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Chapter 1 — Let Me Go
Stacey ’s POV
I shouldn't be here.
“Please! Let me go!”
My hands pressed tightly over my mouth, my eyes staring at the horror unfolding in front of me. Women were dragged to the floor, chains wrapped around their necks and arms.
One tried to run, but a man stepped forward to block her and struck her. She collapsed to the floor, the light in her eyes dying, and I saw her staring at me in the cupboard as if she knew I was there.
I was playing a game of hide-and-seek with my younger sister when I accidentally stumbled upon this place, and I had been stuck here ever since.
An elder from the Council Hall, Elder Xavier, stepped forward, his brows pressed tightly together. He crouched down before the woman and pressed his finger against her neck.
“She’s gone,” he sighed, standing up. “You shouldn't have hit her with such force. What are we going to tell the Lords?”
The man who struck the woman scoffed, walking toward one of the women. He stepped in front of her and dragged her up.
“This one can replace her.” He sniffed the woman. “Her blood is good enough for my lord.”
My eyes widened when I recognized who the lady was. Didn’t my father say she left the pack because of family problems?
“Okay then. I’ll replace her name on the list of goods traveling to your lords,” Elder Xavier muttered, writing something down on a clipboard.
The girl’s eyes widened in horror, and she collapsed to her knees, grappling at Elder Xavier’s feet.
“N-no, please! I made a mistake once, and I am sorry! I shouldn't have spoken Ill to the Alpha’s daughter and call her wolfless! I shouldn't have tampered with her things!” Her lips trembled, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Please don’t sell me off! I’m begging you!”
Xavier’s face twisted in disgust as he pulled his leg back, causing her fingers to slip, and she crashed to the floor.
“Alpha! PLEASE FORGIVE ME! PLEASE!” she screamed, veins bulging in her neck.
My body shook violently, my hand almost digging into my mouth. My father knew about this? I never questioned anything my father did because of how much I saw him taking care of me ever since my mother died giving birth to me.
He loved me and had always shown it through protection, protecting me against maids like Helen who chose to mistreat me because of my birth.
I had relied on my father this way because there was no one else to trust in this pack.
I hugged myself tightly, trying not to let even my scent be detected by the elders in the room. Helen was grabbed by the hair.
She struggled, her hands gripping the person’s arm as she tried to run away.
Elder Xavier took out a hot iron from the burning fire and pressed it behind her neck.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhjhu!” A sizzling sound filled the air, followed by her agonizing scream. I could feel it running through my bones.
Her eyes rolled back in their sockets, foam forming in her mouth. She dropped to the floor, her body shaking profusely.
Elder Xavier brushed it off as though that was a normal reaction he was expecting.
“This batch will be sent to the vampire lords in X City, she will be sent to your lord, and that girl over there is a backup in case she dies too early,” he explained, and everyone in the room listened to him except the women crying.
I covered my mouth, wishing that they would leave so I could run away from this nightmare. Daisy was still looking for me, not knowing I was hiding down here, and if she didn’t see me, she would call for alarm, which would not be very good for me.
With all that running through my mind, the most shocking thing to me was the fact that my father was trading women to vampires!
“Let’s go,” he finally said, and they dragged the women away in chains, one by one.
I let out a shaky breath, my hands slowly freeing themselves from my mouth. I pushed the cupboard open, my eyes shaky after making sure no one was around.
I jumped out quickly. My feet wobbled, and I staggered, hitting the wall. My legs shook underneath me, but I forced myself out of the basement.
I pushed the door open, and soon I was in the garden. Daisy was nowhere to be found.
I needed to see my father.
It couldn’t be him. He couldn’t be the one helping the elders trade women to vampires!
He detested them!
He hated them so much!
There was no way it was him!
This thought played in my head as I got to his meeting room, where he discussed business with his partners.
My feet came to a pause as I stared at the door. My hand trembled slightly as I lifted it to open it. However, the door opened slightly before I did, and I saw a man standing in front of it, but he was looking inside.
“This isn’t the agreement! There shouldn’t be a need for excuses, Alpha Ryder. Your daughter is already of age to be sent to Lord Xerxes.” His accent was different, like nothing I had ever heard before.
What?!
N-no, give me to who?
“I know, Butler, but I am trying. My people are in the middle of a trade between other vampires, and I can’t give her to him yet.” To my shock, my father answered that way.
The man standing at the door slowly let go of it, and the door closed.
“You need more money? We already paid a huge amount for this. Your daughter is the only one Lord Xerxes picked to be his vessel. You can’t interfere with his decisions.”
My feet turned to jelly as I struggled to stand upright.
“I know she’s my daughter, and I’ve brought her up to rely on me. I’m telling you to give me time to prepare her mind for this,” Alpha Ryder replied.
All that love, time, and the memories we shared together… were they nothing?
“How long should that be?” The Butler's voice came through. I lifted my hand, shaking and placed it on the door my heart aching as I prayed that I have been wrong with everything.
He can't trade me.
“Two days. I'll send her to Lord Xerxers in two days.” my father replied.
“No.” My hands pressed tightly against my mouth as my eyes shook violently.
“Sister?” Daisy's voice sounded behind me. My body stiffened slightly as I slowly turned around, she was holding a ball on her hands staring at me with confused eyes. “Where have you been?”
I quickly shushed her, my index finger pressed tightly on my lips. However at that moment the door burst open behind me and my skin crawled in fear.
“We have a spy.” The Butler said grimly. I turned looked behind him to see my father standing up slowly.
His brows pressed tightly when he saw me. “No, that's my daughter, Stacey .”
“I'm not your daughter!” I screamed, my heart slamming heavily against my chest. I grabbed my sister's arm and dashed away from the place.
“She's escaping!” The Butler thundered. “Where are your guards?! She heard everything that happened!”
Their voices thundered behind me as I dashed through the hallway holding Daisy's hands tightly.
“Sister what's happening?” She whispered, trying to keep up.
I stopped briefly to scoop her in my arms running away from the place.
“I-its nothing.” I said through difficulty my lungs burning.
“It's not nothing. You look scared.” She mumbled, her arms wrapping around my neck.
I kicked her room open and placed her on the bed. Her arms refused to let go around my neck and I felt them tremble.
“Hey, hey. It's okay.” I whispered, tucking her hair behind her hair. “Everything's fine.”
She shook her head frantically. “Liar!”
“Daisy. Please let go-” before I could finish yells came from outside.
“Where's she?! Search her bedroom everywhere!”
Daisy flinched. I slowly pulled her arms from my neck and kissed her forehead.
“How about we play a little game? Stay right here and I'll be back to get you when the guards stop searching for me. Can you do that?” I whispered urgently darting from the door to her.
She slowly nodded, “Yes.”
“Thank you.” I kissed her forehead again and ran to the window knowing I'll get caught immediately I go through the door.
“I promise I'll get back for you.” I sniffled and opened the window, looked down and felt my stomach twist tightly.
The height was too much!
I could have jumped this if I had awaken my wolf.
“Check the sister's room.” Dread crawled through me when their voice sounded behind Daisy's door.
“Sister, run.” Her meek voice filled my ears. Gritting my teeth, I jumped down feeling the ground close quickly to meet me the cold wind brushing harshly against my ear.
“Ahhh!” I gritted my teeth in pain from the impact. My eyes widened as I feel the air almost knock out of me.
I struggled to my feet pain shooting from my leg. I looked down to see the right leg ankle have twisted.
“There she is! Get her!”
“Ahhh!” I screamed struggling to escape.
I must get out of here!
I burst out of the main road searching for any way of escape. However, just as I was about to turn and leave I froze when I felt a presence behind me.
“Got you.”
A loud bang blasted through my ears and my feet left the floor my body hitting the main road. I coughed feeling blood in my mouth, from the woods I saw someone standing with a gun aimed at me.
At the same time a car screech sounded in my ears.
Chapter 2 — At The Border
Stacey POV
Where was I?
I tried to move but my body said no.
My arms wouldn't cooperate. My legs felt distant, like they belonged to someone in another room. I managed to turn my head and got a mouthful of dirt for it and that's when I understood I'd collapsed.
But what had happened?
All I remembered was a blinding light from the car and I was running away, my heart in my throat as screams filled the forest behind me.
And then— I woke up here.
I heard footsteps before I saw them.
Boots. Several pairs of them. The sound of the weight of large bodies circling. I got one arm under me, pushed and made it halfway up before a hand gripped the back of my collar and hauled me the rest of the way. I choked and clawed at the grip on reflex but got nothing.
No— had they found me? The men my father wanted to sell me out to? I couldn't even bring myself to scream, my heart—
"Easy," a male voice grunted but he didn't mean it gently.
I got my feet under me suddenly and the world tilted. Five wolves, maybe six— I couldn't count straight, my vision was still blurring from exhaustion and cold. They were in human form but I could sense the wolf in them. And they were dangerous.
Stay silent. They could absolutely kill me if they wanted.
"Who are you?" the one holding me asked. "What pack?"
My mouth opened but nothing came out.
He shook me once, not hard but enough to rattle me. "Name!"
"Stacey ," I said and I hated the way my voice came out cracked. "My name is Stacey ."
"Pack?"
I looked at the trees. At the border markers I'd crossed in the dark without thinking about what was on the other side of them. At the sky going pink with early morning and understood that I had no good answer to that question. If I said Ashveil, I didn't know what that meant here. If I said nothing, that was worse.
What if they hated where I was from? Would they kill me?
So, I said nothing.
The grip tightened as someone else stepped forward from behind the group— a woman, tall, with shoulder-cut hair and a frown. She looked me over the way you look at something you found under a rock.
"Take her in," she ordered.
They didn't drag me and somehow, that surprised me.
They weren't from the men my father worked with. Then, who were they?
They held my arms, one on each side and walked me— marched me, really— through the trees and out onto a gravel path that led to a structure I couldn't take in all at once.
The building was large and intimidating as it loomed in front of us.
I tried to slow down when we reached the entrance, but one of the guards pressed forward without comment and I stumbled through the door.
Inside was stone, wood, cold air and the smell of a pack so thick it made me dizzy. This many wolves in one place. I'd grown up in Ashveil, which wasn't small but this was something different — it reeked of power. The kind I had never come across before.
Pack members watched us pass. Some from doorways, some just standing in the corridors, taking me in. The stranger being pulled along. I had never felt this vulnerable in my life.
I heard one woman murmur something to another as we passed— too low for me to catch the words, but the tone was clear. The kind of tone that means “Who is that and why is she here?”
I kept my eyes forward, my heart going too fast.
Oh goddess, I didn't want to die.
We stopped in front of a set of doors and almost immediately, I understood something about to happen that I was not ready for.
The woman— Dara as someone called her earlier — pushed the doors open and the hand on my arm guided me through and then let go.
I almost ran, but there was nowhere to run to.
The room was large. There was a chair at the far end— not a throne exactly, but large and positioned like one. And in it, a man.
My knees hit the floor before I'd decided to kneel. That's what dominance does when it was commanded by someone powerful — you don't choose to submit, your body just does it, and then you're on the ground trying to understand how you got there.
Slowly, I looked up.
He was younger than I'd expected. Dark hair fell over the harsh lines of his face. A single ruby ring sat on his index finger, the stone almost intimidating. My gaze flicked over him. If the devil had a face, it would probably look like this. Powerful and damning, but yet so ethereal that you couldn't look away.
The hall remained silent for a long time.
"Name," His voice was dark and low, echoing through the room and commanding obedience.
"Stacey ." My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to.
"Where are you from, Stacey ?"
I pressed my lips together and my hands were flat on the cold floor. I was kneeling in a room full of wolves I didn't know, in front of a man whose territory I'd trespassed on and the honest answer to that question was a name that might get me handed straight back to what I'd run from.
And that wasn't something I could afford.
"I asked you a question."
"I know," I said. "I'm—" My voice broke and I hated it. I hated it so much. "I'm from the north. I was travelling and I got lost."
Silence.
"You were travelling," he said, and his tone didn't change, which was somehow worse. "Alone. At night. To the border."
I didn't answer.
The guard to my left— not Dara, a male, big and impatient — shifted and I felt the movement before it even happened, the intention of a knee to my back, a correction, a reminder of where I was and who was asking—
"Enough." The man on the chair raised a hand and the guard hesitated, stepping back.
My breath came out shaky and I hadn't realized I'd been holding it.
I looked up at the man in the chair again and he was looking back at me. That was when something happened.
There was a low pull. Dull but present in my chest.
Oh goddess.
I immediately looked away, my heart racing. If he had felt it too, his expression didn't change in the slightest.
"I ask again. What is your pack?" he said.
"I don't have one," I forced the words out. "Not anymore."
The silence stretched between us, and I thought he would order the guards to beat me, but then, very quietly, he said, "Take her somewhere she can sleep. We'll continue this later."
I didn't understand why I was still breathing. I didn't understand why he'd stopped the guard. I didn't understand any of it.
They helped me up off the floor and walked me out of the room and I didn't look back, but my body still knew exactly where he was.
The thought almost made me cry because I knew what it was. I had heard stories of how it was supposed to feel. But nothing could have prepared me for the real thing.
A mate bond.
Chapter 3 — Fear Of The Unknown
Stacey POV
The room they put me in had a bed.
Honestly, I expected a cell. Not this.
I stood inside the door for probably a full minute before I could make myself go near it. A real bed too, it was narrow, wood-framed, with blankets that looked worn-soft and a pillow that smelled faintly of jasmine.
The floor was stone and the window was small. Definitely not something I could squeeze through. There was nothing else in the room except a wooden chair, a washbasin, and a candle on the sill that wasn't lit.
It was one of the least threatening room I'd ever been in but I still couldn't stop shaking.
I sat on the edge of the bed because my legs were trembling and I put my hands on my knees before taking a deep breath.
Outside the window there was a glimpse of the sky going from gray to white, early morning fully arrived now, and I could hear the muffled sounds of a pack estate fully waking up— movement, voices and something that smelled like food from somewhere far away.
Fuck.
I hadn't eaten since yesterday morning.
I lay back on the bed, still in my dirty clothes, and stared at the ceiling while trying to think clearly.
Memories came crashing back and tears stung my eyes.
I had run from Ashveil in the middle of the night with nothing. No pack, zero supplies, no plan beyond “get out get out get out,” repeating over and over in my head.
Now, I'd crossed a border I hadn't been paying attention to. I'd collapsed in foreign territory and been brought before an Alpha who had every right to throw me out or worse. But instead he'd asked me questions in a flat but calm voice and even stopped a guard from putting his knee in my back before he sent me here to rest.
What did they want with me? I had never been in another person's pack.
My father would have told me, a week ago, that Alphas outside Ashveil were dangerous. That the world outside was unstable, hostile, that I was lucky to have a pack at all. That he was protecting me.
He had always been very specific about what he was protecting me from. He had never been specific about what he was protecting me for.
He was just… Training me so he could give me away. I closed my eyes and I saw his face— the face I knew, the one that smiled at dinner and called me his daughter— and then I thought about the man I saw yesterday. The one who said he would sell me off in two days. The one who sold off women like they were cattle. He watched them kill that woman.
Oh fuck.
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes to stop the tears. I wasn't going to do this now. I wasn't going to come apart in a strange room in a strange pack's house when I didn't even know if I was a prisoner or a guest or something else entirely.
Then, I heard footsteps in the corridor and I sat up fast.
The door opened— not the guards, this time. A girl. She was young, maybe a year or two younger than me. She was carrying a tray and she kept her eyes down as she came in, setting the tray on the wooden chair because that was the only surface available, then she stood with her hands clasped in front of her, looking at a point somewhere past my shoulder.
"Food," she informed me, then, like she'd remembered something, "Alpha King's orders."
I looked at the tray.
Bread. Something hot in a bowl that seemed to be soup. And a cup of water.
"Thank you," I finally croaked.
“I'm Lise.” She looked at me for just a second, then back to the wall. "I'll come back for the tray," she said before leaving.
For a long while, I stared at it, wondering if it was poisoned. But finally, I decided to just eat it. I ate because the rational part of my brain that was still operational understood I needed to. I was starved.
I was on the last of the bread when the door opened again.
But this time it wasn't Lise.
It was another girl— older, or at least she carried herself older, with a frown to her mouth. The look on her face immediately told me she had decided something about me and it wasn't favorable.
She was carrying a folded set of clothes, as she walked in without a word, crossed the room, and dropped them on the end of the bed.
Dropped them. Didn't hand them to me. Dropped them the way you drop something you don't want to be touching.
Oh.
I looked at the clothes, a quizzical look on my face, then back at her.
"You're supposed to change," she tilted her, her tone showing she'd rather be anywhere but here with me. "You smell like an outsider."
"I am an outsider," I pointed out.
A smirk pulled at her lips. "Yes," she shrugged. "You are." And then she walked out and left the door open behind her.
I stared at the door for a moment. Then I picked up the clothes. It was plain, functional and somehow… My size. I changed, because I was dirty and cold and it felt good to do so.
*******
No one else came and I don't know when I slept but I did.
I woke up to dark outside the window and a lit candle on the sill— Lise must have come back while I was out, because I hadn't lit it and it was burning. I lay still and listened to the estate settling around me. Different sounds than Ashveil. The distant howling I heard made my chest feel tight.
I grew up in a pack. I knew pack-sound in my bones. It still felt foreign here because it wasn't mine.
I thought about the Alpha. The king. Whatever he was. He'd stopped the guard without raising his voice and without moving. Just two syllables and the man went still.
That man was powerful. He didn’t seem cruel but he was… Intimidating.
Mate bond.
He had to have felt it too. There was no way. So what exactly was he going to do with me?
I didn't want to think about what that could mean for me. Instead, I sat up, wrapped the blanket around my shoulders, looked at the candle burning in the window and tried very hard to think about other things instead. What I knew. What I didn't know. What was going to happen next.
What I knew was that I was alive. I was unharmed, mostly. I had food, a room and I had not been handed back to my father.
What I didn't know? everything else.
What was going to happen? He would ask me again. The quiet man in the chair. He would ask and I would have to decide what to tell him, and I would have to decide it before he got to a point where patience ran out.
Somehow, I knew I wouldn't like what would happen if his patience ran out.
I pulled the blanket tighter over myself.
Tomorrow, maybe I'd get some answers. And answer some questions. If I was still alive.
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