HYBRID FOR SALE

Hybrid for Sale

The tallest of the eight figures raised one gloved hand, and I felt every hair on my body rise at once, because that single gesture carried more authority than anything Kieran had ever shown me in the entire time I'd known him, as though this stranger had been giving orders to armed men his whole life and expected nothing less than instant obedience.

Kaiden shoved me hard behind him without a single word of warning, positioning his own body between mine and the circle now tightening around us both, and for one absurd, fleeting heartbeat I actually believed that might be enough to keep either of us alive through whatever came next.

"Stand down," the tall figure said, his voice carrying easily across the small clearing despite how quietly he'd spoken it. "We have no interest in you, Kaiden. Only in what's standing behind you."

"She's under my protection," Kaiden said, and something in his tone had shifted into a register I hadn't heard from him yet, low and dangerous in a way that made even the masked figures hesitate for half a second before advancing further.

That hesitation didn't last nearly long enough.

Something struck me hard across the back of my skull before I even registered movement in my direction, and the entire clearing tilted violently sideways as the ground rushed up to meet me, darkness swallowing everything before I even had the chance to hear whether Kaiden had managed to fight back at all.

When I woke again, the world smelled like damp stone and something coppery underneath it that I refused to identify, my wrists bound tightly enough to have gone numb, my skull throbbing in painful rhythm with my own pulse.

I forced my eyes open despite the pounding behind them and found myself in a room lit only by a thin seam of light beneath a heavy door somewhere across from me, chains rattling faintly against my ankles the moment I tried shifting my weight even slightly.

"She's awake," a voice said from somewhere beyond the wall, muffled enough that I couldn't place whether it belonged to a man or a woman.

I lay perfectly still after that, straining to hear any sign of Kaiden nearby, any indication at all that he'd survived whatever had happened after that blow to my head, but the silence surrounding me offered nothing except the distant drip of water somewhere unseen and the ragged sound of my own breathing.

Rough hands hauled me upright sometime later without warning, and a coarse black sack came down hard over my head before I could even think to scream, plunging me into total darkness as someone lifted me bodily and carried me like cargo slung over one shoulder, every jarring step sending fresh pain radiating through my bruised ribs.

When the sack finally came off again, I found myself standing unsteadily in a long stone hallway lined on both sides with iron cages, and inside those cages sat creatures I had no names for, wolves with hollow, defeated eyes, witches bound in silver chains that visibly burned their skin, and something with pale scales running along its throat that flinched away the instant my gaze landed on it.

All of them watched me with the same eerie, exhausted stillness, the particular silence that belongs only to prisoners who have long since stopped believing rescue is coming for anyone.

"Where is he," I demanded, my voice raw and cracking. "What did you do to Kaiden."

Nobody bothered answering me. Instead, a woman dressed in fine, dark robes stepped close enough to study me the way someone might study livestock at market, her eyes lingering deliberately on the exposed skin of my throat.

"Hybrid," she said finally, addressing someone standing just behind her shoulder. "Not full wolf at all. The scent underneath is wrong. How unusual."

"Then she'll fetch an excellent price at auction," a man's voice answered from somewhere I couldn't see, satisfaction dripping from every word.

*Auction.*

That single word landed inside my chest colder than the black river had, colder than anything I had felt since the moment Kieran's rejection first tore through the marking circle behind me.

I was shoved without ceremony into a crowded holding pen alongside three other prisoners, a trembling boy who couldn't have been older than fifteen, a woman staring blankly at nothing at all, and an elderly man whose weathered face carried an expression that looked disturbingly close to genuine pity.

"First time," he said quietly. It wasn't a question at all.

"What happens now," I whispered, hating how small and frightened my own voice sounded even to my own ears.

"Now," he said, settling back slowly against the cold iron bars, "you pray whoever ends up buying you isn't the very worst option sitting in that room tonight. Because there is always one considerably worse than all the rest, and he almost always has the deepest pockets of anyone present."

I didn't sleep at all through what remained of that endless night, sitting rigid with my knees pulled tight against my chest while the woman beside me wept silently into her own trembling hands, and somewhere in the darkness beyond our cage, I heard heavy footsteps approaching, followed by the unmistakable, grinding sound of a massive door being dragged open.

"On your feet," a guard barked, his shadow falling across the bars. "The auction begins within the hour, and the buyers are already demanding to see what's on offer tonight.”