Lorelei POV
"I told you last night would be our lucky night."
"How is it lucky? We only caught one girl. That other bastard slipped right out under our noses."
"But she’s pretty. Do you know how much her kind would be worth?"
"You do have a point."
My brows slowly knit together at the unfamiliar voices around , and my eyes fluttered open just as bright rays of sunlight hit my face, forcing to wince imdiately.
The last thing I rembered was running for my life before sothing slamd into the back of my head hard enough to knock unconscious instantly.
Now the blinding morning light only made the throbbing in my skull feel ten tis worse.
I blinked rapidly, trying to clear the haze clouding my vision, and that’s when I realized I wasn’t in the forest anymore.
The damp scent of earth and trees was gone.
Instead, the air was thick with the suffocating stench of stale smoke, cheap alcohol, sweat, and sothing rotten lingering underneath it all.
Nausea twisted violently in my stomach.
As the blurry figures in front of slowly sharpened into focus, I realized I was lying on a filthy concrete floor. Just a few feet away stood two n dressed in tattered, grease-stained clothes. Their faces were rough, unshaven, and completely devoid of rcy.
Rogues.
Even in their human forms, there was sothing deeply wrong about them. Sothing feral.
"Look at that. The prize is awake," the first one sneered the second he noticed moving. He nudged the other rogue with a cruel grin spreading across his face.
My heart imdiately slamd against my ribs, but the fear was quickly followed by panic as I desperately looked around the room for any possible escape.
Nothing.
I tried to move my arms to push myself up, only to realize my wrists were tightly bound behind my back with thick coarse rope that dug painfully into my skin.
"Don’t bother struggling, little missy," the second rogue grunted as he took a slow step toward . "You’re a very, very long way from ho, and your little gray friend isn’t here to save you this ti."
The mont he said that, all the color drained from my face.
Cole.
Oh God.
"Please..." I choked out as tears instantly filled my eyes again. "Please... please let go. I beg you."
I had heard stories about rogues my entire life but had never actually seen one until now because I spent most of my life locked away inside the estate. But Jaxen had told enough over the years.
They were rciless.
Lawless.
Monsters who lived by their own brutal rules without answering to anyone.
Practically the parasites of the werewolf world.
And now I was completely at their rcy.
"Let you go?" The first rogue burst into a loud mocking laugh, the sound bouncing off the cracked walls of the dilapidated room. "Now why would we do sothing foolish like that? We went through a lot of trouble to fetch you, sweetheart."
He walked over and squatted down in front of , his heavy sour breath washing over my face and making my stomach turn violently. Then he reached out with a dirty hand and gripped my chin tightly, forcing to look directly at him.
"Two of our n are dead," he said. "We can’t let that go to waste. With a face like yours, I’m sure you’ll sell for a very high price. But if that doesn’t work out..." His lips slowly curled upward as his other hand brushed against my shoulder. "Then we’ll just keep you for ourselves. Have you carry our pups. Continue the rogue bloodline."
A wave of pure revulsion hit so hard I physically gagged.
"Get away from !" I choked out, desperately trying to jerk my face away from his grip, but his fingers only tightened harder.
"Feisty," he chuckled darkly, his eyes gleaming with sothing that made my skin crawl. "I like them with spirit. Makes breaking them in a lot more satisfying."
"Leave her alone for now, Drax," the second rogue grunted from across the room as he tossed a rusted pocketknife onto a nearby tal table. "We don’t need her marked up before the buyers see her. High-tier traders want pristine cargo. Save your appetite for later if the deal falls through."
Drax stayed there for another horrifying second, his gaze dragging slowly across my face like he was already imagining all the things he wanted to do to before he finally released my chin with a rough shove.
I instantly recoiled away from him.
"Fine," he muttered, standing back up and wiping his hand against his dirt-caked jeans like I was the disgusting one. Then he kicked a stray piece of gravel toward my legs. "But if things go south, I’m taking the first taste."
My stomach twisted so hard it hurt.
The two of them eventually turned and walked toward the heavy tal door at the far end of the room.
The second it slamd shut behind them, every bit of strength I had been desperately clinging onto completely shattered.
I curled into myself on the filthy concrete floor and broke down sobbing.
After thinking I had escaped one hell, I had sohow fallen straight into another.
Who even knew what kind of person I would end up being sold to?
And if that didn’t happen, then I would really be trapped here with these monsters forever.
There truly was no escaping for .
Maybe I really was cursed.
Cole, please be alive, I prayed desperately as I stared up at the filthy ceiling while tears blurred my vision completely again, even though deep down I knew there was very little chance of that.
But please.
Soone find .
For over a week, I was trapped with those n.
Three of them.
Drax, Silas, and Jax.
For the first few days, all I did was cry.
Every single ti the heavy tal door creaked open, my heart would leap straight into my throat because I was terrified the deal had fallen through and Drax had finally co to make good on his sickening promise.
But as the days slowly bled into each other, the tears eventually stopped.
Not because things got better.
I think I just ran out of the energy to keep crying.
The fear was still there, constantly clawing at from the inside, but eventually it faded into this horrible aching numbness that sat heavily in my chest.
Surprisingly, they actually fed .
More than they even fed themselves sotis.
They forced to bathe regularly and made sure my clothes were changed whenever they got dirty, but it didn’t take long for to realize they weren’t doing it out of kindness.
They were maintaining .
Keeping presentable.
Like livestock waiting to be sold.
Countless tis, I thought about trying to escape on my own, but they were smarter than I expected. One of them always stayed behind to watch no matter what.
I never got a single real opportunity.
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