Sold To The Alphas

Chapter 3: Five Alphas

Roman's POV

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

The moment those words landed, something electric moved through my chest.

I owned the world. Right then, in that sleek underground auction hall in downtown Chicago, surrounded by the most powerful Alphas on the continent, I felt like I owned every inch of it.

Around us, the room shifted.

I could feel it, that invisible current of envy and rage rolling off the other bidders like heat off summer asphalt. Alphas from New York, from Texas, from the Pacific Northwest. Men who had never lost anything in their lives, sitting very still and swallowing the bitterest defeat of theirs.

If it weren't for the ironclad rule that bound every man present to honor the auction's outcome without retaliation, this hall would have turned into a bloodbath inside of sixty seconds.

But no one moved.

Because no one moved against us.

Blackridge Pack.

The name alone made grown Alphas reconsider their choices. Even the most savage, battle-hardened pack leaders thought twice, sometimes three times, before crossing us. We hadn't built that reputation by being gentle.

The losing bidders filtered out in stiff, bitter silence. Jaws tight. Eyes hard. Too proud to show how badly it stung.

I didn't waste a single look on them.

Honestly? I could have popped a bottle of Moët right there at the table and toasted the room. Because this, this was the beginning of everything I'd wanted for years. A mate. A child. A complete family, finally whole, with the four men sitting around this table who were as much my brothers as if we'd shared the same blood.

My most cherished dream. Finally within reach.

But I couldn't say the same for the others.

I glanced around the circular table. Four faces. Four carefully blank expressions, as though the announcement had been about the weather.

They didn't want this.

Not really.

Six years ago, a girl had walked into our lives and burned everything down on her way out. What she left behind wasn't just damage, it was a specific kind of hatred. The kind that calcifies. The kind that makes a man decide, quietly and permanently, that no woman would ever be allowed close enough to do it again.

If it weren't for necessity, the brutal, biological reality that our pack's bloodline was dying without a pureblood she-wolf, none of them would be sitting in this hall tonight.

Not that they'd gone without. Four hot-blooded Alphas didn't exactly live like monks. Women came and went, willing, well-compensated, and temporary. Physical needs got met. That was all it was.

Bringing someone home was a different thing entirely. Letting someone in was unthinkable.

And yet. Here we were.

A heavyset man in an expensive gray suit approached our table, his eyes doing that nervous dance between awe and self-preservation. He offered Caden a slight bow.

"Congratulations, Alpha Wolfe."

Caden didn't respond.

He never did, really. Words, to Caden, were things other people wasted. He sat at the head of our table exactly as he sat everywhere, like the room had been built around him. Black dress shirt, top buttons open, sleeves rolled to the elbows. Dark eyes that gave nothing away. The kind of stillness that didn't read as calm so much as contained.

Contained power is always more frightening than power on display.

The heavyset man cleared his throat. "The she-wolf has been brought to the rear exit corridor, Alpha Wolfe. She's ready for collection at your convenience."

A package. Ready for pickup. That's what it amounted to.

Caden turned those dark eyes to me without a word. The meaning was clear.

Handle it.

Finance had always been my domain, I didn't mind. I reached for the black leather bag at my feet, pulled out the checkbook, and started writing.

Twenty billion dollars.

"One woman with a used body," came a voice to my left, dripping with contempt, "and we're handing over twenty billion just to get a pup out of her? Apparently we've got money to set on fire."

Damien.

I didn't look up.

"Trash or not, she'll still have a use," Cole added from across the table, his tone the particular brand of cold that meant he was already thinking about something unpleasant. "I've been wanting to test a few new techniques anyway. Might as well see how much punishment a pureblood can take before she cracks."

"Now that might actually make this worth it," Damien said, and I could hear the smirk in his voice without needing to see it.

Damien and Cole. Brothers in every way that mattered, Cole had been orphaned young, and Damien's family had taken him in. Two people who had no business being as similar as they were, given they shared no blood. Both devastating in a fight. Both utterly without mercy when crossed.

And right now, both of them were already treating a woman they hadn't even met like a problem to be broken down.

I set down the pen and looked at them.

"We need her alive," I said flatly. "Preferably in one piece. At least until she's given us what we came for. So maybe save the creative ideas for someone who isn't twenty billion dollars of pack investment."

They didn't look particularly chastened.

Assholes.

"I'm done here." The quiet voice came from the end of the table.

Eli was already standing, straightening his jacket with the particular efficiency of someone who had been ready to leave since the moment we arrived. The youngest of us. The least invested in any of this, not because he was soft, but because Eli existed in his own orbit and always had.

Also because Eli wasn't entirely like the rest of us.

Half werewolf. Half vampire.

The faint red ring burning around his pale eyes told me his bloodlust was rising tonight. It did that in crowded rooms, too many heartbeats, too much warmth. He could feed from any of us when it got bad enough, and sometimes did. But even our blood had started to feel like a poor substitute for whatever it was he actually craved.

Eli was the most dangerous thing in this room. Possibly in this city.

And in a few minutes, he was going to be standing in front of a bleeding, terrified she-wolf.

I made a mental note to position myself between them.

"Done," I said, and handed the check across the table.

The heavyset man reached for it and then froze.

A second man had appeared at his elbow, ashen-faced, leaning in to whisper something rapid and urgent into his ear.

I nearly laughed.

Whispering. In a room full of werewolves.

The heavyset man's composure crumbled in real time. Color drained from his face. A bead of sweat tracked down his temple as he turned back to us with a smile that had stopped working.

"Alpha Wolfe, if you wouldn't mind waiting just a moment" his voice had taken on that particular quality of a man calculating how fast he could run, "we'll bring her right to you"

Caden finally moved.

He stood slowly, buttoning one cuff, and looked at the man the way a wolf looks at something it's already decided isn't a threat, just an inconvenience.

"Take us," he said quietly, "to wherever she ran from."