Page 16 of Dark Auctioned Mate

***

The pack's land was larger than it had appeared from the house. They walked along the eastern edge with Sara providing commentary and Elle occasionally adding details that were more specific and more useful, and Alanis listened to both while building her own picture.

"Silas expanded the territory three years ago," Sara said, gesturing at the tree line that marked the northern border. "When he took over from our father. One of the first things he did, actually—started negotiating with the adjacent packs almost immediately. Our father had.... different values about a lot of things. Silas has been undoing some of them."

"Like the no-outsiders rule," Alanis said.

"Among others." Sara looked at her. "You've already heard about that."

"I was introduced to the pack last week. The reception was informative."

Elle, walking on Alanis's other side, snorted. "Silas's father made a law that prohibited relationships with anyone outside the pack. Humans especially." She paused. "I know what that kind of reception feels like. For what it's worth."

Alanis looked at her. "You're human."

"Yes."

"And Silas's mate."

"Yes." Elle met her gaze evenly. "He pulled me out of a trafficking auction a couple of years ago. Same network you were in." A pause. "I didn't ask to be rescued either."

Alanis held her gaze for a moment. "How long did it take," she asked, "before you trusted him?”

"Longer than I would have wanted.”

They continued walking, and Sara talked about the pack layout and fished for information on how Alanis was doing. Alanis answered a few of her questions and redirected what she wasn’t comfortable with yet. By the time they turned back toward the house, she'd been out here for nearly two hours.

She'd also learned, between Sara's commentary and Elle's additions, what the Weston pack had been doing for the past year—the training, the parallel missions, the financial investigation Rael was running, the operational infrastructure they'd built to find and dismantle a network that was destroying their reputation along with the lives of the women it trafficked and a ball of guilt lodged itself in her throat.

She had information they needed. She had eight years of organizational knowledge, field intelligence on the network, contact infrastructure that could accelerate what they were doing by months. She had seen Rael’s files and said nothing to help. Her reasoning was that she did not know him well enough yet. She had people at the Lumen who were expecting her to reach out.

But those reasons were looking smaller in hindsight now. She walked back into the house, went upstairs, sat on the edge of the bed, and thought about the conversation she had with Elle and Sara. Those seven women were somewhere safe right now because Rael had gone back into that building.

She thought about Deva, who offered her a place to go in the middle of the night at a gas station. She also thought about how she'd felt in the car on the drive here, how she was torn between running away or staying.

“Fuck!” Alanis groaned loudly, laying back on the bed. “I am so fucked.”

***

The pack's behavior was more subtle than the Caldwell pack was, which made it more insidious rather than less.

It started the day after the Introduction to Rael’s family. She was in the kitchen in the morning, making coffee, when two women she hadn't been introduced to came in to speak to Rael—who was not there, which they'd have known if they'd looked—and one of them saw Alanis and said something to the other in a low voice that clearly wasn't low enough: “that’s the human he bought.”

She'd gone to observe the training yard that afternoon. She wanted to see the pack's capabilities and tactical patterns, which were useful regardless of what she decided to do next, and one of the older males had looked at her standing at the edge of the yard and said to the man beside him: “What's she going to do, watch? She can't even shift.”

She watched for another twenty minutes and left. Although she hated to admit it, Alanis felt lonely. Being in Rael’s pack reminded her of something she had felt for sixteen years before she ran away from it. It reminded her of the feeling of being in a community that thought she was of no value.

This was why she had no plans of staying. Whatever the bond meant, whatever Rael's intentions were, whatever the truth was about the mate claim and the mission and all the rest—she could not build a life inside a community that had already decided she was less. She had done that once, and it had nearly destroyed her. She was not doing it again.

She went to bed and woke at three in the morning, feeling like her body was literally burning.

She didn’t move at first. She remained lying on her back, looking up at the ceiling for a couple of seconds, trying to determine whether she was dreaming, ill, or dying. Warmth was spreading across her body. It began in her stomach and branched out like an animal that had awakened in her body and was stretching.

Alanis swallowed and sat herself up on her elbows. No! she thought to herself. “No, no, no.”

She swung her legs out of bed, but when her feet hit the floor, her knees failed her. The room tilted a little. She held on to the dresser before she fell. Her heart was beating too quick.

A second wave struck, and it was stronger. She leaned forward and pressed her palm flat against her stomach, fingers digging in as though she might keep whatever it was there.