Alpha's Forbidden Frequency

The Auction Block

My sister was dying, and I was about to be sold.

Rain hammered the holding pen's iron roof, a sound like fists beating metal. I stood at the end of a line of shivering women wrapped in grey shifts, our feet bare against cold stone, our wrists raw from the processing cuffs. Some wept without sound. Some stared at nothing. A girl beside me, maybe sixteen, whispered a prayer I recognized from Low District vigils. I wanted to tell her prayers meant nothing here. I stayed silent because hope was all she had left.

Hope was not something I possessed anymore.

I possessed a sister named Mila. Fourteen years old. Fourth bed, Saint Verena's Infirmary, third corridor. Her lungs were filling with fluid from temporal sickness, a disease that ate poor children in the Low District while wealthy pack doctors looked the other way. Medicine existed. Medicine cost more than I would earn in ten lifetimes of cleaning clock faces.

So I had walked to the Chrono-Auction this morning and signed my body away.

"Batch nine." An Iterator's voice cut through the rain, metallic and empty behind a silver mask. "When your designation is called, proceed to the platform. Do not resist. Do not speak. Violators will be corrected."

Corrected. Erased. Unwoven from time so thoroughly that even the people who loved you forgot you existed. My mother had been corrected when I was ten. I could no longer recall her face.

"Iskra Volkov. Designation nine-seven-four."

My name echoed through the holding pen. The girl beside me stopped praying. I stepped forward.

The auction hall swallowed me whole.

Black stone veined with silver. Chandeliers dripping captured memories, dead moments flickering inside crystal, a woman laughing, a ship burning, a child blowing out candles. Rows of stone benches climbed toward a vaulted ceiling where painted wolves chased each other through a sky that never ended. On those benches sat the bidders.

Pack Alphas. Pack Betas. Representatives from the Twelve Great Houses that ruled Neovictoria with fang and silver and absolute power. Some wore formal coats embroidered with pack crests. Others had come in wolf form, massive beasts with eyes that tracked movement like predators measuring prey. A black wolf the size of a carriage horse opened its jaws and yawned, displaying teeth like ivory daggers.

I was marched onto a circular platform of pale marble. Chains dangled from a silver post at its center. The Iterator fastened manacles around my wrists. Cold metal bit my skin. The runes activated with a violet pulse that made my teeth ache.

"Lot forty-two. Female. Twenty-two years. Unbonded. No recorded supernatural ability. Sold as general labor. Opening bid, two hundred chrono-marks."

Two hundred. The price of used airship parts. The price of three months of Mila's medicine.

"Two fifty." A Beta from the Voss Pack did not look up from his ledger.

"Three hundred." A scarred female Alpha with grey-streaked hair raised two fingers.

"Three fifty." The black wolf shifted into a young man with a cruel smile.

I stared at the marble beneath my feet and tried not to feel the hum stirring in my chest. It had lived inside me since childhood, a wrong frequency, a song that did not belong to the Constant Era. My mother had warned me to swallow it. That sound is death, she had said. You swallow it forever. She was gone. Mila was dying. Swallowing the hum had saved no one.

"Four hundred." A voice from the back of the hall.

Silence crashed down like a blade.

The auctioneer's hand froze above his podium. The Voss Beta closed his ledger. The scarred Alpha turned in her seat. The cruel young man from the Thorne Pack stopped smiling and lowered his head in a gesture I recognized from the streets. Submission.

I looked up.

He stood at the hall's highest tier, far from the other bidders. Tall and broad-shouldered in a coat of charcoal wool with silver embroidery at the collar. Silver hair cropped short and swept back from a face that was beautiful in the way a blade was beautiful. Sharp cheekbones. Hard jaw. Pale blue eyes that held absolutely no warmth. He looked at me like I was a equation he had already solved.

"That is Caspian Finch," someone whispered. "Alpha of the Finch Pack. He never attends auctions."

"Never," another voice agreed, hushed and nervous. "Something is wrong."

The auctioneer cleared his throat. "Alpha Finch bids four hundred. Do I hear four fifty?"

Silence.

Caspian Finch descended the stone steps. Each footfall echoed. Wolves and humans alike drew back as he passed. His eyes never left my face.

"Five thousand chrono-marks."

The number hit the hall like a physical blow. Gasps rippled through the benches. Five thousand was not a bid. It was a declaration. A claim. A warning to every pack present that this purchase was not negotiable.

"Five thousand going once. Going twice. Sold."

The word landed in my gut like a stone dropped into deep water. Sold. My body. My time. My hum. Everything I was belonged to the monster descending toward me.

He stepped onto the platform. Up close, he towered over me by nearly a foot. His presence carried a pressure I could feel in my molars. His hands trembled faintly at his sides, a tremor he was clearly fighting to control. Something was wrong with him. Something beneath the cold arrogance.

"You hum in your sleep," he said quietly, for my ears alone. "A frequency that should not exist. My seer detected it three weeks ago. She told me I would find a woman who sang the wrong note, and that woman would either cure my curse or kill me." He leaned closer, his breath cold against my ear. "I intend to discover which one you are before my curse kills me first."

He pulled back and signaled the Iterators. My manacles fell away.

"Follow."

I followed. What other choice existed? Mila's medicine. Mila's life. Everything depended on the monster who had just purchased me.

His carriage waited outside. Black and gleaming, drawn by a gear-driven engine that hummed with chronostatic energy. He climbed inside and seated himself across from me. His pale eyes regarded me with the same cold assessment.

"Your sister's bills have been paid through year's end," he said. "A specialist arrives at Saint Verena's this morning. She will receive better care than any patient in that ward's history."

My heart seized. "I did not tell you about my sister."

"You did not need to. I do not make purchases without understanding exactly what I am buying." He leaned forward, his large hands resting on his knees. "You are not merely a cleaner who happens to hum in her sleep. You are something far more dangerous. Something the Synchrony has been hunting for a century. I paid five thousand chrono-marks to ensure they did not find you first."

"What am I?"

His jaw tightened. "You are either my cure or my destruction. Possibly both. That is what we will determine."

The carriage lurched into motion. Through rain-streaked windows, I watched the Low District slide past, its grimy tenements and narrow alleys and desperate faces. Somewhere in that maze, Mila was receiving medicine purchased with my freedom.

"Your curse," I said. "What is it?"

Caspian Finch turned his gaze to the window. "My wolf form does not hold a single age. One shift I am a prime adult. The next, a limping ancient. The next, a terrified pup. It grows worse each month. Soon I will not be able to hold any form at all. When that happens, my pack will tear itself apart, and my enemies will feast on the remains."

"That is why you need me."

His eyes snapped back to mine. "That is why I purchased you. Do not mistake the transaction for affection. You are a valuable tool. I will protect you because you are useful. Nothing more."

"I did not ask for affection. I asked for honesty. You have given me some. Not all."

A flicker crossed his face. Surprise. Or something closer to irritation. "You are not what I expected."

"Neither are you."

The carriage began its climb toward the upper districts. Through the window, iron spires pierced grey clouds. Finch Spire loomed ahead, a gothic tower of black stone and silver veins, its peak lost in mist.

Home. Prison. Both words meant the same thing now.