The Lycan Don's Unclaimed Mate

The Transaction

Grand Velar Casino

The rain poured hard against the glass of the Grand Velar Casino's top floor suite, but the noise inside the room felt even heavier than the storm.

Hector Silva was sweating through his tailored suit, his hands shaking so badly he could barely hold his half burned cigar. The ash fell onto the polished wooden desk, but no one in the room bothered to clean it up. Across the black desk sat Viktor, the Blood Syndicate's Under Boss, built like a wall of muscle with scarred hands and eyes the color of ash. Beside him stood two heavily armed Lycan enforcers, arms crossed, their dark coats smelling faintly of rain and gun powder.

On the leather couch in the corner, dropped like a discarded doll, lay Cornelia Silva.

Her dark hair spilled across the cushions, covering most of her pale face. Her wrists were tied tightly behind her back with zip ties. It looks like she was drugged, to help in locking her muscles and keeping her trapped in a deep, feverish unconsciousness.

"She's full blood Silva," Hector pleaded, his voice cracking as he pulled a silk handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his soaked forehead. "Her father was our pack's chief executioner before he died. Her bloodline carries real weight, Viktor. You take her, and my five million dollar inventory debt to the Syndicate is settled in full. Clean slate. We call it even."

Viktor didn't answer right away. He didn't even look at Hector. His cold grey eyes stayed fixed on the unconscious girl on the couch, watching the faint, shallow rise and fall of her chest.

"Don Draxus is currently at thirty thousand feet, flying back from a three day territorial sweep in Chicago," Viktor said, his voice flat, rough, and unmoving. "He doesn't deal in human collateral, Hector. He deals in territory, cash, and blood."

"The Don isn't here, but you have the signing authority while he's in the air!" Hector argued, stepping closer to the desk, his desperation almost too much to hide. "If I go back to the docks tonight without a receipt clearing my debt, the Laurent Syndicate will cut my throat by midnight. Look at her! She's young, she's trained in serious combat, and her name settles the old territorial blood debts under pack law. If you don't take her, you get nothing and a dead debtor. If you sign the transfer, you gain an asset."

Viktor stayed still for a long, painful minute. The only sound in the suite was the steady tap of his thick fingers against the desk and the muffled roar of the storm outside. Finally he reached inside his heavy leather coat, pulled out a gold fountain pen, and dragged the heavy parchment contract across the desk toward Hector.

"Under Syndicate law, a blood debt contract is absolute," Viktor warned coldly, pressing the tip of the pen against the paper. "If Don Draxus rejects this collateral when he lands, your life is forfeit anyway, Hector. And the girl stays our property. There are no refunds in this house."

"Sign it! Just sign the damn paper!" Hector urged, leaning over the desk with wide, frantic eyes.

With two sharp, decisive strokes, Viktor signed the contract, sealing Cornelia's fate before the ink even had time to dry. He capped the pen, slid the document into a steel briefcase, and snapped his fingers at the two enforcers standing guard by the doors.

"Marcus, clear the room," Viktor ordered. "Drag her down to the armored sedan."

Ten minutes later, the tires of the armored SUV rolled against the wet road. Rain falling on the tinted bulletproof glass as the vehicle rode through the dark, winding roads of Upstate New York.

"Is she going to die back there?" the driver barked, checking his rearview mirror nervously every few seconds. "Don Draxus doesn't put up with dead weight in his garage, Marcus. If she stops breathing on our watch, it's our necks."

"She's breathing," Marcus replied, cold and fast, from the front passenger seat. He didn't bother turning around to look at the limp body stretched across the leather bench in the back. "Hector signed her over. Her bloodline clears the debt, and that's all the Under Boss cares about right now."

"The Don's still in the air," the driver noted, swerving hard through tall iron gates into the Syndicate's underground complex. "He doesn't even know Hector brought a girl to settle a five million dollar loss instead of cash. He's going to tear Viktor apart."

"He'll know when he lands," Marcus said, checking his watch as the SUV's engine finally shut off inside the private bay. "The Under Boss sealed the deal under protocol while the Don was finishing the Midwest contract. Our job is just to carry it out. Take her up to the west wing penthouse suite. Lock the fingerprint doors. And if she wakes up before the boss gets here, don't talk to her."

The enforcers stepped out and pulled the rear door open. Rough hands grabbed Cornelia's shoulders, lifting her limp, unconscious body out of the leather seat. Her dark hair fell over her face, her boots dragging quietly across the cold concrete floor as they carried her into the private express elevator.

The floor numbers ticked upward in total silence, thirty, thirty five, forty, forty five, fifty, before the doors slid open into the dark, quiet halls of the private penthouse.

They carried her down the long hallway, laid her onto the oversized maroon coloured bed in the guest suite, and cut the zip ties from her reddened wrists. Without another word, Marcus stepped back, shut the door, and locked it with the fingerprint scanner. The red light on the panel blinked once, sealing her inside the silent dark while everyone awaits Don returns...