Rescued by the Blackridge Alpha

Chapter 11

Hours later, the truck began to slow again.

This time, nobody asked whether we'd reached another territory.

We heard Ravenwood before we saw it.

Music filtered through the metal walls, followed by voices and laughter. Another engine roared past us. The smell reached us next: woodsmoke, roasting meat, beer and so many unfamiliar wolves that Nia stirred beneath my skin.

The truck crawled forward for several minutes before finally stopping.

Locks scraped outside.

The doors opened.

Light flooded the compartment.

“Silvercrest route?” a man called.

The driver appeared beside him. “Sixteen females. Sorry we're late.”

The other man checked the clipboard in his hands, apparently unconcerned by the delay. “Registration three. Get them out.”

Them.

Tessa slung her bag over one shoulder and stood. “Here we go.”

I reached for mine. Beside me, Maisie hadn't moved. She stared through the open doors as if something outside might swallow her the moment her feet touched the ground.

“You okay?”

She looked at me. “No.”

Fair enough. I held out my hand.

Maisie stared at it for a second before taking it.

We climbed down together.

My bare feet hit packed earth, and I stopped. Ravenwood spread across an enormous clearing.

For several seconds, I couldn't reconcile what I saw with everything I'd imagined during the journey. I'd expected a council building with offices, or buildings. Perhaps some miserable hall where Alphas sat behind desks and signed papers while everyone pretended selling people became respectable when enough forms were involved.

Instead, lanterns hung between wooden posts. Fires burned beneath the night sky, illuminating rows of canvas shelters and wooden stalls. Music drifted from somewhere deeper in the grounds. People walked past carrying food and mugs of beer. Pack banners moved lazily overhead while wolves from more territories than I'd ever seen gathered in groups around the clearing.

Someone nearby laughed. It looked like a freaking festival.

Then I noticed the men looking at us. One stopped talking when our group passed. His gaze moved openly along the line, lingering long enough on Maisie that her fingers tightened around mine. Another man nudged his friend and nodded toward Rhea.

Tessa had noticed too. “Keep moving,” she murmured.

We followed the others deeper into the grounds.

Another truck stood across the clearing with its rear doors open. Women climbed out beneath the lantern light. Then came another. Then another.

Beyond them stood a line beneath a wooden sign marked with a number. And beyond that, another.

Women everywhere.

Some held bags. Some held papers. A few stood alone while men moved between them, looking them over with the casual interest I'd seen farmers give livestock before deciding whether it was worth the asking price.

My steps slowed. A raised wooden platform stood farther ahead. A young woman was standing on it.

Three men watched from below. One called out something I couldn't hear. Another lifted his hand and shouted a number.

Someone answered with a higher one. The woman didn't move. She stared straight ahead while the numbers continued.

My grip loosened around Maisie's hand.

“Maren?”

I barely heard her. At a table beside the platform, a man checked a sheet of paper. Another counted money.

Money.

Behind them, someone handed a drink to his friend and laughed. I looked at the food stalls. The fires. The banners. At the rows of women waiting beneath numbered signs.

Garrick had called it a transfer.

Thomas had called the truck transport.

I'd spent the entire journey imagining paperwork. Agreements between packs. One Alpha handing responsibility for an Omega to another.

Another bid rang across the clearing. Higher than the last. The woman on the platform lowered her eyes.

Holy f**k.

This was a meat-market.

Tessa caught my elbow before I could stop completely. “Keep moving.”

I tore my attention away from the woman on the platform. The bidding continued behind us, another number shouted into the night as casually as if they were haggling over a barrel of apples.

Maisie's hand was still wrapped around mine. “This is legal?” she whispered.

I looked at the stalls, the pack banners, the men drinking beer while women waited beneath numbered signs. “Apparently.”

“Registration three!” the driver called from behind us. “Silvercrest, keep moving.”

Tessa released my arm and nodded toward a long wooden building on the far side of the clearing. Three lanterns hung beside its entrance, illuminating a line that disappeared through the open doors.

“Come on,” she said. “I'd rather not give them a reason to put us back in the truck.”

That was enough motivation. We joined the line.

Up close, Ravenwood looked even more like a festival. Someone had set up a stall selling roasted meat less than twenty feet from registration. The smell made my empty stomach clench. Wolves moved between the fires carrying drinks, laughing with friends from other packs and stopping occasionally to look toward the arriving transfers.

One man didn't even bother pretending he wasn't staring. His gaze moved over Maisie before settling on me.

I stared back.

He looked away first.

That helped. Barely.

The line moved quickly. Every few minutes, someone disappeared through the doors ahead of us. Occasionally another woman came out through a separate exit, carrying the same bag she'd entered with and a numbered strip tied around her wrist.

I watched one pass. “What's the number for?”

Tessa followed my gaze. “Tomorrow, I'd imagine.”

Wonderful.

Maisie shifted closer. “Do they have to put it on us?”

“Maybe they'll let you hold it,” Tessa said.

Maisie looked hopeful.

Tessa sighed. “I was joking.”

“Oh.”

“Stop doing that,” I told her.

“What?”

“Believing her.”

For the first time since we'd arrived, Maisie smiled.

Tessa looked offended. “I'm always honest.”

“You told me I drool.”

“You do.”

I was still considering whether kicking her would be worth losing my place in line when someone called, “Next.”

Tessa went first.

Maisie and I watched her disappear through the doorway.

She returned less than five minutes later with a white strip around her wrist. “Still alive,” she announced.

“What did they do?” Maisie asked.

“Asked questions. Wrote things down. Destroyed what remained of my dignity.”

Maisie's smile disappeared.

Tessa touched her arm. “I'm exaggerating.”

“Are you?”

“A little.”

That wasn't particularly reassuring.

The registrar called for the next transfer. Maisie didn't move.

I squeezed her hand before releasing it. “Go.”

She swallowed and disappeared inside.

My turn came several minutes later. The room was smaller than I'd expected. Two desks stood beneath bright oil lamps. Shelves along the back wall were filled with folders, while stacks of paper covered almost every available surface.

It was a relief that no one was waiting to inspect my teeth.

A middle-aged woman sat behind the nearest desk. Grey streaked her dark hair, and spectacles rested low on her nose. She didn't look up when I approached.

“Paperwork.”

I stood there.

She finally glanced at me. “Your transfer papers.”

“Oh.” Apparently I was supposed to have those. “My uncle has them.”

The woman held out her hand.

I looked at it. Then at her. “He isn't here.”

Her hand dropped. “Pack?”

“Silvercrest.”

She shuffled through one of the piles beside her, found a folder and opened it.

“Maren Stone?”

I hated how quickly she found me. “Yes.”

Her pen touched the paper. “Twenty-three?”

“Yes.”

“Rank?”

I stared at her.

She looked over her spectacles.

“You have the file.”

“I need verbal confirmation.”

Of course she did. “Omega.”

The word felt different here. At Silvercrest, it had simply been what I was. Something I'd known since Nia first appeared. Here, it sounded like information printed beside a price.

The woman made a mark. “Occupation?”

“Kitchen.”

“Domestic work?”

“No. Kitchen.”

Her pen stopped.

I wasn't entirely sure why that distinction suddenly mattered so much, but it did.

“I prepared meals for the packhouse,” I explained. “Events too. Ceremonies, council gatherings and such."

The registrar looked at me for the first time with something resembling interest. “Cooking, food preparation, household management?”

“I didn't manage a household.”

“Food inventory?”

“Yes.”

“Staff?”

“Sometimes.”

She crossed something out and wrote again. “Food service and household management.”

I opened my mouth. Then closed it.

Cook would have stabbed her with the pen. I found some comfort in that.

“Training?”

“Kitchen.”

The registrar's pen stopped. “Combat training.”

“Then no.”

She made a mark on the page. “Weapons?”

I thought of Cook's knives. “Do carving knives count?”

The woman looked at me over the rim of her spectacles.

“I'll take that as a no,” I said.

Her pen moved on. “Medical training?”

“Nothing official. Burns, cuts, the occasional i***t who slices his hand open while preparing meat.”

“So no.”

“Apparently.”

She marked another box.

Three questions. Three things I couldn't do.

Nobody asked whether I could stretch winter stores for another week, calm a panicking kitchen during a feast, or feed two hundred wolves without letting half of them notice we'd run short on meat.

Apparently none of that counted as training.

“Shifted?”

“Yes.”

“Most recent shift?”

“Yesterday.”

The registrar made another mark. “Any complications?”

I thought of Nia tearing through my skin before I had any say in the matter. Of four paws hitting the forest floor and the sudden, overwhelming certainty that she was no longer the wolf I'd known before.

“Not exactly.”

Her pen stopped. “What does that mean?”

“It was her first shift since reaching maturity.”

That earned me a glance over the top of her spectacles. “When did she mature?”

“Yesterday.”

The woman's attention sharpened. “And you found your mate the same day?”

There it was again.

“Unfortunately.”

She wrote something in the margin.

I leaned forward. “What did you write?”

“Mature wolf. Recent mate recognition.”

“That's relevant?”

“To some buyers.”

Of course it was. Apparently even Nia's birthday had become sales information.

"Previous mate bond?” she continued her interrogation.

There it was. My arms slowly dropped. “Yes.”

“Status?”

I looked toward the open doorway. Women passed outside. Voices carried from the market. Somewhere nearby, someone laughed.

“Rejected.”

The word barely made it past my throat.

The registrar didn't react. Why would she? I was probably the tenth rejected wolf she'd processed today. “Rejection accepted?”

I looked back at her. “What?”

“Did you formally accept the rejection?”

Caden's voice came back with painful clarity.

Mara Vale, before my Alpha, my pack and the Moon Goddess who bound our wolves…

Then pain, Nia screaming, the stone beneath my knees. Caden reaching for me.

I'd ran.

“No.”