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)
Nothing has ever gone my way. Every time I caught sight of a sliver of hope it was either snatched away, or worse, ended up being some kind of trap. I didn’t notice my ability to believe in good things leaving me, but I notice that it is gone now.
I can enjoy the cake for what it is, experience the day for what it is, but trust this place to be what it seems? Absolutely not. Just because things look happy doesn’t mean they are. Just because things seem good doesn’t mean they are. People are liars. They can’t help themselves.
Thanks to my better-than-average-even-for-a-wolf hearing, I can hear the bustle of the town around me, conversations taking place behind what people think are closed doors. My hearing has always been better than most. Animal senses are. I wonder if Armand has his closed off, or if he just doesn’t care, but I hear discord all around us. I can hear couples bickering. I can hear children yelling in frustration. I can smell the bitterness behind some of these smiles.
A small family wanders in front of us. Man, woman, baby in a push chair. They’ve been at the bakery.
A woman shows her husband a cute little wolf-shaped pastry. He smiles at it briefly, then rolls his eyes as she turns away and tends to their baby, sharing the treat with its grabby little hands. He pulls out his phone and opens a text. I can’t see the message, but I can smell the pheromone release he gets from it. He’s cheating right in front of his wife and baby, and I’m sure both mother and child believe implicitly in the happy family they don’t actually have.
“Beatrix?”
“Hm?”
“You weren’t listening,” Armand says, a slight note of accusation in his tone.
He’s wrong about that, of course. I was listening. I was listening to the myriad domestic scraps of all kinds going on around us. I was listening to parents telling their children to pick up their toys. I was listening to football games being turned up just that little bit louder to cover the sound of a vacuum cleaner. I was listening to dishes being done, and beers being poured, and I was listening to the bright and cheery voices of visiting couples that slipped back into dour and unhappy tones the moment they thought they had privacy.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
He gives me a patient look, his eyes fixed on mine, as if looking at me could keep my focus. Who knows. Maybe that is how that works. Maybe if I just look into his eyes, I’ll stop noticing how the world has remained more or less miserable in spite of all the beauty in it, how many cruelties are hidden away in the plain sight of mundane day.
“And you’re gone again,” he says. “What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing,” I say. I’ve shared thoughts like these before, and nobody likes to hear them. People want to hear nice things, cheerful things, the kinds of things that pour from his mouth without effort.
“I can feel the weight of that nothing, Beatrix.”
His question probes and finds me raw beneath its point.
“Sorry, I should rephrase. None of your business.”
He lets out a barking laugh of surprise, but he’s not actually offended. I do like that about him. Armand is very centered in himself. He knows who he is and what he thinks and he does not need others to be thinking the same things in order for him to maintain his opinions. It’s a very attractive quality. It almost makes me trust him. Almost.
“You are… certainly not what I am used to,” he says. “The notion of anybody in the pack telling Maître what they are thinking is none of his business…” He laughs again, entirely amused. Then his expression turns intense, his eyes more silver as he crooks a finger at me. He can’t let this slide. He has to fix me. A tingle of excitement makes its way down my spine as I realize I might very well be in trouble with him. That’s more interesting than the veneer of happiness he’s been wanting me to buy into.
“Come here.”
He gets up, takes me with him, and draws me into an alcove in an alley where he runs his hands up the sides of my body, squeezing and soothing me with his grounding touch until they settle on my hips. He looks down at me, and I look up at him, the several-inch disparity in our height creating a dynamic of imbalance I will never shake.
“You,” he says, “are retreating into the recesses of your own mind, and coming out sassy.”
“You’re describing thinking. Is thinking banned in your pack?”
He lifts a brow at me, that finely shaped, elegant flock of hair signifying so much. He likes my attitude, but he knows he shouldn’t tolerate it. I’m sure he’s tempted to respond to me in kind, but he knows he has to be the alpha his pack groomed him to be, so instead of companionship there is authority.