Page 11 of Sold to Three Alpha Kings

The three women beside me—Omegas, real ones—have gone quiet, watching me with a wariness I don’t understand.

One of them leans close enough to whisper. “You don’t smell right.”

If she can tell that something’s off about me, how come those dummies are so clueless? How come they can’t detect that my family tricked them?

My tongue feels too thick for my own mouth, my thoughts arriving a full second behind everything happening around me. It feels like I’m hearing the world through water.

We’re pulled out into daylight so bright it hurts, and my knees nearly buckle the second my feet hit the ground.

A trader’s hand closes around my arm to keep me upright, not out of kindness, of course, just keeping the merchandise moving.

I hate him for it. I hate all of them, the whole chain of hands that passed me from one set of owners to the next without once asking what I wanted.

My only consolation in all this madness is that my money pouch is still there. I feel it against my hip through the fabric of my skirt, and some small, stubborn part of my mind fixes on it like a lifeline. Still there. Still mine.

Whatever happens next, they haven’t found it, haven’t taken it, haven’t managed to strip me of the one thing I built with my own two hands over months of aching backs and split knuckles.

When the drug wears off, when I can string two clear thoughts together again, I will find a way out of this. I’ll buy my way free if I have to. How hard can it be to talk my way past men who only care about coin?

I just need this fog to lift first.

It doesn’t lift. If anything, the world tilts worse the longer we stand there, herded into a line with a dozen other women, all of us facing something I can’t yet make sense of through the haze. I just know it’s a wide stone square with banners in colors I don’t recognize.

Ahead of the line is an entrance coated in golden with embroidery that seems like royalty.

“Come on, let’s go,” one of the traders growls, pulling me along with him.

He and his companions lead me to the front of the line, shouting about me being in heat. There’s some pushback, but then we’re let through. I guess they must have paid to cut in line. It’s not until we reach the giant doors that I realize where we are.

I also hear two girls whispering about how they wish to be picked as the Kings’ shared mate. That’s when it hit me just how terrible things are about to get for me.

Oh, no. This is bad. This is really bad.

These people brought me to the palace—before the three Alpha Kings, presenting me as something I’m not. An Omega.

The Alpha Kings aren’t dumb. They’ll know. This fake heat and fake pheromones won’t be able to deceive them. They’ll see right through the deception. And they might have us all killed.

No, no, no, no, no. Panic sets in.

I’m standing at the entrance, behind three other girls, meaning in no time, I’ll be presented before the Kings. My pulse is racing, and my heart is beating fast. I try to calm myself, but fear has already sunk deep into my bones.

I lift my head, managing to assess the three Alpha Kings seated on their magnificent thrones.

The one in the center is the kind of beautiful that doesn’t invite you closer—it warns you off. White-blond hair, a dark expression, and a pair of ice-colored eyes—the kind that’s intense enough to make anyone shit their pants.

There’s something in the stillness of him that’s worse than anger. Something very dangerous.

To his right stands a man built like more of a beast than a man. He’s not still at all. He shifts his weight, rolls one shoulder, glances toward the line of us with open curiosity, like we’re mild entertainment, not possible brides.

He has this looseness to him that the other one lacks. He’s slightly taller with black hair and green eyes.

And on the left—the last one is younger than the other two, or looks it. His blond hair glows as it catches the light, amber eyes moving over the line of women with none of the boredom or menace of his companions.

He looks tired in a way I recognize but can’t really explain. When his gaze reaches me, it doesn’t slide past the way it did with the others. It stops. Just for a moment. Long enough that the burning under my skin flares hotter, sharp enough to make me suck in a breath.

I don’t understand it. But I feel something strange rising inside me.

Why’s he looking at me like that?