CHAPTER 004

Violet POV

I woke to the smell of oil and rust, and for a moment I thought I was still dreaming, still trapped in one of those endless corridors from my nightmares. Then the vehicle hit a pothole and my skull cracked against something hard, and the pain told me this was real.

My wrists were bound behind my back, the rope biting deeper than the one Helena had used. A strip of fabric pressed against my lips, tied tight enough to keep my jaw locked. I tried to scream anyway. It came out as nothing, a useless vibration trapped behind cloth.

The floor beneath me vibrated with the rhythm of tires on gravel. I was lying on my side in what felt like the trunk of a car, my knees pulled to my chest, every jolt sending fresh pain through bruised ribs. Voices murmured somewhere beyond the metal separating me from the front seat. I recognized none of them. Not Helena's voice. Not Victor's.

Strangers were driving me somewhere, and my own family had put me here.

I don't know how long the drive lasted. Long enough for the drug to wear thin at the edges, long enough for fear to sharpen into something closer to panic. When the car finally stopped, I heard doors open and gravel crunch under boots. Then my door swung wide and hands seized my ankles, dragging me out into cold night air.

I hit the ground hard. Before I could orient myself, someone hauled me upright by the arm and shoved me forward. My bare feet scraped against broken asphalt. Ahead of me stood a building I didn't recognize, its windows boarded, its walls streaked with rust, the kind of place people abandoned decades ago and never returned to.

Someone pulled the gag from my mouth just enough for me to breathe properly, though my wrists stayed bound.

"Move," a rough voice said behind me, and I stumbled through a door that led into darkness.

The darkness didn't last. Beyond the entrance, the warehouse opened into a cavernous space lit by rows of flickering lanterns, and what I saw inside stole whatever breath I had left.

They weren't human.

At first I told myself I was imagining it, that exhaustion and fear were twisting my vision, but the longer I stared the more undeniable it became. A woman near the front had eyes that glowed faint amber, like candlelight trapped behind her irises. A man beside her flexed fingers that ended in claws instead of nails, black and curved and gleaming under the lantern light. Somewhere in the shadows near the back wall, something exhaled a low growl that didn't belong to any creature I'd ever heard of.

My legs went weak. I might have collapsed if the hands gripping my arms hadn't kept me upright.

They forced me onto a raised platform at the center of the room, my wrists still tied, my body trembling from more than cold. Every eye in that warehouse turned toward me, and I understood with sick clarity that I wasn't a person to them. I was merchandise.

A man stepped onto the stage beside me, dressed in a fine coat that looked absurdly out of place among the ruin surrounding us. He smiled the way a salesman smiles when he already knows he's won.

"Tonight's final item," he announced, his voice carrying easily across the crowd. "A rare human female. Untouched. Unclaimed."

Laughter rippled through the audience, low and hungry.

"Do I hear an opening bid?"

A number rang out from somewhere near the front. Then another, higher. Then a third voice cut through, doubling the previous offer entirely. I didn't understand any of it. Why would anyone pay this much for me? I wasn't valuable. I wasn't special. I was just a girl who used to have a family and a home and a future, and now I was standing half dressed on a stage while monsters decided how much I was worth.

The numbers kept climbing, faster than I could follow, until the entire room seemed to hold its breath at once.

Silence fell so suddenly it felt physical, pressing against my ears.

I turned toward the entrance and saw why.

A man stood in the doorway, and though he hadn't spoken a single word yet, every creature in that warehouse lowered its eyes as though bowing to something they feared more than death itself. Even the auctioneer beside me straightened, his earlier confidence draining from his face.

The stranger walked forward without hurry, his presence filling the space long before he reached the stage. Dark hair fell across a face carved from something colder than marble, and his eyes, pale and impossibly sharp, found mine and stopped.

He froze.

I don't know how else to describe what happened next. It was as though time itself stumbled, caught on something invisible between us. His nostrils flared slightly, and I watched his expression shift from detached boredom into something I couldn't name, something hungry and ancient and terrifyingly focused entirely on me.

Another voice broke the silence, sharp with challenge. Another bidder had risen from the crowd, another man whose presence seemed to rival the stranger's own. Numbers began flying between them, each one obliterating the last, the two men locked in a battle that had stopped being about money and become something far more personal.

I didn't understand what made me worth fighting over. I only knew that whoever won would decide what happened to me next.

The stranger spoke a final number, quiet, absolute, and the room went still again. No one countered. His rival's jaw tightened, but he said nothing more.

The stranger climbed the stage steps without breaking eye contact with me. Up close he was even more overwhelming, tall enough that I had to tilt my head back to hold his gaze, radiating a stillness that felt more dangerous than any violence could have been.

He lifted me into his arms as though I weighed nothing at all, and I fought him instinctively, twisting against his hold, my bound wrists useless against his strength. He didn't so much as flinch.

Then his thumb brushed across the raw skin where the rope had cut into my wrist, and a small bead of blood welled up beneath his touch.

Without looking away from my eyes, he lifted his thumb to his lips and tasted it.

Everything about him changed in that instant. Whatever composure had carried him through centuries seemed to crack open right in front of me, and for one unguarded moment I saw something that looked almost like disbelief.

"Impossible," he whispered, so quietly I barely heard it.

Then he turned and carried me from the stage, out into the night, away from everything I had ever known.

Behind us, the auctioneer leaned toward the man who had lost the bidding war, his voice low enough that I almost missed it entirely.

"Do you realize what Lord Blackthorne just bought?"

The rival's eyes stayed fixed on me as I disappeared through the doorway.

"No," he murmured. "He has no idea what she truly is."