21. Raine
21
Raine
The air is cold this early in the morning.
The sun hasn’t risen yet, but with the way the sky is starting to lighten just over the tree line, it’s bound to happen any minute now.
A shiver races up my spine, but not because of the cold or the fact that I’ve been dressed in a sheer material that is practically see-through—Daniel’s final act of humiliating me, no doubt—but because I know my new owner will be arriving soon.
My stomach twists at the thought of that—my new owner.
But that’s what he’ll be, right? I’ve been sold as his brood mare and nothing more. A glorified sex pet, which hopefully won’t mean I’m locked in a cage until I’m ready to be used. Although, it’s not much different than how I’ve been kept the past few weeks, is it?
My cell had been my cage until Daniel could secure this deal. I’m only surprised it took so long for him to find someone willing to buy me.
My wrists and ankles are bound in steel cuffs chained in the middle, so there will be no way I can shift and run off like my wolf is begging me to. She’s been scratching and clawing inside of my mind since this morning, ready to mow down anyone who tries to get in the way of our freedom.
I haven’t given in though, dully aware of what happened last time I tried to escape. Since coming back, I haven’t seen Delilah at all, and I can only hope that she’s been sequestered back in her family’s home until I’m finally gone.
She’s a worthy female and I’m sure her parents are disappointed with her trying to help break me out. They most likely requested for Daniel to keep me locked away until today, and he was probably very happy to oblige.
My ears pick up on the sounds of footsteps pounding against the ground in the distance, growing closer and closer as each passing second rolls by.
I hate that the smell of my fear is obvious, and even more so when Daniel chuckles.
“Well, Raine. This has been a rather splendid outcome. I only wish that I’d gone through with it sooner instead of letting you make a mockery of this pack.”
I stare on ahead, not giving him any kind of reaction outside of my heart involuntarily beating rapidly. He won’t get anything out of me other than the stone-cold acceptance that I’ve been practicing since last night.
His last memory of me will never be of me weeping at his feet and begging for a second chance. I’m done doing that. I’m done giving him the satisfaction that he’s won yet again.
Ahead of us, the brush moves and the scent of another pack—foreign—wafts over us. My entire body stiffens while my wolf grows silent, both of us waiting for what’s to come.
Finally, they arrive.
Satisfaction fills me a little bit as Daniel’s enforcers stiffen uncomfortably. It isn’t often that the Andromeda pack runs into shifters that could easily beat them down if they wanted to. My pack has always been on the poorer side, but we make up for that in our scrappiness and how far we’re willing to take a fight.
However, these shifters of the Soleus pack are on a completely different level.
The first three shifters who break through the tree line are huge, much larger than any of the enforcers in the Andromeda pack. The one in the middle, a large black male shifter, lets out a gruff huff before approaching us, while the other two hang back.
Daniel and I are standing a little bit back, with three enforcers on each side fanned out at an angle. The show is meant to look intimidating, but clearly that’s not working at all with how amused the three Soleus shifters look as they bat their tails.
The male shifts, a tall and broad figure replacing his wolf.
He has dark hair that falls in long waves down to his shoulders, slightly tousled away from his face in a middle part. His black shirt is cut directly down the middle in a wide V, reaching just below his sternum and showing off the hard muscles under the thin fabric. His skin is a shade darker than mine, a nice even tan that compliments his darker features, like his lashes and brows.
The most striking thing about him is two piercings, twin black hoops that fit snugly over his full bottom lip.
The air that this male exudes is pure power—pure alpha .
My entire body shivers.
“Welcome, Your Grace.” Daniel bows to the alpha, his hand sliding into the back of my hair and clenching at the strands attached to the nape of my neck, pulling hard enough for my eyes to water.
He forces me down into a bow as well, deeper than his by a longshot.
“Thank you,” the male, Nyx , says. His voice is deep, much deeper than Aiden’s.
Daniel straightens back up but keeps me bent over at the waist, continuing to bow to the Southern King. I don’t fight him, figuring that if anything, maybe this alpha will take pity on me and make my suffering a little less in the coming days.
“I see you’ve brought me my breeder,” Nyx speaks again.
“Yes.” Daniel’s voice is eager, which is strange to hear coming from him. He’s never been one to “lower” himself with pleasing other alphas, especially kings like Aiden.
So what did this king do to earn his respect? Is buying me worth that much to him? It must be.
Surprisingly, Nyx doesn’t speak for a long moment, leading to a very uncomfortable and heavy silence. I can only tell that it’s become uncomfortable by the way Daniel’s hand tightens in my hair, causing me to bite my lip in order to hold back a whimper.
No one else around us moves, not even our enforcers who, only moments before, were shifting on their feet uncomfortably.
When Nyx finally does speak, all he says is, “Hm.”
Daniel’s scent changes then, fear finally breaking through his usual nauseating confidence. “Is there something wrong, Your Grace?”
If I wasn’t trying to keep myself from crying out, I’d be grinning right about now. I’ve never heard Daniel sound so worried before.
“I’m simply…surprised, is all.” The cadence in the Alpha King’s tone is…odd. He’s speaking slowly, but not because he’s testing the waters with my pack alpha. There seems to be something more there that I can’t exactly put my finger on.
“Surprised?” Daniel’s tone pitches up uncomfortably high.
“I’ve been here all of five minutes and not one offer to have a cup of tea. I would’ve thought your pack to be far more hospitable than that. Clearly, I was mistaken.”
Daniel rushes to say, “We can get you tea. We can get you whatever you want. I wasn’t aware you wanted to stay—”
“Ah.” Nyx cuts him off with a simple sound, shutting up my pack alpha immediately.
Everything around us goes silent again.
It’s incredible, the power this man holds. It speaks to all of the rumors surrounding him. All night I’d been trying to remember each and every one of them, each one more terrifying than the last.
Before I eventually gave in to my body’s exhaustion, I remembered a specific rumor that had haunted me even as a young teenager.
It was the story of the Southern King’s disapproval of one of the packs that he ruled over, and how the alpha of that pack had ultimately chosen to honor kill himself at his king’s feet in order to plead for mercy for his pack.
The story didn’t end happily, and from what I could remember of it, the Southern King had ended up slaughtering the pack anyway, despite their alpha’s sacrifice.
Back then, the story had kept me up at night for weeks. And now here I am, in the presence of the same man. There’s no question in my mind on whether or not those rumors are true. This suffocating tension is enough proof in and of itself.
I hear footsteps crunch softly against the ground, and I tense. Out of my peripheral vision and through the strands of hair hanging over my face, I can see our pack’s enforcers quickly moving away, creating a wide berth of space.
Daniel’s fingers flex in my hair, alerting me before I even have a visual that Nyx has drawn closer.
He stops directly in front of me, the thick soles of his leather boots staring back at me.
Oh gods…
“Let me see what I’ve bought,” he says to Daniel, his tone even.
My alpha’s hand quickly leaves my hair, allowing me to stand up straight again. I don’t though—because I know exactly how this will go. If I so much as move a single inch, he’ll see it as a sign of disrespect and punish me for it.
I can feel the crack of his hand against my cheek before it’s even happened.
“Oh? You won’t even look at me?”
For some reason, butterflies kick up in my stomach at the sudden shift in his tone, sounding almost like he’s…teasing me?
I swallow, knowing full well that my scent probably stinks with how nervous I am.
Suddenly, a finger hooks under my chin and lifts up. My body follows with it, pitching straight as I stand fully once more. Nyx gazes down at me, his cold, dark eyes flitting around my features as he drinks me in.
My fingers twitch at my sides with how much I’m forcing myself not to move, even if it’s by accident. My eyes dart away from him, lowering in submission immediately.
“I see you’ve trained her,” Nyx says.
“Yes. Yes, of course we have. She’ll be a very obedient breeder for you,” comes Daniel’s overly eager voice.
“Hm. Not obedient enough though.” His tone shifts again. “Seeing as how she’s already been bred.”
I try not to wince, but the words hurt more than I thought they would. When I’d first laid with Aiden, I thought we were doing so out of love—I never thought in a million years that I’d be in this position.
Hearing my future alpha say something like that, as if the baby growing inside of me is nothing more than a pest, kills me.
This baby had been made with love, even if Aiden refuses to accept that now.
Daniel clears his throat. “We’ll send you with a tonic to get rid of—”
“No need,” Nyx says abruptly.
He surprises me by trailing his thumb along my cheek and over my bottom lip, pressing down on it until my lips part. Not able to help myself, my eyes dart up to look at him.
A slow smile works its way onto his face as our eyes meet.
Finally, he lets me go and steps back.
“Give her things to my beta. We’ll be off now.”
Daniel stutters. “You are more than welcome to stay, Your Grace.”
But Nyx is already turning away from him and moving back toward the group of shifters he brought with him. One of them, a large brown male, shifts and passes by him in order to come closer to our group.
“Her things?” he asks, brows raised expectantly.
One of our enforcers looks back to Daniel with a panicked expression.
“She doesn’t come with anything,” Daniel says quickly.
The male, Nyx’s beta I presume, raises his brows higher. “You’re sending a breeder with nothing? Surely she comes with home comforts. Trinkets, even.”
“We wanted her to pack lightly for your travels,” he lies.
Nyx’s beta stares for a long moment before slowly turning to look over his shoulder at his alpha.
I’m not surprised at their reaction.
If I were a true breeder, I’d be sent off with an abundance of things in order to make my travels comfortable and to honor me and the services I’d be providing for another pack. Even with shifter society having slowly moved away from the need for breeders over the past few decades, their customs are still remembered.
Daniel’s ill-preparedness is only making him look like a complete idiot.
All he saw when he sold me were dollar signs. If he’d done just a little bit of research to make this entire transaction look authentic, he would at least be sending me with a suitcase or two and dressed me in something more modest in order to entice my new owner.
But no, here he is sending me in a thin cloth set that barely covers anything and is practically see-through—not at all proper for a breeder.
Hell, what do I know though?
Nyx’s face doesn’t move.
Instead, he simply fixes my alpha with a blank expression that betrays none of his feelings on the matter. I can’t tell if that makes Daniel more uncomfortable or not, but if his twitching is anything to go by, I’d say it’s the former.
Nyx’s beta sighs before turning back around. He gestures to me with a wave of his hand, beckoning me forward.
I don’t move. I’m too afraid this is another test.
A hand presses against my back, roughly moving me forward. “Go on. He’s calling for you.”
I stumble, forcing myself not to look back at Daniel and glare at him. Tentatively, I inch forward, carefully crossing the distance between my soon-to-be old pack and my new one. The chains around my ankles rattle slightly as I move, drawing the beta’s eyes down to them immediately.
I’m terrified of what’s going to happen as soon as I’m taken away. What awaits me in the Southern Lands?