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)
I came in here wanting to scream at Armand, and now I want to defend him.
“He didn’t do anything wrong, and if he did, I don’t care. I do more wrong than anybody else, and I want him. Nobody else could handle me. You couldn’t handle me. Armand is the only person I’ve ever felt loved by, and nothing you say, and nothing he does is going to change that.”
Armand is smiling at me. “Beatrix, I…”
“Shut up, I am still angry at you. That was still fucked up.”
“It was,” he agrees. “And I am sorry. In my defense, I didn’t think you’d find out.”
I stare at him for a moment, then laugh. “That sounds like something I would say.”
“Yes, it is,” Volkov says. He sounds disapproving. Good. I hope he fucking hates our relationship.
“What’s in there, it answers a lot of questions,” Armand says. “Did you read it? I don’t know how much you remember about your past, but it’s all there.”
“I read some of it, and then I got too angry.”
“There was a lot in there about where you come from, and what happened back then. If you ever have questions that you want answered, those pages answer it.”
“You shouldn’t have done it without telling me.”
“I know.”
I look at him, long and hard. “You’d do it again, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” he admits. “I would.”
A laugh bubbles up in me. We are cut from the same cloth, he and I, both unapologetic about doing what we feel needs to be done.
“I love you,” I say.
“I love you too,” he says. “And honestly, the information we have now is going to help. I know it is.”
“What’s so useful about knowing why I was fucking abandoned, Armand?”
“For starters, you weren’t abandoned. You were hidden in the orphanage. It was an attempt to save you, and I’d say it worked.”
“Maybe. Maybe my parents just wanted to get rid of me.”
Armand shakes his head vehemently.
“You were one of the last of your line, and your pack was under attack. There is absolutely no chance you weren’t wanted, and they didn’t try to keep you safe. My guess? They planned to come back for you, but couldn’t. I doubt they knew what happened to the girls when they aged out.”
“Do you really think so?”
I have never allowed myself to feel hope that anybody cared about me. The girls at the orphanage all had stories about the reasons they ended up there. I heard a lot of theories about absent parents who were coming back at any moment. I never believed them. I always felt, deep down, that I’d never see mine again.
“Do you remember your parents?”
I don’t know the answer to that question. Memory requires consent. You can’t remember things if you don’t want to, if you think about something else whenever it tries to surface, if you shove it down really deeply.
“I don’t want to talk about myself,” I say. “My memories are for me, not for anyone else. And not for people who ask me and assume I have to answer them. You might have paid for my body, but you didn’t buy my brain.”
Mr. Volkov is making notes feverishly.
“How do you feel when Beatrix shares nothing with you?”
“I feel great,” Armand says, his tone dripping sarcasm. “Brilliant. I enjoy being shut out of her internal world and having to guess at the forces that formed her, and being unable to understand where she is coming from, or what I can do to make her happy.”
“You want to make me happy?” I ask him the question, not because I didn’t know that, but because I’m setting a conversational trap.
“I would die to make you happy.”
“I’m still not going to tell you about my childhood, but I will tell you that you dying won’t make me happy,” I tell him.
He narrows his eyes at me for a moment, then relaxes a little as he gets the joke, somewhat against his will. He doesn’t want to think this is funny. He wants to be annoyed, because I’m not giving him what he wants, but he’s too good-natured and he likes me too much to stay mad.
“Alright, so I know you don’t want me dead. I know one thing.”
“You have a binder full of things you know about me,” I say. “A whole stack of Beatrix facts. What else do you want?
He looks at me deeply, seriously. “To know you as you know yourself.”
CHAPTER 16
Beatrix
That night, I dream I am small. There is snow outside, but it is being painted black with blood in the moonlight. There is so much fighting happening, fighting that makes me excited, but I cannot participate.
My older brothers are fighting out there, and so is my father. I am curled up with my mother, who is in her wolf form. I am the only one who cannot become a beast.