Chapter 3

"Kade." My voice came out barely a whisper. "What are you doing?"

He finally looked at me, and his expression was mild. Patient. Like I was the unreasonable one.

"Sienna asked for it first, babe. Don't make a scene." He lowered his voice. "It's just an old rock. I'll buy you something better."

Just an old rock.

My mother's last heirloom. The thing he had once held my hand and sworn to help me find.

Behind me, Sienna leaned forward, her lips almost touching his ear. "Thank you, Alpha," she purred. Loud enough for me to hear. Exactly loud enough.

Something in my chest didn't shatter. It went still. Quiet. Dead.

"Sixty thousand," I said.

"Seventy," Kade answered, without hesitation.

Heads were turning now. Whispers spreading through the room like smoke. The Blackwood Alpha is bidding against his own Luna.

"One hundred thousand." I lifted my chin. That was nearly everything in my personal account. Everything my father had left me.

The auctioneer's assistant hurried over with the card reader. I tapped my card.

Declined.

I tried again. Declined.

I looked at Kade.

He didn't even have the decency to look guilty. "I froze the joint accounts this morning," he murmured. "You've been acting strange. I was worried you'd do something rash."

Sienna laughed. A soft, delighted little sound.

My face burned. Every Luna in the room was staring at me. The broken Silver girl, publicly humiliated by her own husband in front of the whole territory.

"Bid withdrawn," the auctioneer said awkwardly. "Seventy thousand to Alpha Blackwood, going once—"

The lights in the VIP box on the second floor flared on.

The air changed.

It hit me like a wave of heat and thunder, an aura so heavy my knees buckled. Around me, Alphas who had ruled packs for decades bowed their heads without meaning to. Glasses rattled on trays. Even Kade gripped the arm of his chair, teeth gritted.

Only one bloodline could do that to a room full of Alphas.

Lycan.

A voice rolled down from the box, low and lazy.

"Ten million."

Nobody breathed.

"Going—going once," the auctioneer stammered. "Twice. Sold."

A server lifted the Silver Tear onto a velvet cushion and climbed the stairs. A moment later, footsteps echoed down them.

He was tall. Taller than any wolf in the room. Dressed in black from collar to boots, with dark hair and a face carved by something crueler and more beautiful than nature. His eyes were molten gold. Not wolf gold. Lycan gold.

I had always thought Kade was the most handsome man I'd ever seen.

I had been so wrong.

He walked straight past the bowing Alphas. Past the auctioneer. Past Kade.

And stopped in front of me.

He held out the pendant.

"There must be a mistake," I whispered.

"No mistake." His voice was velvet over steel. "It was always yours."

Beside me, Kade shot to his feet. "Caspian."

Sienna gasped behind me, breathless with something like terror. "The Lycan King…"

Caspian Blackwood. Kade's older half-brother. The one exiled from the pack six years ago. The one whose name Kade's mother never let anyone say.

He didn't look at Kade. He looked only at me.

Then his nostrils flared. Something shifted behind those gold eyes. Something old, and hungry, and certain.

His gaze dropped, for just a heartbeat, to my stomach.

And inside me, my wolf, who had been silent for four long years, lifted her head and howled one word.

Mate.