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 don’t know why,” Armand says as we lie together in the aftermath of our rough mating. “But the more you submit, the more I feel as though I’m not getting through to you at all. You’ve made this all too easy.”
“Maybe I like being captive. Maybe this keeps me safe. Maybe not everybody was made to be free.”
Armand wraps his arms around me and sighs into my hair.
“You were made to be free. You just need to understand that there are other ways to be safe besides killing every man that moves.”
“Arguably…”
“No,” he says firmly. “We’re not having this discussion. Killing equals captivity, equals you being kept in a dungeon and fucked until you bear my pups. Until you start to think differently, that’s how it’s going to be.”
“You wouldn’t keep me down here pregnant.”
“I would,” he says. “I’d do anything to keep you out of trouble, Trixie. I love you, and if that means you live the rest of your life as my captive fuck mate, then so be it. Plenty of our ancestors were kept this way. There’s no reason you can’t be too.”
He’s so fucking hot when he’s mercilessly medieval.
CHAPTER 23
Armand
“Maître?” Daniel taps on my door one afternoon not long after I confined my mate to the dungeon to be my sweet little fuck toy. The guilt I felt at the beginning is starting to fade, because it is working. She is contained, she even seems happy. It’s the strangest thing.
Perhaps things are starting to finally come to order. Jenny Duplante seems happy enough with Beau, who seems happy enough with her, and the world is no longer at risk from Beatrix. The attack on the detectives seems to have been put down to wolves; wolf stories are rife at the moment.
I’ve banned the pack from shifting anywhere outside our immediate territory for the moment. There are rumors of hunters flying in with the intention of killing these man-eating beasts. But, all things considered, I’d say I have things under control.
“What can I do for you, Daniel?”
He lifts both his brows and breathes in a way I know heralds the end of my hopes of peace and quiet.
“What is it?”
“I have reason to believe we are being invaded by Russian wolves,” Daniel says. His tone is almost bored, faintly annoyed. I love this man like a brother, though he is only a cousin. I should say that aloud one day, he’d find it funny. Maybe when we are not being invaded.
I look out the window, but the sky is blue and the grass is green and there doesn’t seem to be an invasion anywhere about. I tap my pen on the desk blotter and look at him questioningly.
“Are they out the back? Coming down the chimney?”
“They’re in the town,” he says. “Two people died last night in wolf attacks. Their bones were found scattered around the old cemetery.”
The hair rises on the back of my neck.
“What did you just say?”
“You don’t actually want me to repeat that, do you, Maître?”
“No,” I say. “But it’s not possible. Beatrix is locked up, and I was with her last night. She didn’t escape the dungeon, kill two people, and come back. The security on those doors is…”
“I don’t think it was your mate,” he says. “Actually, I know it wasn’t.”
“How?”
“They shot one of them,” he says. “The wolves, that is. But they missed, they think, and accidentally shot a nudist hiding amid the graves. A Russian nudist.”
He slides his phone across the desk to me. There’s a picture there from the local chat page. It’s a man looking sorry for himself, and nursing what looks to be a patched-up wound. The locals are raising funds and food for him, because they do not know a predator when they see one.
“We need to get this man into our custody immediately,” I say, standing up. “Let’s go get him. Bring the boys.”
“Are we taking the train?”
“Yes, and two cars. We’ll offer hospitality, the villagers will be relieved, and we will have these creatures where we want them.”
I am mobilizing the men when Mr. Volkov makes an appearance.
“If I could speak with you…”
“Not now, Mr. Volkov, we have important pack business to attend to.”
He puts a hand on my shoulder. I was not looking at him before. I am now. This man has been in my pack for weeks, getting deep inside the minds and hearts of everybody he speaks to. I have allowed him because I have regarded him, tattoos and strength and taciturn demeanor aside, to be mostly harmless. He does not look harmless now.
His expression is stoic as he looks at me. “We need to speak.”
I look him over, really look at him. I try to tell what has shifted and changed, why he suddenly seems more like a threat than a guest.