15

Most days, there was food. Most days, there was a roof. But I still scrubbed and cleaned and disappeared when told. And now I was about to be sold to a wolf.

When I came back to myself, they were already driving us forward. Not guiding. Driving. Each step toward the stage felt like being pushed down a narrow chute, the kind built for animals that never come back out. 

Hands slammed into my back, locked around my elbow, fingers digging in hard enough to promise bruises later. No pauses. No space to breathe.

Move.

Move.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” The voice reached me before I could lift my head. “These are our newest goods.” The crowd stirred. “Adult women.”

A hand shoved me again, sharper this time.

“Never touched. Never claimed. Clean.”

The murmur from the dark pit in front of us swelled. I couldn’t see their faces, but I felt their eyes crawling over my skin, pausing, weighing, deciding prices on body parts.

Heat rushed to my face. Not modesty. 

Rage.

The man on the stage started talking something about us being “untrained,” but I tuned half of it out, because if my hands weren’t busy shielding my chest, I would have snatched that stupid microphone and smashed it into his teeth just to shut him up.

I memorized the dark: outlines of masks, the gleam of rings, the curve of greedy smiles. But then I saw him. At the very back, there was a figure who did not move like the others. No restless shifting, no shallow breathing. He just sat there like a predator.

My pulse skipped, then pounded harder, as if my body recognized something my mind couldn’t name. I forced my eyes to shift, but even without looking, I could feel his presence.

Someone’s knuckles jabbed my spine. “Forward.” 

They shoved me forward, and I dropped the last half-step onto my knees under the full wash of light. I swallowed hard, the back of my throat dry, tasting iron where I had bitten the inside of my cheek to keep from making a sound.

Vulnerability settled over me like a second skin. Not the kind that came from nakedness, but the kind that came from being seen without consent, measured without mercy, handled without regard. Every breath felt borrowed. Every movement felt watched.

When I dared to look forward again, the powerful man was no longer standing at the back. He was right at the front of the stage. 

I had never been so aware of my own body and yet never felt so disconnected from it, as if it no longer belonged to me but to the room, the voices, the hands that decided where I stood and when I moved. 

The auctioneer kept talking, but I couldn’t hear a word of it. There was only a loud ringing in my head, drowning everything else out.

Rough hands hauled me up first, fingers biting into my arms until my feet barely found the floor. Then came another shove from behind. My balance broke completely, and I stumbled forward, the edge of the stage pitching beneath me.

For a heartbeat, I was sure I would hit the ground face-first.

But I did not fall.

Strong hands caught me and fingers closing around my waist. My breath hitched, and the sudden contact sending a jolt through me that felt almost violent.

I let my hands fall, fingers shaking, and caught the front of his coat instead, clutching the fabric as if it were the only solid thing left in the room, and the cloth wrinkled under my grip. 

He was too warm. The heat of him bled through the layers and crept up my arms, settling heavy beneath my ribs, making it harder to breathe.

Then I made the mistake of looking at him.

His eyes hit first. Blue, deep and violent, like an open stretch of ocean under a storm, too bright to be natural. They did not just see me, they claimed space inside my chest.

His hair was black as midnight, falling in careless disorder that looked deliberate, calculated. Nothing about him was soft. Everything about him felt controlled, dangerous, untouchable in the way predators are untouchable not because they are distant, but because they decide when to come close.

The heat of his gaze lingered on my skin, and I understood — too late — that looking at him meant being seen.

My gaze drifted lower, tracing the sharp cut of his jaw, the kind of jawline that made you want to follow it with your fingers just to feel its edges. For a split second, I wanted to feel if his skin was as smooth as it looked.

He kept looking down at me. Not all at once. 

Slowly. 

His eyes moved in measured passes, pausing as if marking positions. First my face. His gaze lingered there long enough for me to feel my jaw tighten, my lips press together on instinct. 

Then his attention dropped to my throat. I swallowed, the motion too obvious, my pulse jumping under his stare. His gaze continued lower and stopped again. I felt it before I understood it, a hot, uncomfortable awareness crawling across my skin. 

I drew my shoulders in slightly, arms shifting without permission, trying to cover myself without actually moving away. 

He leaned closer just enough for me to catch his scent. Leather. Heat. Something sharp and clean beneath it. 

His breath brushed my hair when he exhaled, slow and controlled. I couldn’t tell if he was checking for injuries or counting what he saw. 

I did not remember ever thinking Dominic was beautiful. Not like this. Back then, he had just been another presence looming over me, another alpha I was expected to lower my eyes for. His face had blurred into the rules, the orders, the weight of the pack. 

Whatever others saw in him had never reached me. 

Standing there now, I realized how little beauty had ever mattered in my life. Survival had always dulled it. And maybe that was why this felt so wrong... not because the man in front of me was powerful or striking, but because I was noticing at all, when I had learned a long time ago that looking was a luxury I couldn’t afford.

The way he looked at me was different from the others. Not sloppy, not rushed. His attention stayed controlled, measured, and that was what unsettled me first. I felt it in the way my shoulders tightened, in the way my fingers curled reflexively into the fabric of his coat. 

Then it clicked. 

The stillness. The weight in the air. The quiet certainty in his posture. 

He was a wolf!

The realization snapped something sharp inside me. My jaw set. Heat drained from my chest and left behind a familiar, bitter edge. I had learned a long time ago what wolves did with power. 

I had learned not to trust them. 

I scowled up at him, my grip loosening as irritation replaced whatever fragile pull had crept in uninvited. Just another wolf. Another bastard who thought standing taller made him untouchable. 

I shoved my hands against his chest instead. My palms met solid resistance... unmoving and unyielding. 

He did not stumble, he caught me instead. His hands guided me down with infuriating care, easing me back until my feet found the floor again, as if I were something fragile instead of furious.

A voice cut in from somewhere nearby, amused and loud. “The inexperienced ones can be clumsy too.”

Laughter followed. 

Heat flooded my face. I dropped my gaze instantly and turned my head, letting my hair fall forward, hiding my face, my chest, anything I could shield. My fingers trembled as I gathered the strands, wrapping them around myself like it might undo what had already been seen.

My head dipped, but my eyes stayed sharp, peering through the curtain of my hair as I scanned the room. Bodies shifted near the entrance, just enough to open a narrow gap. 

A sliver of space. 

An exit.