Page 13 of Dark Auctioned Mate

More murmurs and finally the crowd dispersed slowly.

Rael touched her arm briefly. "Come on." He led her toward a house at the north edge of the cleared space. Alanis didn't speak until the door closed behind them.

Then she turned around.

"Your pack," she started, "is going to be a problem."

Rael set his keys on the table near the door. "I'll deal with the pack."

"I'm not talking about you dealing with them. I'm talking about the fact that they've already made up their minds about me. I know how this works. First, they give me looks, then it's comments, then it's something more direct, and at no point does anyone who isn't on the receiving end notice it's happening. I won't be bullied. Not by them, not by anyone."

"Alanis,” he stepped forward, his brows furrowed. “I will never allow that to happen to you.”

"But you're also not in a position to stop it. You can tell them I am your mate, and you can tell them to treat me with respect, but you can't make people who have decided I'm a liability change their minds because you said so. That's not how it works. I know that because I've seen it, and if you're honest with yourself, you know it too."

He was quiet for a moment. Then: "You're right."

“What?” She did not expect that. She quite honestly expected him to tell her about his authority and how he planned to exercise it, which would have been the beginning of an argument she was prepared for.

"It won't change overnight," he said. "I know that. Hell, my brother has a human mate, and they all still haven’t completely warmed up to her after a couple of years, but they don’t know you.”

“And who am I?” She folded her arms. "A woman who can't shift. Who appeared out of nowhere. Who you bought at a trafficking auction.” She eyed him warily. "What exactly is the version of that story that ends with them deciding I'm worth their respect."

He didn't answer immediately. Rael looked like the person who was used to having a solution to every problem, and her—his current problem didn’t exactly have a clean solution.

Good. She wanted him to sit in it.

She also wanted him, while he sat in it, to think. The situation needed critical thinking. She had already established that she was alone in unfamiliar territory and no contact with the Lumen. What if, and this was a crazy thought, but what if Rael was in on the trafficking network. What if he were also part of an organization like the Lumen, whose sole mission is to build trust with their members first. It was not the most likely explanation for everything she'd witnessed tonight. But she needed something to hold on to.

She would stay. She would watch. She would maintain the cover of a woman who'd been pulled out of a trafficking auction and had no resources of her own, because that cover gave her access and time and the advantage of being underestimated. She would gather enough information about Rael, his pack, and his operation, just to be certain.

And if she needed to escape, she would escape. She looked at him. He was leaning against the far wall with his arms crossed, watching her the same way he did in the bar, which she found less irritating now than she would have preferred. He was still infuriatingly good-looking. The way the lighting in the house highlighted his eyes distracted her. Same as his annoyingly broad shoulders.

She cleared her throat and asked, “Where am I sleeping?”

He pushed off the wall and moved toward the stairs. "I'll show you."

She followed him up and took a mental inventory of the house as she went—exits, windows, floor plan, the location of the main door relative to the staircase. She would not need to use any of it, probably. But she took the inventory anyway, because that was how she had stayed alive this long.

He opened a door at the end of the upstairs hall. A room—bed, window, dresser, bathroom through the far door. Clean and spare, like the rest of the house.

"There are clothes in the dresser," he said. "They'll be too big, but they're clean."

"Fine."

He looked at her for a moment in the doorway, and she stared right back at him.

"I know you don't trust me yet.”

“No shit.”

“But I will try to change that. "Goodnight, Alanis."

He pulled the door closed, leaving her standing in the middle of the room, with the bond mark on her shoulder blade throbbing, listening to his footsteps move down the hall.

Chapter 7 - Rael

Rael liked to have his coffee at six in the morning. He liked it with one cube of sugar and two drops of milk. He was usually up by five thirty a.m., went on a quick run, showered, and had his usual morning coffee. He'd had this routine for as long as he'd lived alone, which was the entirety of his adult life, and he liked it. But since Alanis started living in his house at his pack, things had changed.