Slave

The slave inn stank of sweat, sour ale, and men who had stopped caring what they were buying.

Winter Drayonne, Alpha Lycan of Dravonia, sat at a scarred oak table near the hearth with a cloak of midnight wolf fur around his shoulders, the pelt of a kill barely three months old. The crowd had noticed him the moment he walked in. Then they had very carefully stopped noticing him. When a serving girl slammed down two tankards and a tray of boar stew, she fled before his gray eyes could so much as lift.

Across from him, August Saffron, his Beta, tore into a hunk of bread with the relaxed ease of a man who had never once been bored in his life. One hand rested near his dagger. His eyes missed nothing.

“You hate this place,” August said around a mouthful.

“I hate that I’m here.” Winter’s gloved fingers curled around his tankard. He hadn’t touched it. “Imogen wants a servant and the court wants to see her get one. So I’ll buy one and be done.”

It was a task beneath his station, and he had no intention of enjoying it.

On the stage, the slave master cracked his whip against the boards. “Next!”

Another chained figure stumbled into the torchlight. Then another. A boy with swollen eyes. A woman who stared at nothing. They shuffled past one after another, and Winter watched them with the flat patience of a man reading a very dull ledger.

He was already reaching for his cloak when the slave master dragged out the next one.

She was filthy. Caked in grime, her dress in tatters, a rope knotted around her neck and another binding her wrists. But her hair, even matted with dirt, fell over her shoulders in silver, catching the torchlight like moonlight on frost. And she did not stumble. She did not shuffle. She walked onto that stage with her chin high and her honey-brown eyes sweeping over the leering crowd as if every man in the room were something she had scraped off her boot.

Winter stopped moving.

The slave master caught her jaw to force her face toward the bidders. Scarlett’s head whipped round and her teeth snapped shut a hair’s breadth from his fingers. He yelped and jerked back. The inn exploded with laughter, tankards hammering the tables.

Winter did not laugh. He leaned forward slowly, his eyes narrowed, the way a wolf does when the wind shifts and carries a scent.

“Well,” August murmured, grinning. “That one’s got claws.”

“Starting at one hundred gold!” the slave master bellowed, recovering with a crack of his whip.

The bids came like sparks. Two hundred. Three-fifty. Five hundred. Voices slurred, coins clinked, hungry eyes crawled over her, and Scarlett stood in the middle of it with her wrists bound and her neck roped, glaring at every one of them as if daring any man to try.

Winter said nothing. He did not blink.

August lowered his voice. “You’re considering her.”

“I am.”

“She’s trouble, Alpha. That kind doesn’t bend. She’ll cost you more than she’s worth to break.”

Winter’s chuckle was low and cold, like ice cracking on a river. “I’ve tamed kingdoms, August. A girl is no different.” His gaze never left the stage. “And some fires are worth the burn.”

He lifted his hand to bid but his hand stopped in midair.

“Sold!” The gavel slammed down. “To the gentleman at the back, six hundred and fifty gold!”

The crowd parted. In the corner sat a man he had not noticed, half-hidden in shadow, his heavy frame barely covered by the fur he’d wrapped around himself. He didn’t look pleased. He looked like someone collecting what he was owed.

On the stage, Scarlett’s head turned. For the first time, something flickered across her face. The fury cracked, and underneath it, for one heartbeat, was fear.

Winter saw it and something low and possessive tightened in his chest, so sudden and so unwelcome that his gloved fist clenched against the table.

The slave master shoved her toward the edge of the stage. Her bare feet scraped across splintered wood. The rope jerked at her neck. She stumbled toward the man in the corner, and he stood, in no hurry at all.

“One thousand gold.”

Winter’s voice was not loud. It didn’t need to be. It cut through the inn like a glacier splitting.

Every tankard froze. Every head turned. Even the torch flames seemed to hold still, and in the silence, Scarlett spun around, silver hair whipping across her face, honey-brown eyes locking on his, wide with shock. He had a clear view of the rope pulling taut at her throat.

The slave master’s greed fought with his fear for the span of one breath. Greed won.

“Sold! For one thousand…”

“One thousand five hundred!” The man in the corner had not moved from his place, but his jaw had gone tight. He did not like being crossed.

The slave master’s head swung back and forth, grinning like a man watching gold rain from the sky.

August whistled low. “Is she worth it?”

Winter’s mouth curved into the faintest smirk.

“Five thousand.”

The inn roared. Somewhere in the noise, Scarlett’s gasp was swallowed whole. She stared at him across the smoke and torchlight, and everything in her face was there at once: defiance, fury, dread, and beneath it, braided so tightly he couldn’t pull it apart, something that looked almost like recognition.

The man in the corner said nothing more.

Winter rose from the bench like a predator rising from rest. His shadow swallowed the table. The black wolf-fur cloak swept out behind him as he unhooked a heavy leather pouch from his belt and tossed it across the room. It arced through the smoky air and landed against the slave master’s chest with a heavy clink. The man fumbled it, clutching it like a lifeline, eyes gleaming.

Five thousand gold, for a girl in rags.

“August.” Winter did not look away from the stage. “Get her. Secure her in my wagon.”

August was already rising, the smirk gone from his face, replaced by something thoughtful. He studied his Alpha for one moment longer, then nodded and strode through the parted crowd, boots thudding on the creaking boards.

Winter stood alone at the table and let himself look at her one last time.

She was still watching him. Her chin was still high. And in her honey-brown eyes burned a fire so fierce it startled something loose in the cold, hard place where his heart had been.

Then the guards took her rope, and they led her out into the night, toward the wagon that would carry her to Castle Holgah.

He had come to buy a servant. He had no idea what he had just bought.