Sold to the Alpha King

Location: Blackwood Academy Auction Grounds, Northern Territories The platform is cold through the soles of my bare feet. Wet. They hosed it down before they brought us out—washes the blood off from the last girl. Someone's mother's daughter. I stare straight ahead and try not to think about whether she screamed. The chains around my wrists are too heavy. Silver. The contact burns—a low, constant throb like the wrong tooth, like the ache in my collarbone when the seasons turn. I've been told not to touch them. That the burns will heal. That I'll heal faster after I'm bought. I am not livestock. I repeat it in my head, over and over, until the rhythm becomes a prayer. *I am not livestock. My name is Elara. I am not livestock. My sister died for something.* "Eyes forward, human." The handler's voice, close to my ear. His breath smells like sour wine and old meat. "No one wants a culler who can't hold her gaze." I look forward. The crowd is a sea of bodies. Wolves, all of them—shifters in their skin-suits, pressed together in the amphitheater seats. Some wear suits. Some wear tribal leathers with teeth strung on cords. They watch me the way I watched anatomy slides in nursing school: with clinical interest, with the cold distance of a future I cannot touch. The auctioneer's voice booms. "Lot 47. Female, twenty-two years. Unmated. No known bloodline contamination. Fertility status: unconfirmed." Twenty-two. Unmated. No known bloodline contamination. *I am a breeding cow with a price tag.* Bile rises. I swallow it. The bidding starts low. Fifty thousand. Sixty. Someone in the back raises a paddle and the handler twists my arm, forcing me to turn, to show my profile. My dress is thin cotton, white, sleeveless. I shiver so hard my teeth chatter. "Sixty-five. Sixty-five going once—seventy. I have seventy from the Vanguard seat. Do I hear seventy-five—" A hand rises from the front row. A woman, silver-gray hair coiled tight, emerald earrings catching the industrial lights. She does not look at me. She looks at the auctioneer and lifts two fingers. "Two hundred. The Ironwood Pack bids two hundred." Two hundred thousand. My throat closes. Two hundred thousand for a lifetime of needles and bleeding and being kept. "Two hundred going once—two hundred—" The air changes. It's the smell first. Like ozone before a storm. Like iron filings and pine sap and something older, something that makes my hindbrain—the part of me that is still mammal beneath the human—want to curl into a ball and play dead. The crowd parts. Not dramatically. Not suddenly. They *shrink*. Men twice my size step sideways, shoulders dropping, eyes sliding away from whoever is walking down the center aisle. Boots. Heavy. Measured. The sound of someone who does not rush, because the world rushes for him. "Three million." The voice is low. Unhurried. It settles into the amphitheater like a stone dropped into still water. No paddle. No raised hand. Just the words, spoken with absolute certainty. The auctioneer's mouth opens and closes. "Three million—Lot 47 to the—to the *Alpha King's* seat." My knees give. I don't fall—the chains keep me upright, my arms yanked above my head as I stumble. The burns on my wrists flare. The crowd erupts—whispers sharp as glass shards, someone calling out a protest that dies mid-syllable. The woman from Ironwood has lowered her hand. Her face is stone. I can't breathe. I can't— He's walking toward me. The platform is raised three feet above the floor. He doesn't use the steps. He *vaults*—one hand on the edge, the movement effortless, suit jacket pulling tight across shoulders built like a cathedral arch. Up close he is taller than I thought. Six-four. Maybe more. Silver-shot black hair tied at the nape, a jaw that looks carved from granite, and *gold*. His eyes are gold. Not brown with gold flecks. Not amber. *Gold*. Like coins. Like the inside of a furnace. Ancient. Cold. They land on me and hold, and I feel every layer of my skin peel back. He crosses the platform in three strides. The handlers melt away. The auctioneer is silent. I smell him as he stops a foot away. Sandalwood and lightning. Blood and something sweet, something— "You're shaking." His voice is different up close. Less performance. More... gravel. Like a man who doesn't speak often. I open my mouth. No words come out. He looks at my wrists. At the silver burns. At the bruises from the handler's grip on my arm. His expression does not change, but the temperature drops. I feel it. A cold that has nothing to do with the damp wood beneath my feet and everything to do with the slow, deliberate way his eyes track back to the handler's face. "Who marked the merchandise?" The handler's voice cracks. "Standard restraint protocol, Your Majesty—" "You bruised her." "She resisted—" "She's a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet. She's human. She's *chained*." He says it without raising his voice. That's what makes it terrifying. "What did she do? Breathe wrong?" Silence. "Unlock her." The handler fumbles with the keys. The cuffs fall away. The air hits the raw burns on my wrists and I hiss—soft, involuntary. Gareth catches my arm before I can pull it back. His fingers are warm. So warm. He turns my wrist over, studying the damage without speaking. The silver-burn is weeping. Red and puffy. It will scar. "Dorian will treat you," he says. Not a question. "In my chambers." "Your—" My voice cracks. I try again. "Your chambers, I'm—that's not—*the bloodletting*—" "Is not happening in a cell." His gold eyes meet mine. "You're not livestock. You're mine." The word settles in my chest like a blade. Mine. Possessive. Absolute. I should be furious. I should be terrified. I am both. But there's something else under it. Something I don't want to name. *He wouldn't have done this to Sera.* The thought comes unbidden. I shove it down. Gareth's thumb presses once, gently, against my unbroken skin. "Look at them." I follow his gaze. The crowd. Hundreds of wolves, silent, watching. The Ironwood woman has not moved. The handler is backed against the far wall, pale as milk. "Every wolf in this territory just watched me claim you," Gareth says. "From now on, looking at you the wrong way is looking at *me* the wrong way. Do you understand what that means?" I shake my head. He leans closer. His mouth at my ear. His breath hot. "It means you're the most dangerous person in this room. You're human. You're breakable. And everyone here just learned that hurting you means answering to me." He pulls back. His smile is sharp, cruel, and absolutely unrepentant. "Welcome to Nightfall, little lamb." He turns and walks off the platform. The crowd stays frozen. I stand in the center of the stage, wrists burning, heart stopped, and watch the man who just bought my body walk away. I follow because I have no other choice. But in my head, I am counting. *Three million. Three million for two years of bleeding. Three million to get close enough to the Alpha King to sink a blade between his ribs.* I clench my burned fists and walk after him into the dark.