Sold As The Breeder Of Three Alpha Brothers

The bell rang before dawn, and Lyra Evermoon already knew what it meant. Auction day. She sat up on her thin mat, listening to the pack house stir around her. Omegas didn't get warnings. They got bells, and orders, and the sound of boots on the floor above. "Get up." Her aunt's voice cut through the dark. "The Alpha wants the omegas washed and lined up by sunrise." "Washed for what?" "Does it matter?" Lyra pulled her knees to her chest. It always mattered. Every ritual in Silverpine Pack meant something, and none of it was ever good for someone like her. She dressed in silence. The dress they'd left for her wasn't hers. Pale blue, soft fabric, nothing an omega was ever given. She held it up to the candlelight and felt her stomach turn. "This isn't a work dress." Her aunt wouldn't look at her. "No." "Then what is it?" "Just put it on, Lyra." By the time she reached the courtyard, the sky had gone the color of a bruise, purple bleeding into grey. Every omega in the pack stood in a line, dressed the same way she was, shivering in the cold. At the front of the courtyard stood Alpha Rourke, and beside him, someone Lyra had never seen before. A woman in silver robes, a crescent moon carved into the staff she carried. A priestess. From the Moon Temple. "Why is she here?" Lyra whispered to the girl beside her. "I don't know. I don't like it." The priestess raised her staff, and the courtyard fell silent. "Three centuries ago," the priestess said, "the Moon Goddess promised our kind a gift. A Breeder Mate. A woman whose blood could restore what the royal bloodline has lost." Murmurs spread through the crowd. Lyra felt her pulse climb into her throat. "For three centuries, we searched. Pack after pack, generation after generation, and found nothing." The priestess lowered her staff, and her eyes moved slowly across the line of omegas. "Until now." Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. "Step forward when I call your name." Lyra prayed. She prayed harder than she had in years, prayed to a goddess she wasn't sure had ever noticed her at all. "Lyra Evermoon." Her knees nearly gave out. "No," she said, so quietly only the wind could have heard it. "No, that's wrong." But the priestess was already walking toward her, and the crowd was already parting, and Alpha Rourke's face had gone from indifferent to something sharper. Something hungry. "Come here, child," the priestess said. Lyra didn't move. Her aunt's hand found her back and shoved her forward, and she stumbled into the open space where everyone could see her. The priestess took her chin in cold fingers and tilted her face up. "Moon eyes," she murmured. "Just as the prophecy said." "What prophecy?" Lyra managed. "What is happening?" "You, Lyra Evermoon, are the Breeder Mate." The words landed like a physical blow. Around her, omegas who had ignored her for years now stared like she'd grown a second head. Alpha Rourke stepped forward, and for the first time in her life, he looked at her like she was worth something. She hated it. "There has to be a mistake," Lyra said. "I'm an omega. I'm nobody." "You were nobody," Rourke said, and there was a smile curling at the edge of his mouth that made her skin crawl. "Now you're the most valuable woman in the kingdom." "Valuable to who?" Nobody answered her. "Take her inside," Rourke said. "Prepare her for travel." "Travel where?" Lyra's voice cracked. "Somebody tell me what's happening to me." The priestess finally looked at her with something close to pity. "The royal Alpha brothers will decide your future tonight. That is all you need to know for now." "That is not all I need to know." Lyra pulled her chin free of the priestess's grip. "You just told an entire courtyard I'm some kind of prophecy. I deserve to understand what that means before you drag me off to strangers." A ripple of surprise went through the crowd. Omegas did not speak that way. Omegas did not speak at all unless spoken to first. Rourke's jaw tightened. "Watch yourself." "Why? What more can you take from me?" Lyra held his gaze, refusing to look away first, even though her hands were shaking at her sides. "You've already decided I'm not a person anymore. Just a prize." The priestess studied her for a long moment, something unreadable moving behind her eyes. "She has spirit," she said, almost to herself. "Good. She will need it." That night, they didn't let her sleep in the omega quarters. They moved her to a private room, locked from the outside, with new clothes laid across the bed and a tray of food she didn't touch. She paced until her legs ached, replaying the priestess's words over and over, searching for the version of this where she still had a say in her own life. She didn't find one. At midday the next day, they loaded her into a carriage bound for the capital. Through the window she watched Silverpine shrink behind her, the only home she'd ever known, and nobody came to say goodbye. The capital was worse than she imagined. Golden spires, banners bearing the crest of three wolves entwined, streets lined with people who'd gathered just to see her pass. She heard the whispers even through the carriage walls. The Breeder Mate. The Ashborne brothers' prize. "What happens when we arrive?" she asked the guard riding beside the carriage. He glanced at her like he pitied her. "The Alpha Council will hold the auction tonight." "Auction." She said the word like it tasted foul. "You're selling me." "Not selling," the guard said, though he wouldn't meet her eyes when he said it. "Bidding for the right to court you. That's how the Council put it." "Court me." Lyra let out a short, humorless laugh. "Does courting usually start with a bell before dawn and a locked door?" The guard said nothing. "That's what I thought." The carriage rolled to a stop in front of a palace so vast it swallowed the horizon, its towers catching the last gold light of the afternoon. Mooncrest Palace. She'd heard the name whispered her whole life, always attached to stories about the three Ashborne brothers who ruled from behind its walls. She had never once imagined she would see it from the inside. Guards opened the carriage door. Lyra stepped out into air that smelled like woodsmoke and moonflower, and looked up at the palace that was about to decide the rest of her life. Somewhere behind those walls were three men who believed winning her meant saving their kingdom. None of them had asked her what she wanted. She meant to make sure that changed. "Move," the guard said gently, and Lyra squared her shoulders and walked toward the gates, chin lifted, refusing to let them see her fear. Whatever waited for her inside, she would not go in as prey.