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PROLOGUE
Stacy
She’d been warned that the mate candidates would be naked, but it wasn’t until that first flash of pale, smooth skin, and the haunted eyes of the women standing up on the platform that Stacy really understood.
Karen, her team leader, laid a hand on her shoulder, gently squeezing. “Steady, agent. We went through this. Remember your training.”
Despite the cool calmness in Karen’s voice, Stacy’s heart hammered in her chest, her mouth suddenly dry.
She had imagined what she might find at the auction—there’d already been so much whispered rumor about whatactuallywent on at one—but the reality of it was both more mundane… and far more unsettling.
The mates were lined up shoulder-to-shoulder on a polished wood platform, overhead lights spraying a warm, incandescent illumination down upon them, highlighting and rendering in stark unflinching detail the naked forms of each of the trembling, frightened women who’d been collected for the auction.
The fact that Stacy and her team had brought one of those women here only made it worse.
The women ranged in age from eighteen up to the early forties. Fifteen in all, they were outnumbered at least ten to one by the group of tall, muscled, and very dangerous looking men crowding closer to the stage.
Karen indicated two folding chairs along one of the walls, and Stacy sat down, the metal cold against her ass through the thin fabric of her slacks. She gripped the steel edges of her seat, hoping it would hide the trembling of her fingers.
Standing off to the left side of the stage, a towering man in a gray, pin-striped suit pointed toward the group of waiting women. “Turn around.”
Faces grew suddenly paler as the group reluctantly did as they were told. One of the younger women, her silky brunette curls framing a blushing, but pretty face, burst into tears, her back hitching as she haltingly obeyed, displaying her round, plump buttocks to the assembled men.
Stacy remembered the girl’s name from the auction list: Connie Oliver, a community college student in Spokane—beforea team from the Fugitive Management Bureau had come for her.
At the sight of so many naked, vulnerable bottoms, a low murmuring rose from the gathered spectators, a few of them whispering to each other. Then the man in the striped suit called the first woman, a tall, statuesque redhead with lips the color of palest pink, beckoning her to come down… into the midst of the male throng.
Karen, seemingly unaffected, typed away on her phone, her earpiece dangling down onto the shoulder of her dark suit— “Agent Gray,” as they referred to the outfit. Standard issue charcoal suits—just like anything one might see in an office. Excepttheiroffice was the entire country, and rather than chasing down the quarter’s sales numbers, they chased down fugitives.
Don’t you mean victims?
It didn’t matter whatshecalled them—or felt about them—they were still the same thing. As soon as a mate was designated (she hated the term “fated mates” as it implied a sort of blame shifting on the part of the Wolf Nations), the unfortunate woman had one choice—to report, or not to report—when called for an auction.
When some decided to refuse—and a few always tried—or just plain disappeared, that’s when teams like Stacy’s were called in.
“How the hell are they all so…tall?” Stacy murmured, unable to look away from the spectacle taking place before them.
“I’ve never seen one under six foot two,” Karen replied, not taking her eyes from her phone. “Most of them are taller than that.”
They didn’t look that different from any other man. Taller, yes. Muscular—practically all of them, as far as she could see. Not an ounce of fat on any of them.
“Christ, it’s a bunch of Spartans,” Stacy said, rubbing a hand across her mouth, wishing she had a bottle of water handy to combat her suddenly parched tongue.
If only all your parts were dry.
She pushed that aside, not sure how to even unpack it, what it might mean.
Another woman was called down, her buoyant breasts swaying as she negotiated the stairs, her haunted gaze flicking from one waiting man to the next. Two males stepped from the crowd, each one taking her by an arm and leading her to one side of the stage. Several other men followed, at a distance. It was a custom at an auction. The agents called it “The Interview”—a sick joke.
One by one, they called down each woman to be paired with two, and sometimes three, hulking men, followed by a group of others. It was like predators sizing up their prey, culling the herd, isolating the most vulnerable, the most succulent.
Stacy shuddered at the ghastly metaphor.
Ironically, the last one remaining on the stage was little, frightened Connie Oliver, her weeping somehow even more heartbreaking as she stood all alone. When finally her name was called, rather than tottering down the risers, two lanky, strong men bounded up to the stage themselves, crowding her to the back of the platform. They stood between her and the waiting throng below, almost as if to shield the woman. A lump grew in Stacy’s throat as she watched Connie’s bright, overflowing eyes peer up at one of the men, then over to the next as they murmured to her.
Stacy looked away, unable to watch any more. She took a deep breath, glancing at Karen.
Her team lead was staring across the room, toward a group of men seated around one of the many tables.
