Devany

They gave me one week. Long enough for the worst of the bruises to fade. Beckett didn't enter my room again, though several times I heard his voice drift through the door. It was baffling how attuned I was to him in such a short amount of time, or maybe it was because the velvety timbre of his voice was impossible to mistake for anyone else.

On day eight, an older woman entered the room and commanded me to follow her. I considered refusing for all of thirty seconds, but I'd spent the last seven days trying to figure out how to escape this mess. The answer wasn't within these four walls.

Dozens of people–wolves, I corrected–wandered about the manor. None of them spoke to us as we passed, but more than a few took a second look. Their curiosity was ill disguised. Most of them had probably heard of the rare find of a packless she-wolf who couldn't shift.

That was a sentence I never imagined saying. Me. A wolf. As I was washed and groomed and made up within an inch of my life in possibly the most luxurious bathroom I'd ever seen, I stared at my freshly scrubbed hands, searching for some hint I wasn't entirely human.

There was nothing there.

"You have such beautiful hair," the man styling my hair said, running his fingers through the lavender strands. "I can see the silver roots. Why would you cover that?"

"Why wouldn't I? I'm in my twenties. I don't care if it was trendy for a while."

He clicked his tongue against his teeth. "Your Alpha will probably demand you wear the natural color. Silver hair is highly valued among wolves. Some say it ties you to the ro–"

The woman painting my nails snapped her head up and barked out a warning. "Chesney, focus on your task. We have twenty minutes before she's due at auction."

"Wait. An auction? Today?" I flinched so hard the nail tech dragged red paint over my fingers.

"Damn it." She cleaned up her mess and fixed angry green eyes on me. "Did you think we were dressing you up to go back to your bedroom?"

Afraid of irritating the woman farther and angry that she scared me, I held as still as possible while they finished. They took me into another bedroom and handed me off to another man, who thrust a handful of black and silver material at me.

"Put that on."

I untangled the item and gasped. "Absolutely not."

"Look, hon. I'm being nice in letting you dress yourself. You won't be the first girl I've had to force into an outfit, so make a good choice."

"What the hell kind of people are you?" I muttered, stepping away and turning my back to him. He growled and stepped outside. If I hadn't seen other women snap at the hairstylist, I might have thought all she-wolves were forced to live in fear and submission.

"Now was that so bad?" he asked when he returned.

Clear appreciation filled his eyes as he traced them over my body. The black leather top was styled like a corset, but made so the laces in the front did not bring both sides together, leaving a wide swath of skin visible. Including a generous amount of cleavage that felt like it was pushed up to my chin.

The bottoms were little more than sparkly underwear, though some might have the audacity to say they were shorts. Cut high enough that my ass was falling out, I couldn't stop tugging them down while the man fumbled through a bag sitting on the fourposter bed.

He pulled a strip of studded black leather out and snapped it around my neck. "There. You're perfection."

"You just putting a fucking collar on me," I said, pressing my fingertips against the choker.

A hint of pity crossed the man's grizzled face. "Best to get used to that feeling, hon."

He opened the door, and once again I found myself escorted through the manor by the severe little woman who'd collected me from my bedroom. If I thought I'd earned looks before, I was wrong. Every man and woman stopped in their tracks when I passed, and it occurred to me then if I had the long canines of a wolf right now, I'd gnash them at everyone in warning.

We walked outside. The sun had long since set, so I could make out very little about my surroundings. Other than the lawn, it was large and well-kept. She nudged me toward a gravel path, and for a while, there was nothing but the sound of our footsteps crunching against stone. Overhead, without a moon to compete with, the stars shone brighter than I'd ever seen, and I thought I might like to live out here in the peace and quiet. If not for the sexist wolves.

Out of the darkness, a softly lit building appeared, and the raucous laughter of men shattered the silence. Scents of cigar smoke and meat tainted the air and curdled my stomach. They must be the Alphas waiting to claim a prize.

"In here." She opened a door at the back of the building. "You will wait with the others until it is your turn."

"The others?"

The door slammed shut after she pushed me inside. The others were a group of five women, all dressed in outfits like mine. Each one with a collar around their neck. Three of them ignored me completely, returning to their conversation, but the two women sitting against the far wall motioned me over.

"Hello," I mumbled as I approached.

"Why so meek, little wolf?" The woman in yellow asked me, patting the concrete floor beside her. Kohl lined her dark eyes, and her long, thick hair was pulled back to accentuate her high, bronzed cheekbones. "I'm Jaya."

"Devany."

"We don't bite," her companion added. Her corset was red, but they had given her leather pants instead of shorts. I didn't think they were much better than shorts, as they were so tight and nearly the same shade as her shimmering black skin, making it look like she wore nothing.

"Are you both she-wolves?" I asked, confused by their presence. They had led me to believe that I was a rarity.

The women shared a look. Jaya fiddled with the ends of her hair. "We all are. You must be the packless girl."

"Ugh, don't call her that. It's so rude. I'm Kiara."

"But it's true."

"Wait," I interjected into their bickering. "Why are you here if you're not packless?"

"We're not packless, but we can't shift," Kiara said.

Jaya held up her hand as I opened my mouth. "We can't shift because our pack leaders determined we wouldn't survive the transition. I'm diabetic, and Kiara had leukemia when she was ten. Unfortunately, you don't get the super healing and immune systems of full-blown wolves until you shift, but if you're sickly, you never get to shift."

The three women who had ignored me stopped talking, and from the way they angled their bodies, I could tell they were eavesdropping. I didn't care. Ignorance was nothing to be ashamed of. Their world was new to me.

"But why would you choose to be auctioned?"

"Oh, lord. That's more than we have time for," Kiara said, as a door opened. "It's getting started."

The same woman was back. She swept her eyes over the group, then pointed at the smallest girl in the room. A little blonde in a green corset.

"Come. The auction will begin with you."

a/n- Hope you're enjoying the story so far. Check out the images below to see the auction outfits and meet the girls. 

Devany

Kiara

Jaya