All Chapters of AUCTIONED TO THE LYCAN KING: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

ASHERThe file sat on my desk for three hours before I opened it.Ethan had delivered it at noon. A thick sealed envelope stamped with Commander Rhea's personal cipher. The investigation I had ordered weeks ago into the Stone family bloodline.I stared at it through two meetings and a border patrol briefing. I stared at it through a cup of tea that went cold and a dinner I did not touch. I stared at it while the sun set and the candles burned low and the palace settled into its nightly silence.Then I opened it.The first page was a genealogy chart. Rhea's team had traced Maya's lineage back seven generations through fragmented records recovered from allied packs and underground archives. The Blue Moon pack records were destroyed in Damien's attack but Rhea had found alternative sources. Old journals. Temple registries. Blood oath documents preserved in neutral territory vaults.Maya's father Alpha Richard Stone came from a strong but unremarkable line. Solid Alpha stock going back fo

MAYASomething changed after the clearing.Not suddenly. Not dramatically. It happened the way dawn happens. So gradually that you do not notice the darkness leaving until everything is already bathed in light.Asher started training with me every day. Not just evenings. Mornings too. He would appear at the yard before Rhea arrived and fall into position across from me without a word. No explanation. No contract clause that required it. He just showed up.And he kept showing up.The distance he had maintained since the day I arrived began to shrink. Not in obvious ways. In small ones. The kind that were easy to dismiss individually but impossible to ignore when they accumulated.He sat closer to me during meals.Not beside me. Not yet. But the gap between us at the war room table narrowed from four chairs to three to two. By the end of the week his elbow was close enough to brush mine when he reached for a document and neither of us pulled away when it did.He asked me questions that

ISABELLAHe smelled like that basement room again.Dust and old paper and obsession. The scent clung to his clothes and his skin and followed him through the house like a ghost that refused to leave.I was sitting in the bedroom when he walked in. Midnight. He did not look at me. He walked straight to the bathroom and turned on the shower without closing the door. Steam curled into the room carrying the scent of soap that would wash away the evidence of where he had been.But it could not wash away what I already knew.He had been down there again. Sitting in that chair. Talking to her photographs. Whispering her name to a wall covered in frozen smiles that would never answer him back.I pulled my knees to my chest and stared at the bathroom door. The sound of running water filled the silence between us. The same silence that had become our entire relationship. Meals eaten without conversation. Nights spent in the same bed without touching. A life shared in proximity but lived in comp

MAYAEthan delivered the intelligence report at dawn.He did not knock. He walked straight into the war room where Asher and I were reviewing the extraction plan and dropped a folder on the table with a weight that did not match its size."We found more of them" he said.I grabbed the folder before Asher could reach it. Inside were scout reports. Photographs. Location coordinates. My eyes scanned the pages so fast the words blurred.Then I saw the names.Twelve Blue Moon survivors. Held in an underground facility near the southern border. Operated by a rogue trafficking ring that bought and sold wolves like livestock.My stomach turned when I reached the condition report. Malnourished. Dehydrated. Signs of physical abuse. Several had injuries consistent with forced labor. Two were in critical condition.Then I saw her name.Olivia Hartwell.The folder trembled in my hands. Olivia. My best friend. The girl who braided wildflowers into my hair when we were children. The girl who pulled

MAYAThe wolfsbane was eating me alive from the inside.Every step back to the kingdom was a war between my body and my will. The poison spread through my bloodstream like liquid fire. It burned along my veins and settled into my muscles and turned every movement into agony.My wolf fought it. I could feel her clawing against the poison. Pushing it back. Burning through it with whatever ancient power lived inside her blood. The silver warmth in my chest flared and dimmed and flared again like a flame being battered by wind.But she was not strong enough to purge it completely. Not yet.Olivia was on my back. Her arms draped over my shoulders. Her head resting against my neck. She weighed almost nothing but with the wolfsbane in my system she felt like the entire world was sitting on my spine.I did not put her down. Not once.Ethan tried to take her from me twice during the march. Both times I shook my head and kept walking. These were my people. She was my best friend. I would carry