Page 7 of Dark Sold Mate

He was one of them. He was one of the monsters who purchased human women.

Silas Weston, the golden boy of the pack, was here, buying slaves.

This new piece of information shouldn’t hurt after eight years. It shouldn't have mattered. But it did.

Someone else bid. Elle could barely hear through the ringing in her ears.

“A hundred thousand,” Silas countered.

The warehouse fell silent.

Something within Elle died as she stared at him from across the room. Whatever little hope she had of him, to believe that he could have been redeemed—the small part of her that hung on to who he was before he started to torment her—broke.

“Sold,” the auctioneer said.

No. No, no, no.

Silas moved toward the stage. As he got closer, Elle wanted to run away. She felt like doing anything but standing here and waiting for him to claim what he had bought. But one of the handlers took her down the stage to meet him.

Elle could see that he had not changed much. He was still devastatingly handsome, and he radiated the same confidence that drew people to him.

And he was still the same person who had ruined her life.

“Hello, Elle,” he said quietly.

Her throat tightened with eight years of suppressed pain and grief. But underneath that was a warmth in her heart that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with her body, which had now apparently decided that it was time to register a pull that she had never known before.

It was not the old girlhood pangs for someone she had wished to look at her with love. It was something else. Something that was more than memory.

She crushed it immediately. Adrenaline, she told herself. Shock. Her body was acting weird. She had been locked in a cage for a couple of days, and now she had just been sold at an auction, so her brain was short-circuiting. Elle kept her chin up and glared at him.

“You,” she breathed.

The single word carried everything she couldn't say. Every wound he'd inflicted. The first year in the human world where she cried herself to sleep. All those moments she had strived to survive as he lived comfortably.

And here he was, showing that he was the monster she had always thought he was.

She wasn't only surprised by the fact that someone had bid for her at this auction.

It was the fact that the one who bought her was the same person who had arranged her exile and ruined her life.

Chapter 3 - Silas

The rage coursing through Silas’ veins could not be compared with anything he had ever felt. Violent images flashed through his mind.

What would have happened had he not been here? What would her buyer have done to her?

His fingers twitched, eager to tear all the shifters in this warehouse to pieces. The auctioneer. The handlers. The buyers who bid on her.

But he couldn't. Not here.

So Silas put a lid over his anger, despite his wolf's protest. Then he turned to the one thing that mattered. Getting Elle to safety.

“We must go,” he said.

Elle looked at him with those vengeful dark brown eyes, and Silas remembered all the cruel words he spoke to her. But there was no time to explain or even think about anything but pulling her out of this nightmare.

He reached for her arm. Elle jerked back.