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“You’re pregnant,” I whisper, my hand tightening around the cage bar I’m using for support. The man in the hallway hit me hard, and I’m hoping my ringing, pounding head is the result of that slap and not the contents of the needle injected into me.
Her smile is bitter. “The alpha who kept me decided he’d rather not wait for me to give birth. He wants an omega in heat, not a pregnant one who won’t give him all that heat loving for another seven months.”
I stare at her in horror, and then I swallow hard. “Mine… mine wants an omega who can give him a baby.”
She sinks onto the pallet and draws her bare feet off the ground, wrapping her arms around her knees. “Then it looks like they’ll trade us. Better that than the open auction.”
Dread is heavy in my gut as I curl both hands around the cold cage bars. My head has stopped ringing, but I still need the support. Or I have a feeling I soon will. “Open auction?”
The man’s words outside ring in my head.Auction.He said he was going to get me ready for an auction. But maybe that isn’t what he meant at all if this woman is talking about trades.
Pity stirs in her big, brown gaze. “This is your first time.”
Which means this isn’t hers.
I nod.
She sighs. “Then let’s hope it’s a trade. Open auction means all the members are there. It means they all get to bid on you.” She pauses. “It’s… not what you want. I’m Resa, by the way. I’d give you a surname, but it wouldn’t be mine.”
“Everleigh. Everleigh W—” I bite back the rest of Lawrence’s surname.
Resa smiles again, and it’s as bitter as the one before. “We become a piece of them, don’t we? You’re not even your own person anymore.”
“No,” I admit. “You’re just their omega. That’s all there is to you.”
She nods. “Where did they find you?”
How to explain? “I perfumed a year ago, and I found out the woman who raised me wasn’t my real mom. Someone paid her to raise me. An alpha.”
Resa stares at me, and then, unexpectedly, she cradles her hand around her belly. “They found me in a free heat clinic. A man—an alpha—came into my suite.” She swallows hard. “I woke up in a new place, and he refused to let me go. That was the beginning. Other things happened after, but that was the beginning.”
The beginning is beyond horrifying.Especiallybecause it confirms what Cian saw at the back of the free heat clinic.
Alphas have been taking advantage of omegas in the city.
I stare at her with dawning horror. “What will they do to your baby?”
She suddenly looks exhausted. Like she hasn’t slept in days. With what’s happened to her, I’m not surprised. “They will take my child and when she’s old enough, maybe put her in an open auction.”
Is this what they did to my real mom?
I struggle to drag enough air into my lungs as I stumble away, toward the pallet, and drop heavily onto it. I stare at the single rough, scratchy sheet, struggling to see it.
“Everleigh?” Resa calls out.
“This has been going on for so long,” I whisper. “How could they have been doing it for this long?”
Sweat forms on my brow, and I wipe it away with the back of my hand Did someone turn the heating on for me to be sweating this much? They must. I swipe more sweat away and hope whoever it was turns it down again. Before I sweat through my dress would be great.
“When they brought you here”—Resa’s voice is strange—“did they stick you with a needle?”
I lift my head and nod.
She stares at me with pity-filled eyes and then turns away. “I’m sorry, but they won’t trade us. They only stick the girls they put in the auction.”
“Why?” I breathe.
Still not looking at me, she continues. “An omega on the cusp of her heat is more exciting to the buyers. They’ve triggered yours. I’m sorry.”
