a little paperweight inlaid with gold and puts it down almost immediately as if it burned her. “I don’t dare touch any of this. It all feels like it belongs to someone grand and important.”
I wrap her in my arms and look down at her, understanding the words she is saying, if not quite the emotional weight of them. I was raised with all of this. It feels quite natural to me to have many nice things because they are my due.
“Beatrix, you are grand and important.”
She frowns, almost as though that statement was offensive.
“I’m not. I’m rubbish. I always have been. And I’m not going to be a good mate for you. I’m not… I’m not a good person, and I am a worse wolf.”
“Why do you think you’re not a good person?”
“I lie. I cheat. I steal. I do worse, too, sometimes.”
“And did you do those things because you had to survive in a place where very little was given to you?”
“Maybe. But I got good at them. They’re in my brain now. I’m not… your pack is not going to like me.”
“The pack is going to adore you, just as I do,” I reassure her. “And you will have help. There are many instructors here who can give you etiquette lessons and deportment classes and other lessons to teach you what you need to learn, history and mathematics and such.”
She looks even more uncertain now.
“Don’t worry, ma petite,” I say. “When you meet everyone, you will understand.”
Beatrix
Now he’s talking about lessons. I really am not going to be good enough for this place.
The orphanage had enough basic education that we could read, write, and function to a low level. I have never learned history besides what I picked up here and there through the few books that were passed around, and I don’t know how much of what I read was true.
What I do know, because my instinct tells me, is that I am out of place. I am too young, too rough, too stupid, too poor, too outcast, too alone. I wish I had just one friend from the orphanage, but Armand refused to take any of them with me. So now I am facing this strange situation without any support from anyone who has ever understood me.
I want to go and hide and cry.
He keeps looking at me as if I should be happy, but I am not. And that makes it worse. It was okay when I was in my wolf form. Open spaces and pretty lakes are all I need, a water source and a place to hunt. But as a human, my needs are all too many, too overwhelming, and I am not capable of handling any of this.
“You’re shaking,” he says, taking my hands in his. “Beatrix, I promise, you have nothing to fear. Let me show you.”
I let him show me. I let him find a dress he says will bring out my features, whatever that means. He chooses a deep green velvet gown, and his own suit is similarly colored, so we match. He even goes so far as to do my hair, braiding it with agile fingers.
“How do you know how to do this?”
“When I was young, I used to assist with my mother’s hair.”
“What happened to your mother?”
“She retired with my father. They live in Greece now, as the honored guests of the main pack there.”
“I didn’t know you could choose to give it all up.”
“I was twenty-four when my father took ill. It was decided it was time for me to succeed him. I have been maître of the pack for four years now.” He speaks slightly askew, due to the bobby pins he is holding between his teeth as he secures my braids in place.
“And there has not been a single day of all those years that the pack hasn’t desired I find myself a mate,” he says. “And now you are here. You are the culmination of an ancestral line that will blend with our own, strengthening the bloodlines, and ensuring that our kind survives into the future.”
“Are there a lot of packs?”
“Not as many as there once were, but yes. The bloodlines tend to become diluted over time, or simply end. After a certain point, a shifter can no longer shift. Some American packs have what they call domestic wolves, those who shift into forms more like a dog than a wolf.”