Page 65 of Purchased

I sniff Mr. Volkov out, following my nose. I don’t like the way he smells, either. His wolf scent is laid atop something colder, deader. Something like the scent of corpses. Sometimes one scent is stronger than the other, but nobody else seems to notice how gross he is.

I find him in the library, out on the balcony. The sun has started to set, and he is standing under the rising moon sucking on his cigarette. Disgusting habit. Maybe that’s where the dead scent comes from.

I’d push him off the balcony, if not for the fact that we’re on the ground floor and it would barely inconvenience him. I wonder if I can get Armand to move his office to the roof.

“Hello, Beatrix,” he says coolly, greeting me before I want him to know I am here. I needed a bit more time to decide what I wanted to do to him. Murdering him seems a bit much given Armand’s current feelings on the matter of me killing people. I don’t want to upset my mate. I know I’m pushing him to his limits as it is.

“I should kill you,” I hear myself say.

Shit. I opened with a murder threat. I was going to try so damn hard to stay away from going zero to a hundred that quickly, but it just feels like I can’t help myself. I want very much to kill him. It’s an imperative pounding in my blood. Death to the interloper.

“You’d find it harder to kill me than most,” he says, unconcerned. “And unlike your mate, if you were to try, the result would not be a spanking. You would suffer badly for a long time.”

He says all that very casually, but something about his tone makes me believe him. It makes me think twice. It doesn’t make me any less desiring of hurting him for hurting my mate, but it does make me think I’m going to need to do it carefully.

“I like a challenge,” I say.

“You are a perfect little predator,” he says. “Made entirely for your environment. But I am not from your world and you will only hurt yourself in trying to hurt me. I know that this won’t be enough warning to stop you from trying, but when you do inevitably try, and you do inevitably suffer, you will remember this warning.”

“Don’t upset him again, or I will make you regret it. There. Now we’re both threatening each other.”

He smirks at me. “Your session isn’t until tomorrow, but I feel as though we are getting an early start on it.”

CHAPTER14

Armand

Antoine is practically vibrating with excitement as we enter my office. He is usually so restrained, with the boredom of life that sometimes comes to those who have lived a lot of it and ceased to be surprised. I have the feeling something has surprised Antoine.

“I have news,Maître. I think the mystery of your mate’s origin has been resolved.”

“Really?”

“Yes,Maitre.Really. You might want to sit down. I’m afraid there’s strange news to be heard.”

I don’t sit down. I look at him, expecting him to make it quick. He does not make it quick.

“I found the director’s records. That’s the first bit of news, and the best. He secreted them away in a bank vault in Paris. There was quite a bit of information of various kinds in them. I’ve made copies, naturally, and added them to our archives.”

I try not to be overtly impatient. All I want to hear is what the deal with Beatrix is.

“Her family name was Rostova. She was orphaned because her parents both died in inter-pack aggression. The Russian packs were at war in the early two thousands, and that war was vicious, bitter, and violent. Females were not spared any more than males were. Her parents sent her away to safety, to family in Britain. But the family she was sent to were also killed, as were the people she was traveling with. She was found in a bloody crime scene, and taken to the orphanage, because she was judged to need a higher level of care than could be given in a foster home. They did not know her shifter heritage, but they knew she was not normal.”

It sounds like Beatrix’s trauma has always been clear. She wears it like armor. The Russian connection is also not entirely surprising, given that the director mentioned she had Siberian blood.

“Moreover,Maître, I can allay your second concern. The one around her virginity. I did some research, and there’s an ancient shifter pack—or was. They were wiped out in the wars. They’re noted in the history books because they had a specific mutation. Females of most shifter packs these days don’t gain the ability to shift until they’re bred. Some don’t even have the ability to properly hunt and kill once they do shift. They’re practically domesticated, more like dogs than wolves. We’ve all heard the stories out of the States.”

“Yes. And?” I am growing increasingly impatient as he seems intent on saving the best for last.

“This is the part that I find concerning,Maître. And so you know, I have not told anybody, nor will I, besides you.”

“Alright.”

“Females of this lost pack do not gain their ability to shift when they are mated by their fated mate for the first time. They gain their ability to shift when they first kill a man.”

He pauses to let that sink in. “She is not made wolf by merit of mating, of love. She is made wolf by merit of destruction, of committing an indelible sin that can never be forgiven.”

He is laying it on more than a little thick, but I get a sense of what he is implying.

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