The Beast Lord’s Prize (The Cursed Marriage Auctions #1)

Chapter 1

THE BLOCK

Annora's POV

The blood-collar knows when I'm afraid.

It pulses against my throat like a second heartbeat, hot metal biting into skin already worn raw. I learned in the first hour not to fight it. Fighting makes it tighten. Fighting makes it burn.

So I don't fight.

I go small. I go quiet. I count my breaths and search for exits that don't exist.

The handler—a woman with cold hands and colder eyes—drags me through the underbelly of the Red Amphitheater.

Stone corridors slope downward into torch-lit darkness, the air thick with sweat and terror that isn't only mine.

My wrists are bound in front of me with coarse rope that's already left marks.

Not that it matters. I'm already marked.

The brand on my shoulder throbs with each step, still fresh enough to weep.

Witch.

They burned it into me three days ago in the village square while the crowd cheered. The same neighbors who used to smile when I sold them healing herbs. The same people whose children I'd drawn fevers from, whose bones I'd mended, whose ailments I'd eased with poultices and tinctures and care.

Funny how fast a healer becomes a monster when the crops fail and someone needs to bleed for it.

"Strip."

The word cuts through my thoughts. We've stopped in a low-ceilinged room that reeks of lye soap and fear-sweat. There's a wooden tub in the corner, steam rising from water that's been used before. Recently. Two other handlers wait by the far wall, their faces blank as plastered stone.

I don't move fast enough.

The first handler grabs the neck of my shift and tears. The fabric gives with a sound like something dying, and I gasp—can't help it—and the collar flares hot enough to steal my breath.

Don't react. Don't give them anything.

Rough hands shove me toward the tub. The water scalds, but I've learned this too: silence costs less than sound. They scrub me with brushes that might as well be weapons, scouring away three days of filth and blood and the last pathetic shreds of my dignity.

When they haul me out, I'm shaking. Cold, probably. Or fear. I've stopped being able to tell the difference.

The dress they give me isn't really a dress. It's ceremonial linen, thin as a broken promise and just as reliable. It clings to my damp skin, translucent enough to display what it pretends to cover.

That's the point, I realize.

Display the merchandise.

"Listen carefully." The first handler grips my chin, nails digging crescents into my jaw as she forces me to meet her eyes. "You don't speak unless spoken to. You don't fight the collar. And you don't look defiant." She leans closer, her breath sour. "Defiance raises the bid. Understand?"

I nod. My throat's too tight for words anyway.

She smiles, and it's worse than the scowl. "Good girl. Maybe you'll survive this after all."

I don't believe her.

I don't think she believes herself.

The roar hits me first.

They shove me toward a doorway, and suddenly I'm stumbling onto the auction block, blinking against lanternlight that floods the arena like a second sun.

The Red Amphitheater rises up around me in tiers of stone and screaming faces—hundreds of them, maybe thousands, all baying for blood or gold or entertainment.

All here to watch me be sold.

My legs nearly buckle. The only thing keeping me upright is the handler's iron grip on my arm and the absolute certainty that if I fall, they'll drag me up and make an example of weakness.

"Ladies and gentlemen!"

The voice slices through the noise like a blade through silk. The Auction Mistress stands on a raised platform to my left, beautiful the way a knife is beautiful: all sharp edges wrapped in jeweled silk. Her crimson lips curve in a smile that promises cruelty.

"Tonight, the crown offers a special tribute to maintain our precious peace." She gestures to me like I'm a prized mare. "A witch bride—a scapegoat for her village's failed harvest, generously donated to soothe the tempers of our... guardians beyond the Blackwood."

Laughter ripples through the crowd, cruel and delighted.

Something hits my shoulder. Soft. Wet. Rotten fruit, bursting against bare skin.

I keep my face blank. I've had worse thrown at me. Stones. Fists. Words that cut deeper than either.

Breathe. Count. Find the exits.

There are none.

There never are.

The bidding starts like a feeding frenzy.

"Fifty silver!" A slurring voice from the lower tiers—some minor lord with wine-flushed cheeks and too much coin.

"Seventy-five!" Another voice, this one oiled and smooth as a merchant's lie.

I scan the crowd without moving my head. Predators, all of them. Polished boots and perfumed silk and eyes that strip me down to meat and potential.

Then I see him.

Lower tier, third row. A man in dark clothes, perfectly still while chaos swirls around him. His posture is relaxed, his smile calm and controlled, but his eyes...

Oh gods, his eyes.

They're fixed on me with the certainty of someone who's already decided I belong to him. Not in the heated, drunken way of the other bidders. Colder. More patient.

More dangerous.

A Crown Inquisitor. I'd stake my life on it.

If I still had a life to stake.

"Two hundred silver!" someone shouts, standing now, desperate to be noticed.

The Auction Mistress laughs, delighted. "My, my! Such enthusiasm for our little—"

She stops.

The crowd stops.

Even the air seems to stop, held hostage in collective lungs.

Something's changed. The noise doesn't fade so much as retreat, like the whole amphitheater has become prey and just scented the predator.

I feel it before I see it. A pressure in the air, heavy and primal. The temperature drops.

Then the scent: iron and pine, woodsmoke and something wilder, something that makes the small animal part of my brain shriek run run RUN.

I can't run.

So I turn my head—slowly, because fast movements draw predators—and look.

Oh.

He stands at the arena's edge, and he is wrong in every way that matters for a man.

Too tall—seven feet, maybe more. Too broad, all brutal muscle and scarred flesh barely contained by leather armor that's seen battle and won.

Horns curve up from his temples like a crown of blackened bone, and his hands. ..

His hands end in claws.

The beast lords aren't supposed to come here. They stay in their territories beyond the Blackwood, taking their tributes and leaving civilized lands alone.

That's the treaty.

That's the peace.

But he's here now, and he's looking at me.

Gold eyes. Burning gold, like a forge in full flame.

Predator's eyes.

The Auction Mistress recovers first, her voice pitched higher than before. "Ah! Lord Vorak of Blackwood graces us with his presence! Will you be bidding tonight, my lord, or merely... observing?"

He doesn't answer her.

He doesn't look away from me.

The silence stretches. Somewhere in the upper tiers, someone coughs nervously.

Then a voice—drunk or stupid or both—breaks the quiet. "What's wrong, beast? Afraid of a little witch?"

Scattered laughter, brittle and uncertain.

Another voice, emboldened: "She's probably too fragile for the likes of—"

Vorak moves.

He doesn't run. Doesn't rush. He simply moves, and three strides later he's on the sand, and the drunk lord who was mocking him suddenly looks remarkably sober.

"I'll bid," the lord says quickly, words tumbling over themselves. "Five hundred—"

"No." Vorak's voice is gravel and death and finality. "You won't."

"This is an auction, beast." The lord's trying for indignant, landing somewhere near terrified. "I have every right to—"

Vorak hits him.

It's not a duel. Not elegant or ceremonial or bound by any rule except survival. It's just violence, quick and brutal and absolute.

The lord goes down hard.

Vorak follows him down.

I should look away. Every instinct screams to close my eyes, to spare myself this, but I can't.

I watch him fight the way he was made to fight—like violence is a language he speaks fluently, like he was born with the vocabulary of breaking things.

The lord tries to get up.

Once.

Only once.

When it's over, Vorak rises slowly. Blood drips from his knuckles—I don't think it's his—and his chest heaves like a bellows. For a moment he stands there, silhouetted against the lanternlight, and he looks exactly like what he is.

Monster.

Then he turns.

And looks at me.

I forget how to breathe.

He crosses the sand toward the block, and every step is deliberate, controlled, like he's deciding whether I'm worth the trouble of keeping alive.

Please, I think, and I don't even know what I'm begging for. Please let me be worth it. Please let this be better than the Inquisitor. Please—

A guard appears at my side, fumbling with the chain at my wrist. His hands shake as he unhooks it from the post. When he shoves me forward—too rough, too eager to be rid of responsibility—I stumble.

I don't fall.

Because Vorak catches me.

His hands are massive. Scarred. Still flecked with another man's blood. They should terrify me, and they do—gods, they do—but they're also...

Gentle.

Careful.

Like he knows exactly how breakable I am and has made some private decision not to break me.

Yet.

He leans close—so close I can feel the heat rolling off him in waves, smell pine and iron and earth—and his voice drops to a growl meant only for me.

"Do not fear me, little witch."

A pause. His thumb brushes the blood-collar at my throat, and the metal shivers under his touch.

"Fear what I'll do to anyone who touches you."

The collar pulses once—hot and angry, like it wants to object—

And then it settles.

Goes quiet.

Like it recognizes him.

Like it knows I already belong to someone far more dangerous than any spell-wrought metal could ever be.

The Auction Mistress's voice rings out, shrill with forced cheer. "Sold! To Lord Vorak of Blackwood, for—" She hesitates, clearly unsure what price was actually agreed upon.

Vorak doesn't clarify.

He simply lifts me—lifts me like I weigh nothing—and turns toward the exit.

The crowd parts.

No one stops him.

No one's that stupid.

As he carries me into the shadowed corridor beyond the arena, his arms solid and unyielding around me, I make myself one promise:

Survive the night.

Everything else can wait until morning.

If there is a morning.