Chapter

Not the sharp sting of a cut. Deeper than that. The kind of burn that settled into bone and stayed there, quiet and cruel, reminding Ava Sterling with every breath that she was not leaving this stage on her own.

The warehouse smelled like motor oil and sweat and alpha dominance — thick, competing scents that pressed against her from every direction. Industrial lights overhead blasted white heat down onto the platform. Thirty feet below, men in expensive suits sat in folding chairs like they were watching a livestock show.

Because they were.

Ava kept her chin up. She wouldn't give them the pleasure of watching it drop.

Her father stood at the edge of the platform in his pack Alpha sash, the golden threads catching the light. He hadn't looked at her once since they chained her wrists. He was looking at the crowd, at their hands, at the numbered bidding paddles lifting one after another as the auctioneer called out figures that climbed like temperature on a fever chart.

"Sixty million."

"Seventy-five."

"Eighty million for the Evergreen omega."

Her father's jaw tightened with satisfaction.

*Payment for the debt.* That's what he'd called her in the car on the way here. Not *daughter.* Not even *Ava.* Just *payment.* One hundred million dollars that Evergreen Pack owed Blackthorn Empire after the border war, and her body was the currency he'd chosen to settle it.

She pressed her knees together. Kept her breathing slow.

*Don't let them see.*

But then the memory hit — the way it always did when she was most desperate to hold herself together.

Four months ago. Seattle. The inter-pack summit.

She'd felt the heat come on without warning, too fast, too savage. She'd barely made it to the corridor outside the conference hall before it swallowed her whole. A hand had closed around her wrist in the dark — large, sure, pulling her out of the foot traffic and into a hotel suite before she could form a single coherent word.

Ryder Kane.

Alpha of Blackthorn Pack. The War God. The man every pack feared and no one approached without permission.

She'd known it was him and she hadn't cared, because the heat had burned every rational thought to ash and his scent had been the only thing in the world that made sense. He'd pulled her apart and put her back together three times before the sun came up, and she'd fallen asleep curled against his chest believing, in the hazy warmth of the aftermath, that something had shifted between them.

Dawn had been a cold correction.

He'd stood at the window in a white dress shirt, looking out over the city, and said the words without turning to face her.

*"You are nothing to me."*

Seven syllables. Clean as a blade.

She'd dressed and left and never told a single person what had happened — not even when, two weeks later, the tests confirmed what her body already knew.

"Ninety million."

The auctioneer's voice dragged her back.

Ava's wrists screamed against the silver. The man bidding ninety was watching her with flat grey eyes and a smile that didn't reach them. She recognized his pack crest. She looked away.

*Don't react. Don't give them anything.*

"One hundred million."

The voice came from the back of the room.

Low. Quiet. The kind of voice that didn't need volume because the room simply obeyed it.

Every head turned.

Ava's did too.

He stepped out of the shadow between two support columns like he'd been standing there the entire time, watching, waiting for the right moment. Black coat. Hands in his pockets. Crimson eyes that swept the room once and dismissed everyone in it before landing on her.

Ryder Kane.

Her lungs locked.

He didn't look at the auctioneer. He didn't look at the crowd. He looked at *her* — steady, unblinking, something burning behind those red eyes that she couldn't name and didn't dare try to.

Silence spread through the warehouse like a held breath.

"Sold," the auctioneer said, the word barely above a whisper.

Nobody argued. Nobody raised another paddle. A hundred million in alpha authority, and the room folded.

Two of Ryder's men walked the platform and removed her chains. Not gently, but efficiently. Her wrists were raw and red and she pressed them against her coat the moment the silver fell away.

Ryder was waiting at the bottom of the steps. He didn't extend his hand. He simply turned and walked, and his men guided her after him.

They took her to a private room off the main floor — bare concrete walls, a single light, a metal table no one was sitting at. The door closed behind them. His men stayed outside.

For a moment neither of them spoke.

Then he moved.

One step. Two. Close enough that his alpha scent hit her like a wall — cedar and iron and something dark beneath it, something that made her body betray her instantly. Her thighs pressed together. Heat crawled up her throat.

*Stop. Stop it.*

His hand wrapped around her jaw, not squeezing, just holding — tilting her face up toward his as if she were something he'd purchased and was now examining in the light.

Her pulse was a drum.

His eyes moved across her face slowly, and whatever he found there made something shift in his expression. Not softness. Nothing that simple. More like recognition. Like a man who'd been looking for something and was irritated to have finally found it.

He leaned down, lips brushing the shell of her ear, warm breath against skin that had no business responding.

"Four months ago," he said, voice gravel-low, private, meant only for her, "I left you dripping."

Her breath fractured.

"Tonight," he murmured, "I'm collecting every drop."

The door opened before she could speak.

His men stepped in, coat held out, ready to move.

Ryder released her jaw and straightened like nothing had happened.

"Let's go," he said.

And Ava Sterling, omega of the Evergreen Pack, daughter sold like cattle, walked out of that warehouse carrying a secret that would either save her—

Or destroy them both.