Page 14 of Purchased

Humans are sometimes confused by sex. Wolves are not. I am not an innocent, nor am I pure, but my youthful sexual forays never held anything beyond simple lust. I never wanted to watch any of them sleep. I was never contented with their mere presence. I was never instantly, completely devoted the way I am now.

Our kind are made differently from humans in several respects. We are wilder. We can be less predictable. We have simpler needs, even more hierarchy than people enjoy, and an understanding of love that goes deeper and means more than people, who throw each other away for reasons big and small, could ever hope to understand.

There is nothing that this girl could ever do to make me abandon her. There is nothing she could do that would make me a sliver less devoted to her. In her, I see my future.

I realize I will have to sleep somewhere else tonight. I like to plan for every eventuality, but I never planned to be unable to sleep in my own bed. So I retire from the bedroom carriage and go into the lounge, where Daniel, one of my closest associates and long-term friends is holding up the bar. He’s my age, with shaggy brown hair and a tweed suit that he insisted would help him blend into the English countryside. He did not allow the fact that we were in Scotland to dissuade him.

He lifts a brow in surprise, then shakes his head at me slightly.

“I did not expect to see you again so soon,Maître.”

“She needs her rest. Those bastards at the orphanage put her through…” I pause and gather myself. “Add them to the investigation list.”

“Investigation list, or destruction list?”

“One, pending the other.”

I pour myself two generous fingers of Scotch and sip it slowly. This has become a momentous day. My eyes slide to the calendar on the back of the wall. Seventh of July. Right between two days of independence. Beatrix has her freedom now too. She has a chance to be who she has always been.

I imagine how shocked she will be when she realizes that she really is a wolf, that she’s always known what she is, and who she is. I cannot wait to guide her through that first transformation. I will have to take great care of her when that happens. It hurts a lot. And it causes symptoms that can be likened to a severe cold.

“We will need painkillers, Daniel.”

“Yes,Maître. We have painkillers.”

“Good ones, I mean. Opiates. I don’t want her to suffer. I want the transition to be seamless.”

“As much as it can be, yes.”

I do not like the idea that there will be pain that I cannot prevent. “She’s had enough hurt, Daniel.”

He stays silent, kindly not mentioning the fact that I thrashed her publicly and thoroughly in front of a crowd. Or the fact that the first transition from human to wolf is the most painful thing a female can endure, including childbirth. Some females never emotionally recover from the first transformation, and refuse to do it a second time.

The physiology of being a shifter is a brutal thing, a supernatural curse, some call it. In females, the transformation is inextricably linked to the loss of virginity to their fated mate. When her flesh joins with the male nature made her for, she is transformed in many ways. She is not merely deflowered. The veneer of simple humanity is ripped from her and the beast is revealed. When Beatrix and I first have sex, she will discover something new about herself, something she clearly understood instinctively, or perhaps was told when she was young, but was taken from her by the orphanage.

The director knew the truth, but I wonder if he did not suppress it simply to make her easier to handle. It would be simpler to drug a young female shifter than to deal with all her rising instincts.

“We are going to the family home,” I tell Daniel. I had planned for a different destination, but Beatrix needs to be among her kind. “I want there to be nothing but peace and recuperation for her. I will take several months from my duties. I will…”

Bang! Bang! Bang!

There’s a sudden series of loud noises coming from the rear carriage. I move before I can think.

I rush back to find the bed empty and the rear carriage door open. The banging sound is the door slamming back and forth at high speed.

She’s jumped.

I run to the little balcony at the back, expecting to see the receding body of my mate twisted on the tracks. But I see no such thing. Instead, I see something large moving under the moonlight, something fast and primal and animal.

A cold thrill runs through me as I realize what I am looking at.

A wolf. A shifter. Her.

My mate has shifted, leaped from a moving train, and is fleeing into the night.

It should be impossible.

Daniel is immediately behind me.

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