The Lycan King's Auction Prize
Devlin Ashford has spent her whole life being the daughter her family always forgot.
Inside the high walls of the Edevane stronghold, built to keep lycans and wolves out and everything else rigidly in, she learned early that love in her family was a privilege distributed by usefulness and she had never been the most useful child.
That distinction belonged to Mara, her older sister, who was beautiful and charming beyond words. When their father arranges Devlin's engagement to Corvin Hale, son of a neighboring chief, it is the first time in her life she has been given something that feels like a future.
Corvin was at least decent and had a bright future as the youngest son of a Chief. Mara decides that's too good a future for someone like Devlin.
Her parents make him choose, marry Devlin and live as just the youngest son of a Chief or marry Mara and become the chief of Edevane.
Corbin makes a choice without thinking twice, he chooses the more attractive sister with a bright future tied to it. Inciting Incident Devlin goes over the wall with just forty coins, a knife and an extra set of clothes. She doesn't make it far before she's captured by slave hunters.
In the borderlands auction market, the mate bond snaps in place between her and the lycan king, Ronan. That night he marks her in his room.