The Dragon Alpha's Forsaken Luna

Chapter Four: The Dungeon Below

The cage stopped on the evening of the third day.

Seraphina heard voices. Many voices. Men and women both, some laughing, some arguing, some speaking in languages she did not recognize. The sound of wealth and cruelty wrapped together.

The canvas tarp was pulled back. She blinked against the fading light and saw a dead town.

Buildings with collapsed roofs. Streets overgrown with weeds. A sign hanging from one post, the words rotted away. No people. No animals. No life at all. It looked like a place the world had forgotten.

"Out," a guard said.

He unlocked the cage door and grabbed her arm. His grip was rough. She let him pull her to her feet. Her legs were weak from days of sitting, but she refused to stumble.

She would not give them that satisfaction.

The guards led her toward a crumbling church at the top of a hill. The church had no doors. Inside, the floor had collapsed in the center, revealing a staircase that descended into darkness.

Torches burned on either side of the stairs. Their flames cast long shadows against stone walls.

"This way," the lead guard said.

They went down.

---

The stairs went deep into the earth.

Fifty steps. Then a hundred. The air grew colder. The smell changed from dust and decay to something darker. Blood. Sweat. Fear. The smell of too many creatures kept in too small a space.

At the bottom, a corridor stretched out before her.

Cells lined both sides. Not like the dungeon beneath the palace. These were newer. Cleaner. But smaller. Much smaller. Each cell was barely wider than her shoulders and not much taller than her head.

And they were full.

Seraphina saw a woman with feathers growing from her arms. A man whose eyes glowed gold in the torchlight. A creature she could not identify, covered in scales, curled in the corner of its cage.

Some of them looked at her. Most did not. They had been here a long time. Too long. The hope had drained out of their eyes and left nothing but emptiness.

"Spectacular, isn't it?"

The voice came from ahead. A woman stepped out of the shadows. She was tall and thin, with gray hair pulled tight against her skull and eyes the color of old blood. Her dress was black velvet. Her smile was sharp.

Seraphina stopped walking.

"My name is Madame Voss," the woman said. "I run this market. I have been running it for thirty years. And you, my dear, are the most interesting thing to come through those doors in a long time."

"I'm not interested. I'm just a prisoner."

Madame Voss laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. "Oh, you're much more than that. An Alpha female. Young. Healthy. From the Ravencrest bloodline."

She circled Seraphina slowly, studying her like a farmer studying a horse.

"Do you know how rare that is? Most Alphas are male. The females are snapped up quickly. Marriages. Alliances. Political trades."

"I was a political trader."

"And now you're here." Madame Voss stopped in front of her. "The auction is tomorrow night. Until then, you'll stay in one of my cells. Try not to damage the merchandise."

---

Cell number seven was exactly like the others.

Small. Dark. Cold. A thin mat on the floor. A bucket in the corner. No window. No light except the torch burning in the corridor outside.

Seraphina sat on the mat and touched her belly. The warmth was still there. The wolfsbane had not killed it. Somehow, impossibly, the child was still alive.

"Hey."

The voice came from the cell next to hers. A woman's voice. Young. Tired.

Seraphina turned toward the wall. "Hey."

"First time?"

"First time being sold, yes. Is that obvious?"

The woman laughed softly. It was a sad sound, worn thin by too much time in the dark. "You still have hope in your voice. That goes away after the first week."

"What are you?"

"Fae. Half-breed. Not pure enough for my court, not human enough for theirs." A pause. "They've been trying to sell me for three months. No one wants damaged goods."

Seraphina pressed her palm against the cold stone wall. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I've made peace with it." The woman's voice grew softer. "What's your name?"

"Seraphina."

"Pretty name. Almost too pretty. You should change it after you get out of here. Makes you harder to find."

"I don't think I'm getting out of here."

The woman was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "That's what I thought too. But then I watched a woman escape from cell number three. She clawed through the stone with her bare hands. Took her three nights. She was gone before anyone noticed."

"Clawed through stone?"

"She was half-dragon. Her blood woke up when they tried to brand her." The woman's voice dropped to a whisper. "The point is, you never know what you're capable of until something tries to break you."

Seraphina touched her chest. The heat stirred there again. Stronger now. Almost like it was answering.

"Half-dragon," she whispered.

The word felt right in her mouth. Like a truth she had always known but never had the words to speak. Her mother had not told her. Her father had not known. But the blood did not lie.

Seraphina Ravencrest was not just a wolf. She was something else entirely.

---

The hours crawled past.

Seraphina sat on the thin mat and listened to the sounds of the market coming to life. Footsteps in the corridor. Voices speaking in languages she did not recognize. The clink of coins being counted.

Buyers were arriving. Wealthy creatures from all over the world, here to purchase living beings like they were buying horses.

She thought about Lira, the half-fae woman in the cell next door. Three months in this place. Three months of waiting for someone to buy her.

"I won't last three months," Seraphina whispered.

The heat in her chest stirred again. Stronger this time. Almost like it was answering her.

"You never know what you're capable of," Lira had said.

Seraphina closed her eyes and reached for the heat. She pushed past the pain in her side. Past the wolfsbane in her blood. Past the fear and the exhaustion and the grief.

Something answered. Not her wolf. Something else. Something older. Something that had been sleeping in her blood since the day she was born.

Fire flickered behind her eyes. Blue and gold and silver all at once. The flames danced across her vision, and in the center of them, she saw a face.

A man's face. Dark hair. Red eyes. Ancient eyes. Dragon eyes.

He was beautiful and terrifying and familiar.

"Who are you?" she whispered.

The vision faded. The fire died. But the heat remained.

---

The washing room was small and steamy.

A metal tub sat in the center, filled with warm water that smelled like lavender. Two women in gray dresses waited beside it, their faces blank and empty.

"Undress," one of them said.

Seraphina pulled the shift over her head. The fabric was stiff with dirt and old blood. She stepped into the tub and sank down until the water covered her shoulders.

The woman washed her hair. Scrubbed her skin. Trimmed her nails. They worked quickly and silently, like they had done this a thousand times before.

When they finished, they dried her with soft clothes and dressed her in a simple white gown. No lace. No crystals. Just clean fabric that fell to her ankles.

"Better," Madame Voss said when she saw her. "Much better."

"What happens now?"

"Now we wait. The auction begins at midnight." Madame Voss smiled. "Try to look valuable. It will fetch a higher price."

---

The auction chamber was larger than Seraphina expected.

Ancient stone walls rose high above her head, covered in moss and cracks. Torches burned in iron brackets every few feet, casting dancing shadows across the faces of the crowd.

The crowd. Vampires. Witches. Werewolves. Creatures she could not identify. They sat on wooden benches arranged in a half-circle around a raised platform.

The platform was bare except for a single iron post in the center. A post with chains attached.

"That's where you'll stand," Madame Voss said. "Don't speak unless someone asks you a question. Don't look at the buyers directly. And whatever you do, don't cry. Tears lower the price."

The guards put her on the platform and chained her wrists to the iron post. The metal was cold. The chains were heavy. The torchlight made her white gown look almost transparent.

Someone in the crowd whistled.

"Quiet," Madame Voss called out. "We haven't started yet."

She climbed onto the platform and stood beside Seraphina. In her hand, she held a small wooden gavel.

"Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the seventy-third annual Black Market Auction. Tonight, we have an exceptional collection of rare supernatural creatures for your consideration."

The crowd murmured. Someone clapped.

"But before we begin, I want to draw your attention to our final item of the evening." She gestured to Seraphina. "A female Alpha werewolf. I'm twenty-two years old. Unmarked. Unmated. From the Ravencrest bloodline."

The crowd's murmur grew louder.

Seraphina kept her eyes on the back wall. She would not look at them. She would not let them see her fear.

"We'll start the bidding at fifty thousand gold pieces.”