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The limo slows. “Mr. Wentworth.” The driver’s voice is crisp and clear through the intercom that connects the back seat from the front. “We are approaching the gate.”
Lawrence glances at the servant. “The hood.”
The hood?
I’m sitting passively in the seat beside Lawrence, an order to keep still holding me immobile. So all I can do is watch as the servant picks up a folded white piece of material from the seat beside her and shuffles toward me.
My world turns white as I’m blinded by the white hood she slipped over my head. I might not be able to see a thing, but I can hear.
A gate is swinging open. Tires crunch over gravel as the car moves forward, makes a winding turn, and then slides smoothly to a stop.
Not knowing what is happening makes panic eat at my belly.
But I don’t fight and I don’t tug the hood over my head. My alpha has given me a direct order. I sit in quiet panic, my heart smashing against my chest, with no idea why he would need to blind me like this. What doesn’t he want me to see?
And then I’m sure I hear something.
I strain to listen.
Is that gravel crunching again? Maybe a metallic whir? Or am I imagining the low hum of a male voice just outside the limo?
All sound cuts off again. It doesn’t seem to matter that I’m straining every muscle in my body to listen. It’s like sitting in a black hole.
My door swings open so suddenly I nearly have a heart attack, though it’s not nearly as much of a shock as when hard hands grip my arm and drag me up from the car.
I’m standing on gravel, the cold, small stones digging into the soles of my bare feet.
The man holding me says, “Refreshments are being served in the red room, Mr. Wentworth. I will ready her for the auction.”
Auction?
“Excellent.” Leather squeaks, more gravel crunches, and it sounds like Lawrence is moving away. To this red room for refreshments, apparently.
I don’t want Lawrence anywhere near me ever again, but my mind seizes on the wordauction, and it’s making me wish he would come back.
Why do I need to be made ready? And what is it about this auction that’s creating such a deep sense of foreboding in me?
The farther Lawrence moves away, the easier it is to shrug off his order to keep still and quiet. The man with the painful grip on my right arm drags me along as Lawrence’s order loses its potency. That’s when I start to struggle.
I reach for the hood over my head. A hand seizes my wrist in a merciless grip, holding on as I’m dragged over gravel and to a place with cold, concrete floors.
His leg brushes my hip. Now I know exactly where he is in relation to me, I prepare to twist away, kick him, and run, when he suddenly shoves me.
I cry out when my back slaps against a cold wall. I’m still gasping for breath when someone rips the hood off my head, and I recoil, blinking rapidly from the bright overhead lights that blind me.
When I refocus, I’m in a square white room so clinical that for a second, I wonder if I’m in a hospital waiting room. There are no chairs. The only thing in this stark window-less space is a plain blond man with brown-black eyes dressed in white with a bland expression stamped across his face. A beta.
And then he turns around with the white hood in his hand. Standing directly behind him, my eyes clash with a slight blonde woman also wearing white carrying a small silver tray. Her lack of pheromones makes it clear she’s also a beta.
An open door on my right paints the way to escape, and I twist toward it, managing one step before something sharp and cold makes me cry out.
As I clap my hand over my stinging right arm, the pale, bland man turns from me to place something that clatters on the woman’s small silver tray. Which is when I realize I should have paid more attention to what was on her tray.
An empty syringe.
Why do I have a feeling the syringe wasn’t empty a second ago?
“What was that?” My voice is sharp with panic as my eyes bounce between the silent man and woman observing me. “What did you give me?”
