Page 32 of Purchased

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 beenmaîtreof 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.”

“Sounds cute.”

“I am led to believe it is, but I am glad you are entirely wild. You are absolutely stunning in your wolf form, Beatrix. You are a beauty inside and out. Thick pelt, tipped with white and that mask about your eyes and muzzle. You are the color of driven snow and exposed granite.”

I stare at him, the compliment hitting me deeply. He thinks I am beautiful. Not just as a human with big breasts and young body. He thinks I’m beautiful when I am shaggy and messy and wild.

“Thank you,” I say. “That is very nice.”

“Not nice, true. You’re stunning. The pack is going to be absolutely beside themselves. Look at yourself.”

I look in the full length mirror he has turned me toward and I find myself transformed in an entirely new way. I am elegant, I am tall. I am beautiful—he put a little color on my lips and mascara on my lashes when he was fussing with me. My hair is braided back from my face, but falls in dark curling locks down my back.

“They are going to lose their minds when they see you. I am losing my mind this moment,” he says, lifting my hand to his mouth. He presses an adoring kiss to it, and I start to believe that he might be right. If I can look this different, maybe I can be this different.

CHAPTER7

Beatrix

The dining room, like the rest of the chateau, is majestic and very old money. This place was built and decorated when men still believed in being extra for the sake of being extra. There is not an unadorned corner in the place. Art is built into the very bones of this building, into every wall, every ceiling, every light switch.

There are dozens of people here. Maybe forty, all sitting at a very long table. They rise as we come in, smiles plastered on their faces. I am not used to people smiling at me because I walked into a room. At first I assume they are looking at Armand. Who wouldn’t? Tall, rakishly and elegantly handsome, with those eyes that pierce you entirely when they fall on you. I can see why the pack chose him as replacement at twenty-four. He is every inch an alpha.

I look at him to try to tell what I’m supposed to do, and like magic he pulls my chair out for me. Everybody sits as I do. It’s honestly kind of weird. For a second, I think about standing up again to see if they all get up, but I don’t have the nerve.

Besides, food is already being delivered by white-gloved waiters. A plate is slid in front of me containing an orange-looking soup with bits of something that isn’t quite fish in it.

“Lobster bisque,” Armand murmurs to me as I stare at it for just a little too long.

“Wolves eat lobster… what’s a bisque?”

“A kind of soup.”

He picks up one of the spoons provided and hands it to me. “Try it,ma cherie.”

I taste it and find that it’s not too bad. Quite rich, and very much not what I am used to. The only soup we got at the orphanage was more like gruel.

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