Sold To The Alphas

Chapter 1: The Rarest of Them All

Sienna's POV

"We hit the jackpot. This girl is a pureblood she-wolf."

The words cut through the silence like a knife.

I lay still on the cold, narrow cot in the basement of what I now knew was a private research facility somewhere beneath the streets of Chicago. The fluorescent light above me flickered. Through the thin wall, I could hear everything, the beeping machines, the shuffling of papers, the barely contained excitement in their voices.

Jackpot.

Right. Because that's all I was.

Not a person. Not a name. Just a jackpot.

For six years, the men who owned me had called me everything but human. w***e. Slut. Property. Words that used to make me flinch. Words I'd long since stopped feeling.

Bitch was practically a term of endearment at this point.

I'd forgotten what it felt like to have someone say my name with kindness. Sienna. Even now, the word felt foreign on my own tongue, like something borrowed from another life.

"Pureblood?" came the skeptical voice of Marcus, the facility's head researcher. "Are you absolutely certain, Donovan?"

"One hundred percent." Donovan's voice trembled with barely restrained awe, like a man who'd just discovered buried treasure beneath his own backyard. "Marcus, her genetic purity rating is the highest I have ever recorded. In twenty years of research. Look at the results yourself."

A heavy pause.

Then

"Holy shit."

Marcus exhaled the words like a prayer.

"Pureblood she-wolves are practically myths," he whispered. "If word gets out... every powerful Alpha on the continent will come to us. They'll offer anything."

I closed my eyes.

Pureblood she-wolf.

Six years ago, those two words had shattered my entire world.

I'd grown up in a quiet house in rural Montana, raised by my grandparents with one absolute truth hammered into my skull, You are weak. You are wolfless. You are nothing but a half-breed, half human, half werewolf. Be grateful anyone claims you at all.

I had believed them.

Until the night of my sixteenth birthday, when everything I thought I knew about myself exploded into ash.

And my life was never the same again.

Sometimes, late at night when sleep wouldn't come, I'd let myself wonder

What if the world had known what I truly was, back then?

Would things have been different?

I'd smile bitterly at the thought.

No.

It would have been worse.

My grandparents had known exactly what they were protecting me from. Because if the packs had discovered a pureblood she-wolf walking freely in Montana? I wouldn't have made it to seventeen.

The most powerful Alphas across America, from the East Coast empires to the California coastal packs to the brutal mountain clans of the Northwest, would have descended on my grandparents' doorstep with contracts already drawn. Secret pacts already sealed. Deals made in darkened boardrooms and underground meeting halls.

They would have drawn lots.

Who gets her first. Who sires the first child. Who gets her next.

I would have been passed between them like a rare vintage, savored, shared, and never once asked what I wanted.

The only difference between that fate and the one I actually lived?

Instead of filthy basement rooms and nameless buyers in cities like Detroit and Las Vegas and New Orleans... I would have been kept in a penthouse. Silk sheets. Diamond chains. A gilded cage instead of an iron one.

A breeder. Not a slave.

Such a pretty distinction.

This was the cursed legacy of pureblood she-wolves, once revered, now hunted. Because the werewolf clans had destroyed us themselves. Their pride. Their violence. Their careless cruelty toward the very women who carried their bloodline.

They'd abused and discarded and murdered pureblood she-wolves until there were almost none of us left.

And now?

Now the werewolf race was dying.

They needed us. Desperately. Because only a pureblood she-wolf could survive bearing an Alpha's child. Human women didn't survive it. Half-breeds didn't survive it.

We were the only ones who could.

How poetic.

"Auction her tonight," Marcus said, his voice bright with greed. "I'm sending out invitations immediately. We'll get billions for her. Billions, Donovan."

"I'll have her sedated enough to keep her cooperative," Donovan replied. "She won't cause a scene."

Of course.

They dressed me in white, ironic and wheeled me into a dimly lit monitoring room that evening. The drugs they'd given me kept my body heavy and slow, but my mind sharp enough to understand exactly what was happening.

On the screen before me, a sleek auction hall gleamed. Men in expensive suits occupied tiered seating like some grotesque amphitheater. Alphas. Dozens of them. Some I recognized by reputation alone, pack leaders from New York, Texas, Seattle, Miami.

All of them here for me.

"Look at how many powerful men want you." The nurse stationed beside me smiled like she was doing me a favor. Like I should feel flattered.

I said nothing.

She didn't need to know that I'd stopped wanting to escape a long time ago.

That what I actually wanted was to disappear from this world entirely and the only reason I hadn't managed it was because pureblood she-wolves were frustratingly, infuriatingly difficult to kill. Even ourselves.

The door slammed open.

Marcus and Donovan stumbled in, both pale as ghosts.

"Are you serious right now?" Marcus snapped, rounding on Donovan. "Do you understand what you're saying? Those Alphas will slaughter us"

"I know what I'm saying." Donovan shoved a tablet into Marcus's hands. "I dug deeper into her biology. It's not a rumor. It's fact. She can only conceive with her fated mate. No one else. Ever."

Marcus went very still.

Then he drew a slow breath. Squared his shoulders. The panic in his eyes hardened into calculation.

"Those Alphas don't know that," he said quietly. "By the time her new owners figure it out... we'll be long gone. New identities. Different country." He glanced at Donovan. "We take the money and we run."

Donovan said nothing for a long moment.

Then "Better than dying tonight."

Fated mate.

The words hit me like a fist to the chest.

And without warning, his face rose in my mind.

Cold gray eyes. A jaw cut from stone. A stare so filled with contempt and hatred it had made me feel like something he'd scraped off the bottom of his shoe.

Why him? Out of every werewolf alive, in every corner of this country, why did it have to be him?

Six years. I thought I'd burned every feeling out of myself. Grief. Hope. Fear. I thought I'd killed them all just to survive.

But the moment his face surfaced in my memory, I realized one emotion had survived everything.

Hate.

I hated him with a ferocity that still surprised me.

The voice from the screen snapped me back to the room.

"And the winner of tonight's draw is... the Alpha of Blackridge Pack, Alpha Caden Wolfe, and his four bond-brothers."

The air left my lungs.

Blackridge.

No.

My eyes flew to the screen. Five faces appeared, proud, powerful, ruthless.

His face appeared.

The room spun.

This wasn't real. This couldn't be real. This was the kind of nightmare you wake up screaming from, not the kind you live through.

"Congratulations." The nurse touched my shoulder with a bright smile. "Twenty billion dollars. You've just made this facility the wealthiest operation in the country. Isn't that something?"

I didn't hear her.

All I heard was the single thought detonating through my mind like a bomb:

I can't go with them. I have to run.