The Auction

Chapter 2

"Don't go inside yet."

My father said it from the porch, one hand out like he was calming a dog. Behind him the door was half open, and I could see the study light spilling yellow down the hall.

"You sold me," I said.

"Now hold on—"

"You sold me to somebody. That was a broker, wasn't it." I wiped my face with the back of my hand. Mascara came off gray. "What'd you get for me, Dad?"

He looked at the road where the car had gone. Then at me.

"Debt's cleared," he said. "All of it."

"All of it."

"Every dime. The house, the land, your mother's medical bills, all of it, Ella. Wiped. We're free."

We. He said we like I was in the room when he signed.

"Dad." My voice came out wrong. Too calm. "What did you sign?"

He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded paper. Didn't hand it to me right away — held it, the way people hold a receipt they're embarrassed about.

"The Culling," he said.

The word landed like a slap. I knew what the Culling was. Everyone knew. Once a year the Alpha King's people come through the packs and collect the unmated women nobody's claimed. Nobody talks about what happens after.

"That's a death sentence."

"That's not—" He shook his head. "It's not what it used to be. They say he's gotten—"

"He's cursed, Dad. He's a monster. They throw girls in a pit with him and he kills them."

"You can't shift," he said.

There it was.

"Girls who can't shift don't get claimed anyway," he went on, fast, like if he said it quick enough it'd be less cruel. "You know that. Karl's already moved on—"

"You knew about Karl."

He didn't answer.

"Dad. You knew about Karl and Kate."

He folded the paper smaller. Unfolded it. Folded it again.

"Kate's got a future," he said quietly. "She shifts. She's got the Rourke boy now, that's a good match, that's—"

"She's my sister."

"She's my daughter too." His voice cracked, and for one second he looked like my dad, the guy who taught me to fish and carried me on his shoulders at the harvest fair. "I had two daughters and one debt and one way out. You tell me what you'd do."

I stood there in the yard with my face a mess and my hands shaking and I understood something I'd been avoiding my whole life:

Nobody was coming.

Not Karl. Not Kate. Not him. There was no version of this where someone rode in and picked me.

"Okay," I said again. Third time that night. I was getting good at it.

"Ella—"

"When do I go?"

He blinked. "What?"

"The Culling. When do they come?"

"Morning." He swallowed. "The broker said morning. They'll bring a car at six."

Six hours. I had six hours of being a person left.

"Then I'm gonna go pack," I said.

He stepped forward, arms half up, and I don't know if he was going to hug me or hand me the paper. I didn't find out. I walked around him through the door and up the stairs and I didn't look back, and he didn't follow.

My room smelled like the candle I'd burned down last week. I sat on the bed. Didn't cry. I was done crying, apparently — I'd used it all up in one night and there was nothing left in the tank.

I packed a bag. Not much. Two shirts, jeans, socks, my mom's ring that I kept in a teacup on the shelf. I put the ring on my finger instead.

Then I sat back down and waited.

Around four in the morning I heard the front door open and Kate's voice in the hall, low, and my dad's, lower. I couldn't make out the words. I didn't need to. She came upstairs at some point and paused outside my door. I watched her shadow in the gap under it. It stayed there a long time.

She didn't knock.

The shadow moved on.

At five-forty I came down the stairs with my bag. My dad was in the kitchen with a cup of coffee he hadn't touched. Kate was at the table. She was wearing one of Karl's hoodies and she wouldn't look at me.

"For what it's worth," she said, "I told him not to."

"Sure you did."

"I did."

"You're wearing his hoodie."

She finally looked up. Her eyes were red. That was almost worse than if she'd been smug.

"I didn't mean for it to go this way," she said.

"Yeah." I picked up my bag. "You just meant for it to go some way."

The car pulled up outside at exactly six. I heard it before I saw it — that low, heavy engine. My dad's chair scraped back and he went to the window and stood there with his back to me, and he stayed that way while I walked out.

The broker from last night got out. Same suit. Same folder.

"Ella Vance?"

"Yeah."

"Bag in the trunk. Back seat. Don't talk to the driver."

I got in.

The last thing I saw in that yard was my sister standing on the porch with her arms crossed, and my father still at the window, not looking at me, not looking away either.

The car turned out of the drive.

And then the driver did something strange. He didn't take the highway. He took the old mill road, out past where the timber companies had cleared everything, and he pulled off onto a gravel track that went up.

"Where are we going?"

He didn't answer.

"Hey." I leaned forward. "The Culling's at the pack hall. This isn't—"

"You're not going to the hall," he said.

"Then where?"

He looked at me in the rearview. Just once. Then back at the road.

"You're going straight to him."

Chapter 2 Ends