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)
CHAPTER 15
Armand
“You cannot tell anyone what I tell you, right?”
“Yes,” Volkov says. “You have complete confidentiality in this room.”
“I have information that suggests my mate is from an ancient line of wolves. These wolves did not breed out the way most lines did. They remained primitive in some respects, more primal in their desires and in their deeds.”
“So you’re putting her behavior down to genetics, not the experience of being abandoned and growing up without context in a cruel human world that was incapable of tending to her needs even if it had been interested, which it was not. Interesting.”
“Now you’re making me sound…”
“What?”
“My researcher was very disturbed by what he discovered about her heritage. He claims that breeding with her could contaminate our bloodline.”
“What you’re describing is racism.”
Those words hit me like a blunt hammer. I have no desire to think that way, or to discriminate.
“Wolves believe in pack lines because they are, well, you know, significant in property matters…” I start to say, because I know he is right. But I am skirting around the edges of the problem, and I know it.
“He said she’d be violent, and she is. He said her shift was not precipitated by love, but by killing, which it seems to have been. She is different than we are. If we have children, they might have the same tendencies. They might lean toward killing. If they’re female, they might not be able to take their wolf forms until they off someone. And that’s just impractical on many levels…”
“Why?”
“Because falling in love with your fated mate and being transformed by the act of love is beautiful. And having to kill someone is not.”
He nods and makes a note.
“But it doesn’t matter,” I say. “Because come what may, she is my fated mate. She was made for me. I love her more than I love life. I have never bonded with anyone the way I have with her. I have never loved so deeply, been so frustrated, cared so much, felt so protective… and so protected. She would do anything for me.”
“The devotion of a strong woman is a powerful thing,” Mr. Volkov agrees. “I am glad you can see that. Being able to appreciate her is an important step toward resolving this ambivalence.”
His words carry an accusation couched in gentle therapist speech that makes me want to rip his throat out. Smug fucker.
“The last thing I have ever felt about Beatrix is ambivalent,” I declare. “I don’t actually care where she comes from, or what her bloodline is, or even if she was intimate with someone before me. I just want to know her truth. That’s it.”
I get up to leave the room, before I give into my urge to hit him again.
I am about to open the door when it is kicked open. I find myself pushed around behind it as Beatrix bursts in and throws the file that was on my desk at Volkov. It hits him in the chest and bursts open, showering papers everywhere.
“I’m an evil psychopath!” She makes the declaration. “They have a whole file on me. My mate has a whole fucking set of research on me that I didn’t even know he was doing.”
“And how does that make you feel?”
“How does that make you feel?”
She’s not aware that I am in the room. All her attention, all her anger is focused on Volkov.
I feel as though I am intruding, even though she is the one who barged in on my session. As she rants, I back toward the door and leave without her noticing I was ever there, though I can still hear her as I retreat.
I want to give her the chance to process her rage with Volkov. He’s the one she went to. Not me. She didn’t ask him where I was. I assume she will come looking for me soon enough, though.
Beatrix
“Why doesn’t he love me?”
“What about this makes you think he doesn’t love you?”
“He sent a man to go and get dirt on me. He found out all this stuff about me, and he didn’t tell me any of it. He was keeping this a secret from me. All this information about me.”
“How long has he had it?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. He should have told me right away.”
“Your mate wanted to know more about you.”
“And everything he found out is bad. I’m a psycho from a long line of psychos, and the person who made these notes said I should never be bred with.”
“That’s a hurtful statement.”
“Yeah, it is. Just because I kill people and have to be prevented from eating them, and because I assaulted him viciously the first time we met, and because I’ve been killing since I was fourteen, it’s, like, what, I’m a bad person now?”
Volkov’s lips twitch in a way I haven’t seen them twitch before. I think he finds it somewhat amusing, which only serves to piss me off.