Auctioned To Five Beasts

Lyria

Cold metal bit into my hip before I even remembered that I had a body.

Light came next. White, harsh, and fucking bright, pressing against my eyelids until they watered. I dragged one arm over my face, only to realize I was naked. Completely fucking naked. There was no sheet or gown. Nothing between my skin and the metal grate digging into my ribs.

I jerked upright and cracked my skull against iron bars.

A fucking cage. What the fuck?

The sound that tore out of me was somewhere between a gasp and a scream. My knees snapped against my chest as panic took over. One hand flew over my breasts while the other shoved between my thighs, but neither was big enough to cover me properly. The metal grate left a square pattern across my shin. Somewhere beyond the blinding lights, a man laughed. Low and amused, like he had paid for the fucking view and intended to enjoy every second of it.

“Hey.” My voice came out rough and dry. “Hey! Where am I?”

No one answered me.

I blinked hard until the room stopped swimming, and when my vision finally cleared, I realized I was surrounded by money. Chandeliers hung in long rows above me, their crystals throwing sharp pieces of light across black suits and polished shoes. Round tables filled the enormous room. Crystal glasses, gold rims, and men.

Every person I saw was a man, and every one of them was turned toward me the way people turn toward a stage when the show is about to begin. I searched desperately for a woman. A server. A guard. Anyone with a softer face. There was no one. Just expensive collars, perfect cuffs, watches that probably cost more than my father’s house, and mouths leaning close to other mouths as they whispered about me.

“Only one?” someone said, not bothering to lower his voice.

“They said there would be a full lot.”

“Look at her.”

I looked at them, and I wished I had not.

A man at the nearest table had his jacket open and his trousers undone. He was not hiding it. His fist was already around his cock, thick and flushed, and he stroked it in plain sight while he stared at my breasts. The man beside him had his out too, resting heavy against his thigh, and he palmed the head like he had forgotten there was a room around him. No shame. No attempt to turn away. They looked at me the way starving men look at a plate, and none of them seemed to have seen a woman in their lives.

My stomach rolled. I dragged my eyes off the wet shine at the tip and found another. Then another. Hands under tables. Cocks freed over expensive cloth. One beast with a gold ring on his finger pumped himself fast, breath hitching, and his eyes never left the gap between my knees.

“Fuck,” he groaned. “Fuck, look at her.”

Heat crawled up my throat and spread across my face. I curled tighter, trying to make myself smaller, but the cage was too cramped even for that. My shoulder hit iron. My heel struck another bar. The air smelled of expensive cologne, cold metal, and the sharp, sweet chemical scent of whatever they had used to clean this fucking cage before putting me inside it.

A choked sound cut through the whispers. The man with the gold ring bowed over his fist. His cock jerked, and he spilled across his knuckles, thick white streaks dropping onto the tablecloth. He did not even close his eyes. He watched my body while he came, like the sight of me naked was enough.

I gagged. Bile burned the back of my tongue. I had never seen a man’s cock like this, not hard, not bare, not emptying itself because I had the bad luck to wake up without clothes. I pressed my face to my knee and still heard him panting.

“Ten million for the door,” he said, wrecked and pleased, wiping his hand on a napkin like it was nothing. “Not a waste. I got to release looking at a real woman.”

The words landed worse than the sight.

Ten million. Just to walk in. Just to look at me and finish. If a seat at this auction cost that much, what were they about to pay for the rest of me? My skin went cold under the lights. I was not a guest in this room. I was the reason they had bought a ticket.

Fragments slammed into my head, arriving too quickly for me to hold onto any of them.

My father’s kitchen. A letter with a red stamp across the front. His hands shaking around a glass he should not have been holding. Debt, he said. Not the bank. Worse than the bank. Then there was a clinic that did not look like any clinic I had ever seen. White tiles. A man in pale medical scrubs who refused to look me in the eyes. A needle. The sting in the crook of my arm. Someone saying compatible while I struggled to sit up.

Then nothing.

Then this.

“What the hell did you do to me?” I slammed my palm against the bars. The metallic clang cut through the room and seemed to reach every chandelier above me. “Answer me! What did you put in me? Where is my father?”

A few heads turned toward me. Most of the men did not even react. One lifted his glass and took a slow drink while openly staring at the curve of my waist, his other hand still working his cock under the rim of the table. Another leaned sideways in his chair, trying to see past my raised knee, trousers open, no effort made to cover himself. I yanked my legs even tighter against myself and hated every bastard in the room for making me feel as though covering my body was somehow part of their entertainment.

A door opened at the side of the room.

The man who entered walked as though the entire floor had been built specifically for his shoes. His silver hair was swept neatly back, and his black suit did not have a single wrinkle. His smile looked practiced, like he had worn it in rooms far worse than this one. He stopped at the edge of the light and rested one hand on a slim stand while keeping the other casually tucked into his pocket. Then he looked at me the way a man might look at an expensive watch he already owns.

“Gentlemen.” His voice filled the hall without effort. “Welcome back. For those of you who have waited your five years with something resembling patience, I am Lucius Mercer. The house is open.”

Five years?

The words caught somewhere inside my head. I did not understand what they meant, but I understood his smile.

“Where am I?” I demanded again.

Lucius did not even look at me. His attention remained fixed on the men sitting before him. “In a kinder cycle, I would be introducing a row of cages. Sisters. Strangers. Women who survived the blood and lived long enough to be priced. You know the numbers. You have paid them.” He tilted his head, managing to look almost regretful. “This year, the row is empty. The tests failed. The wombs failed. The blood rejected every candidate we brought through that door.”

A murmur moved through the room. I heard hunger in it. Irritation too. But underneath both was something I did not expect, fear.

“Except one.”

Lucius finally turned toward me. The chandelier light caught his cheekbone as he lifted a card from the stand. He read from it with the casual indifference of a man describing livestock at an auction.

“Lot One. Lyria Hale. Twenty-three. Human, by every record we could buy, no mark, no house. No claim.” His eyes moved down my naked body and stayed there, careful but no less violating. “Height, five foot six. Weight, one hundred and twenty-eight pounds. Blood compatible with werewolf, dragon, night, craft, and brimstone lines. Ovarian reserve intact. Womb unscarred. Cycle regular. Survival index after beast seed projected high. Fertility window opens within days.”

My stomach twisted so violently I thought I might vomit. “Stop.”

He continued as though I had never spoken. “No prior births. No prior bonds. Virginity unconfirmed and irrelevant to price. She bit a nurse. She cried once. She asked for her father nine times before the sedative took effect.”

“Stop fucking talking about me.”

Lucius looked down at the card and smiled. “Opening interest is already violent, so I will not insult you with a small number. She is the only woman on this floor who can carry what you are. If you leave without her, you leave without an heir. That is the evening.”

I spat at him.

It did not reach his face. It hit one of the bars and slowly slid down the metal, ugly, wet, and fucking mine. A few men laughed. One of them did not. Lucius glanced at the spit before looking back at my mouth, and his smile changed into something thinner. Something pleased.

“There she is,” he said. “Defiance raises the bid. It always has. Shall we begin?”

A paddle rose somewhere to my left. “Five million.”

The number was so fucking ridiculous that I laughed. Just one cracked, disbelieving sound. Five million for a naked woman locked inside a cage. My father owed less than the price of a car. But he did not owe a bank. He owed a man. He owed the kind of person who does not send another letter when you fail to pay the first one.

“Ten,” another man called.

“Fifty.”

The mood in the room changed. Chairs scraped against the floor. A man wearing a red tie stood and did not bother sitting back down. “One hundred million.”

His cock was in his fist while he said it. He did not tuck himself away to bid. None of them did. Another man two tables back cursed, stroked twice, and spilled over his wrist with his eyes locked on my chest. The wet sound turned my stomach again. They were not embarrassed. They were grateful.

Lucius repeated the amount as though he were reciting a prayer. Crystal glasses clinked together somewhere in the room. I pressed my forehead against my knee and tried to disappear into my own skin, but the lights refused to let me hide. Every breath exposed the movement of my ribs. Every flinch gave them another glimpse of the soft inside of my thigh. The cold made my nipples tighten, and humiliation burned through me so violently that for one horrible second I wished I could simply stop existing.

Then I saw them.

They were not sitting at the round tables with everyone else. They occupied a raised black platform at the back of the hall. Five chairs. No paddles. No nervous conversations. No need to pretend they were ordinary guests. Something inside me recognized what they were before my mind caught up. I did not know how. Maybe from a dream. A warning. A poster hanging in some clinic hallway that I was never supposed to notice.

The man sitting on the far left looked too broad for his chair. Dark hair. A scar cut through one eyebrow. His eyes were gold, catching the chandelier light and throwing it straight back at me. Wolf, some terrified, instinctive part of me whispered, and my entire spine locked.

Beside him sat a man who seemed to have heat coming directly from his skin. I could actually see it. The air above the collar of his shirt wavered faintly. For a second, scales appeared along his throat when he swallowed, then disappeared beneath human skin again, dragon.

The third man was pale and unnaturally still, beautiful in a way that made my mouth go dry for all the wrong reasons. I stared at him long enough to realize he had not blinked once, vampire.

The fourth wore rings on every finger. Unlike the others, he watched my face instead of my naked body, and somehow that felt worse. Like he was looking for something beneath the fear, witch.

The last man smiled, and there were too many teeth showing at the edges. Small black horns curved through his hair as though he had simply gotten bored of hiding what he was a demon.

I did not know their names, but somehow I knew the fear that came with them. It settled deep in my bones and sat between my teeth.

“Two hundred,” the vampire said in a bored voice, and the entire hall went quiet enough for me to hear my own breathing.

“Three,” the dragon answered without bothering to stand.

The witch raised two fingers. “Five hundred million. And the eastern mines.”

Lucius’s eyebrows lifted. “The house accepts mixed bids if the cash clears tonight.”

The man with the gold eyes had not stopped watching me. The wolf leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees, and something about the intensity of his stare made shame flood through me all over again. I bared my teeth at him anyway because it was the only weapon I had left.

“Don’t,” I said. The word came out smaller than I wanted, and I fucking hated that. “Don’t you dare bid on me.”

He heard me. I knew he did because the corner of his mouth moved.

The numbers stopped making sense after that. Seven hundred million. Nine hundred. A man on the floor shouted “one billion” and looked physically sick the moment the number left his mouth. Another offered a port and a blood treaty. Someone laughed and said it was already becoming a war. Lucius continued repeating figures my mind could no longer hold. My arms ached from trying to cover myself, but I refused to move them. My entire body felt exposed, cold, and filthy beneath the eyes of strangers.

A billion came and went. The number kept climbing until the room began to thin. Men lowered their paddles. Others sat back down. Someone swore loudly. A glass shattered somewhere behind me.

When silence finally fell, it felt heavier than all the noise that came before it.

The wolf stood.

He was even taller than I expected. Dark hair. Scarred brow. Those impossible gold eyes. His black coat hung open over a broad chest and a throat that looked like it had survived battles other men did not. He did not raise a paddle. He simply looked at Lucius, then at me, and suddenly every person in the room was waiting for him to speak.

“Kael Draven,” he said, as though anyone in this room could possibly need the reminder. “King of the Werewolf Kingdom. I speak for the five.”

The dragon gave a small tilt of his chin. The vampire’s unnatural stillness finally cracked with the hint of a smile. The witch’s rings caught the light as his hand shifted. The demon let out one soft laugh.

“The Werewolf Kingdom, the Dragon Kingdom, the Vampire Kingdom, the Witch Kingdom, and the Demon Kingdom submit one bid,” Kael announced. “Four billion in cash. Assets to match. Ports, vaults, a ceasefire signed before dawn, and enough steel to make the next man who raises a hand reconsider whether his heirless house is worth dying for.” His gold eyes dropped briefly to the spit still clinging to the bar before returning to my face. “We are not splitting her on this floor. We are buying her. Together.”

Lucius Mercer looked, for the first time since entering the room, like a man who might actually sweat. He checked the card in his hand. Then he looked toward the platform before scanning the silent tables around him, studying the powerful men who could start a war tonight and had just been warned not to try.

No one said a fucking word.

“Four billion,” Lucius announced, “and the alliance assets as stated. Do I hear another bid?”

I shook my head even though no one had asked me. It changed nothing. My hands had gone numb where they pressed against my own skin. Four billion. Five kings. A ceasefire. My name written on a card beside notes about my womb and fertility as though that was all I was worth.

“Going once.”

The demon’s smile widened.

“Going twice.”

Kael did not blink.

The hammer fell. One clean, small crack cut through the hall and ended the bidding for my life.

“Sold,” Lucius declared, “to the Five Kingdom Alliance.”

The lights remained fixed on me. The cage did not open. Somewhere behind the raised platform, a door unlocked, and five pairs of expensive shoes began moving toward the stairs.

I pressed my forehead against the cold bars and tasted iron where I had bitten the inside of my lip.

I was not bought by one monster. I was bought by five.