Page 23 of Sold to Three Alpha Kings

“Ashwick.” The word comes out flat, bitter. “It’s a small village, western edge of Snowpeak’s territory. Not that it matters. Nobody there will miss me anyway.” There’s sadness and a hint of anger in her voice.

“Not even your family?”

Her brows arch, and a dismissive scoff falls off of her lips. “They were the ones who sold me to those traders.”

I feel it deep in my bones; anger. I don’t know why I’m so affected, but it makes my jaw tighten.

She continues, “My stepbrother’s Omega got sold first. They needed a replacement, and I was the only spare body in the house nobody valued enough to keep.” Her voice doesn’t waver on it, which somehow makes it worse to hear.

I listen in silence.

“They drugged me. Forced pills down my throat and drenched me in fake pheromones until I smelled close enough to the real thing to fool men who don’t know any better. Then they handed me over for coin and let their favorite child keep his intended.”

I feel sorry for her, genuinely. She got rejected by her own family and now by her fated mates as well. It must be rough.

“You don’t have to believe me,” she says after a beat. “I’m used to people not doing so anyway.”

A pause.

“But why would I lie? You’re already planning to kill me. What would a lie even buy me at this point?”

What’s in her voice is exhaustion. And I recognize it because I’ve worn it myself often enough, managing two men who’d rather destabilize the region with their fights than admit they need each other.

I don’t answer her question. Instead I let the silence sit for a moment. Underneath it, faint but undeniable, I catch it again—that thread of scent from the hall. Thinner here, dulled by exhaustion and cold stone, but present.

It’s nothing like the artificial perfume the traders—rather, her family slathered on her. This is different. Warmer. Real, in a way I have no framework for explaining.

“The drugs you were given,” I say slowly. “They can act as an aphrodisiac. On a wolf, they’d force something close to heat. I understand that part.” I study her face. “What I don’t understand is why you’d still be giving off a scent, hours later, when whatever they forced into you should have burned through your system by now.”

She frowns, genuinely confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have a scent. I’ve never had one. I’m not an Omega. That’s the whole reason my family force-fed me those pills in the first place.”

“There’s something there now.”

I watch that land on her, watch the confusion deepen into something closer to fear. “That’s not possible.”

“I’d like to test something, if you’ll allow it.”

Her hands curl tighter around her knees. “Do I have a choice?”

“You do, actually. I’d rather you agree than force it.” I mean that.

I don’t examine too closely why I mean it, or why it matters to me that she consents to this rather than simply enduring it the way she’s clearly braced to endure everything else tonight.

After a moment, she gives one small, wary nod.

I let a thread of my pheromones loose. Not the wall of force I used earlier in the hall, tangled up with Chris and Wayne’s. Just my own, deliberate and controlled, aimed at her the way I’d test any Omega’s responsiveness.

Her reaction is instant.

Her breath catches. Her spine straightens, some buried instinct pulling her upright before her conscious mind seems to catch up to what her body’s doing.

Color floods into her face, and for a moment her eyes go glassy, unfocused, the exact response I’d expect from an Omega caught by an Alpha’s dominant scent.

This is definitely heat. She’s in heat.

She makes a small, strangled sound and presses a hand to her chest like she’s trying to physically hold something in place. “What—what did you just do to me?”

“I confirmed something.” I keep my voice steady, though my pulse hasn’t been steady since the moment I walked into this cell. “You reacted to that the way an Omega reacts. Not the way a beta would. Not the way anyone shiftless should.”