2

I woke up when I heard someone crying.

It took me a moment to realise that the broken, animalistic sounds were coming from me. I was curled up on the dungeon floor, still in my torn wedding dress, my throat raw from screaming.

How long have I been down here?

Hours? Minutes? I did not even know.

The stone was so cold it burned against my skin. My beautiful wedding dress, the one that had made me feel like a queen just yesterday, was now filthy and torn. The silk was stained with dirt and my own tears.

I kept replaying Adrian’s words in my head. I should have known that my crush of three years suddenly realizing he loved me three months ago after living in the same pack with me for years was too good to be true.

All of it had been a lie. I cried so hard that I could barely feel my eyes anymore. Just then, I heard footsteps echoing down the dungeon stairs, pulling me out of my thoughts.

I scrambled to my feet, pressing my back against the stone wall. If Adrian was coming to finish what he’d started, I wasn’t going to die cowering on the floor like an animal. But it wasn’t Adrian.

It was Jackson and Stevens. I tried to place the look on their faces but I could not. It was like they were a shadow of the two people I once knew that helped raise me since I was a child. How could they switch up on me this fast?

“Time to go, Anna,” Jackson said quietly, not meeting my eyes.

Stevens opened the cell door, holding a pair of silver shackles that made my wolf, Nyra whimper in the back of my mind. They shackled my wrists and ankles, and the silver burned against my skin, cutting me off from my wolf completely.

I felt naked and vulnerable without her in a way that made my stomach churn. As they led me up the stairs, I caught a glimpse of the pack house’s main hall.

When they saw me, some turned away in shame. Others stared with a mixture of pity and relief that it wasn’t them in chains. Not one of them met my eyes.

“Please,” I whispered to Jackson as we walked past the front desk where I’d signed a thousand documents as Luna. “You’ve known me since I was eight years old. You taught me how to throw a proper punch. How can you do this to me?”

Jackson’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t respond.

“My father trusted you,” I tried again, desperation making my voice crack. “He made you Beta because he believed in you.”

Jackson didn’t speak back. He just led me to the black van was waiting for us in the driveway. The back doors opened, and there was a metal cage inside.

An actual cage, like I was some kind of wild animal instead of a person.

“No.” I dug my heels in, fighting against their grip even though the shackles made it useless. “No, please, I’ll leave the territory, I’ll never come back, just please don’t—”

They dragged me into the van, and I saw a face in one of the palace windows. Alyssa. She was pressed against the glass, tears streaming down her face, her mouth open as she screamed inaudibly.

Our eyes met for one devastating moment. I tried to mouth “I love you,” but then Jackson shoved me into the cage and slammed the doors shut. The van started moving, and through the small window, I watched my home disappear.

The place where I’d taken my first steps, learned to shift, fallen in love with a monster who’d been planning my destruction from the very beginning.

The drive seemed to last forever and no time at all. When we finally stopped, I could hear voices outside. They were rough voices talking about “quality” and what “bitches” looked most promising tonight.

The doors opened, and Stevens hauled me out. We were in some kind of warehouse. It was dimly lit and filled with cigarette smoke.

Men in expensive suits clustered around in groups, sipping champagne and studying magazines like they were at an art auction instead of a human trafficking ring.

“Fresh meat!” someone called out as Stevens pushed me forward. “Look at this one. Still in her wedding dress. What's the story?”

“Former pack Luna,” Stevens told him. “Also, an alpha. She will make a lot of money.”

Jackson pushed me forward away from the small talk and I was taken to another cage. There were an array of women there, some crying quietly while others stared at nothing with empty eyes. How many lives had been destroyed to fill this warehouse?

“Ladies and gentlemen!” A voice boomed over the speakers. “Welcome to tonight’s exclusive auction. We have some truly exceptional offerings for your satisfaction.”

I pressed myself against the back of my cage as the man continued. My heart was beating wildly in my chest as I tried to convince myself that this was not true. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening.

“And now, gentlemen, our crown jewel!” The man’s voice cracked with excitement as two guards unlocked my cage. “Lot number seven. She is a former Luna. Anna Anderson, still wearing her wedding dress from just this morning.”

Two men opened the cage and dragged me onto the stage, and the spotlights hit me blindingly. That made my skin crawl, but I forced myself to stand straight.

If I was going to be sold like cattle, I wasn’t going to give these bastards the satisfaction of seeing me cower.

“Bidding starts at ten thousand!” the auctioneer shouted.

“Fifteen!”

“Twenty!”

“Thirty thousand!”

The numbers climbed higher and higher.

“Fifty thousand!”

“Sixty!”

“Seventy-five!”

My legs started to shake. Seventy-five thousand dollars. Someone was willing to pay seventy-five thousand dollars to own me, to do whatever sick things they wanted to a woman who’d woken up this morning as a happily married Luna.

“Eighty thousand!” came a voice from the middle of the crowd. “I want the bitch!”

“Ninety!”

The bidding war was getting intense now, and I felt like I was going to vomit.

“Do I hear one hundred?” the auctioneer called out hopefully.

Silence stretched across the warehouse. Even human traffickers had their limits, apparently. Then, from the very back of the room, a voice cut through the air, “One hundred thousand.”

The entire crowd turned to look, but I couldn’t see who had spoken. The voice was deep, with an accent I couldn’t place. Whoever it was remained hidden in the shadows, and that scared me so much.

“One hundred thousand dollars!” the man practically screamed with excitement. “Do I hear one-ten?”

Dead silence.

“Going once… going twice… SOLD to the gentleman in the back!”

As the guards dragged me off the stage, my legs finally gave out completely. One hundred thousand dollars. Someone had just paid one hundred thousand dollars to buy me.

Through my tears, I caught a glimpse of my buyer moving through the crowd toward the payment table. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and wearing an expensive black suit that looked out of place where these disgusting people were.

But I couldn’t see his face. I was unshackled and pushed to another area where I was given new clothes and then I was taken to the car. As they dragged me toward whatever fresh nightmare awaited, I realized that for the first time since this morning, I wasn’t thinking about Adrian anymore.

Because what was coming next was seemingly more terrifying than betrayal from the man I loved.