All Chapters of AUCTIONED TO THE LYCAN KING: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

ASHERTwenty years ago.The palace was too big for a boy my size.Every hallway stretched on forever. Every ceiling reached up so high I could not see where it ended. Every room echoed with emptiness no matter how many candles were lit or how many servants walked through.I was eight years old and I had been searching for my mother for three days.Nobody would tell me where she was. The servants looked away when I asked. The guards said they did not know. My father locked himself in his chambers and would not open the door no matter how hard I knocked.So I went to the only person who always had answers.Lord Kael's study was at the end of the west corridor. The door was heavy dark wood with iron handles that I had to use both hands to pull open. The room smelled like old books and pipe smoke. Shelves covered every wall from floor to ceiling stuffed with leather bound volumes that I was not allowed to touch.Kael sat behind his desk writing something by candlelight. He looked up when

GABRIELThe meeting took place in a slaughterhouse.Fitting.The building sat on the outskirts of unclaimed territory. An abandoned meat processing facility that stank of rust and old blood. The kind of place where deals were made by men who did not want witnesses.Damien stood at the head of a long metal table. Bryce flanked his right side. Three rogue Alphas sat across from him. Each one more dangerous than the last.Alpha Crane of the Iron Fang pack. Short and stocky with a shaved head and a scar that split his face diagonally from his left temple to his right jaw. He talked too much and thought too little. Perfect cannon fodder.Alpha Dorian of the Blackthorn pack. Tall and gaunt with sunken eyes and fingers that never stopped moving. A weapons dealer who had made his fortune selling to both sides of every conflict for the past decade. He did not care who won as long as he got paid.Alpha Voss of the Shadow Ridge pack. The most dangerous of the three. Quiet. Composed. A woman with

MAYAThe rain started without warning.One moment the sky was dark and heavy. The next the clouds split open and water poured down like the heavens were trying to drown the earth. It hammered the stone courtyard so hard it sounded like a thousand drums beating at once.I did not care.I had stormed out of the palace ten minutes ago and I was not going back. Not yet. Not until the fire inside me cooled enough for me to think straight.Ethan had told me they were leaving at dawn. A rescue mission. Small team. Quick extraction. Exactly what I had begged Asher for.But he refused to let me go with them.He changed his mind about the mission but not about keeping me locked inside these walls like a porcelain doll he was afraid to break. I had argued. I had demanded. I had raised my voice in a way that made Ethan take two steps backward and suddenly find the ceiling very interesting.Asher had not moved. He stood there with that infuriating calm and said one word.No.So I left. I walked ou

MAYATwo months.I stood in front of my mirror and studied the woman looking back at me. She was a stranger in the best possible way.My face was sharper. The softness was gone. Replaced by angles that caught the light differently. My jaw was more defined. My cheekbones sat higher. The baby fat that once rounded my features had been carved away by eight weeks of brutal training and sleepless nights.My body had changed even more. My arms were lean and corded with muscle that flexed when I moved. My shoulders were broader. My legs were solid. The training uniform that used to hang loose now stretched tight across my frame in places that made me feel powerful instead of small.But the biggest change was in my eyes.They were still hazel. Still the same color that earned me a nickname I pretended to hate. But there was something behind them now. A sharpness. A steadiness. A quiet fire that had not been there two months ago.The girl who was sold at an auction would not recognize me.Good

MAYAThe world went white.Not the white of light or snow or clouds. Something deeper. A white that existed behind my eyes and inside my bones and in the spaces between my heartbeats. It filled every inch of me until there was no room left for fear.My wolf rose.She did not creep forward gently like she had during the training sessions. She did not stir or flicker or tease at the edges of my consciousness. She erupted. A force so massive and so ancient that my body could not contain it. She poured through me like a river breaking through a dam that had held for years.And I let her.The three rogues closing in on the wounded Lycan soldier never saw it coming.The first one lunged at me with a blade aimed at my throat. I moved. Not the way Rhea had taught me. Not the way I had practiced in a thousand training sessions. I moved the way water moves around stone. Fluid. Effortless. Inevitable.My hand caught his wrist and twisted. The snap of bone echoed through the clearing. He screamed