Page 7 of Dark Auctioned Mate

He adjusted his jacket in the mirror of the rented apartment, checked the concealed recorder clipped to the inside lining of his left sleeve, and went over the inventory in his head. Recording device, scent masker, clean cash, and a cover identity thin enough to hold for one evening and built specifically not to be examined too closely. He was a buyer. A new one, the kind with money and no particular history, which was the profile that attracted the least scrutiny because the operation preferred cash over background checks.

He had never done this on his own before. Especially while his brothers were miles away. Silas was in the east, following a financial thread that Rael had flagged weeks ago. Javi was somewhere north, doing what Javi did, which was operate in a state of barely contained energy that somehow produced results anyway. Neither of them knew exactly where he was tonight, which was standard. They shared information at extraction points, not in the field. It was cleaner that way. If one of them got made, the others weren’t compromised.

He left the apartment at nine-fifteen and walked the six blocks to the venue.

***

The warehouse had been dressed up for the occasion. The outside still looked like nothing—which was the point, but inside, the space had been organized in a way that told Rael this wasn’t their first event here. Rows of folding chairs arranged in a clean arc faced a raised platform; lighting was rigged to the ceiling in a way that would illuminate the stage and leave the audience in relative shadow. Two security posts—one at the main entrance, one at a side door that led to what he clocked as the holding area. All with no cameras. They believed in privacy. He almost scoffed at that. Of course.

He found a seat in the third row from the back, left side, which gave him a good view of the stage and the secondary exit.

The crowd was arriving individually or in pairs. He placed the number at thirty-eight, possibly forty, by the time it started. Predominantly male. Predominantly shifters…

He committed faces to his memory the way he always did, building the reference file he’d reconstruct in detail later. His contact had told him that the top dogs rarely attended in person—that they used intermediaries at the venue level and only moved visibly when something needed to be managed. So, he wasn’t looking for them tonight. He was looking for the ones at the bottom of the ladder—the handlers, the logistics people, the ones who knew the infrastructure.

The side door opened at nine forty-seven, and the handlers came through.

Three of them. The first one scanned the room—left to right, threat-first, exit-second, which meant that he was duly trained. The second had a huge mole on the right side of his face. While the third stayed near the door.

The auctioneer appeared on the stage at ten, and the room went quiet, thrumming with energy.

The first woman came through the side door at a few minutes past ten. Rael centered all of his attention on the stage. He could not afford to miss anything. Him looking away wouldn’t help anyone. Sentiment in the field cost people their lives and their missions. But his hands, resting on his thighs, pressed flat. The woman on the stage was young—early twenties, maybe less, with red-rimmed eyes and a lost and dejected look. The number went up, and she was bought in seconds. His jaw clenched as he watched the buyer stand up to claim her.

Then came the second, the third, and the fourth. Each face, each number, each buyer. The crowd was full of people who treated this like business. That was the most disturbing thing about it—the normalcy of the transactions, the brisk efficiency of the whole proceeding, and the way the handlers moved the women off stage like they were cattle going to the slaughterhouse. It was hard not to let it all crawl under his skin, but he had to maintain his cool if he was ever going to gain any information.

“Our final item of the evening,” the auctioneer announced with a big-ass, creepy smile.

The side door opened, and for about ten seconds, Rael’s brain did something it almost never did. It stopped. Long curly dark hair was all he saw at first. Then, sharp grey eyes looking into the crowd. She was wearing a loose-fitting floral dress that was torn in certain places.

Rael’s wolf, which had been quiet all evening under the weight of the mission and the scent-masker, suddenly surged forward so hard and so fast that Rael’s hands pressed into his thighs and his back teeth locked together. “Mine,” it growled. Any suspicions he had were immediately confirmed. Alanis was his mate, and she was on a stage at a trafficking auction, bound at the wrists, about to be sold. He glanced at the wolf shifter two seats away, leering at her.

No. Not him, not any of them, not this room, not tonight, not ever. He inhaled sharply, looking around the warehouse again. There were thirty-eight buyers, three handlers, and security at two points. He had no backup. His brothers were in different cities. If he moved now, he moved alone and against a room full of shifters in a venue they controlled. But she was his mate, and there was no way he left this building without her.

The bidding started.

Rael watched the wolf shifter’s hand go up and felt something within himself. It wasn’t exactly anger. It was deeper than that. It was clarity. Fuck being logical. She was not going with the bear shifter. She was not going with anyone but him in this room.

He watched her face while the numbers climbed. She was scanning the crowd, and then they found him.

She went absolutely still.

He saw the exact moment she recognized him. He held her gaze and raised his hand. “One hundred thousand.”

The room went quiet. The bear shifter turned to look at him. Several people in the rows ahead did the same. The auctioneer looked completely shell-shocked but quickly recovered.

“Well, uh, one hundred thousand. Going—”

Nobody made a move, and the gavel came down thrice

Rael stood and moved toward the stage, the crowd parting for him. One of the handlers led him to a corner of the warehouse with a tablet. Rael transferred the money from an untraceable account in under a minute. Then looked at the stage as the other handler led Alanis to him.

He watched her jaw set, staring at him with unbridled anger. He knew she had a lot to say, so he gently placed his hand at the small of her back to guide her toward the exit.

Chapter 4 - Alanis

The cable tie bit into her wrists with every movement, but Alanis tried not to dwell on it, especially since she needed to focus.

She was backstage, if you could call it that. It was a sectioned-off area behind a particleboard partition, lit by two bare bulbs, smelling of concrete and musky too. Seven other women were in here with her.