My Ex Sold Me for His Debts, Then My Brother's Enemy Claimed Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Not for Sale

The buyer breaks the deal and frees her; she refuses to be carried; headlights appear on the river road.

"Kingsmill," I said. "My name is Willa Kingsmill."

The man crouched in front of me didn't blink.

"Your father's name was Thackeray," he said. "Say it however you like."

Dean made a small noise behind him.

"Thackeray?" he said. "Willa, what is he talking about?"

Nobody answered him.

Costa Rooke looked at my wrists, at the blistered skin under the silver, and something moved in his jaw.

"Who put these on her?"

"I did," Dean said quickly. "It's standard. You said you wanted her unharmed, and she's unharmed, she's just asleep."

"She's awake."

"She's, I mean, she's sedated."

Costa stood up and turned around slowly.

The broker's man was a heavy wolf with a pierced ear, and two others had come down the stairs behind Costa and were standing very still.

"Two hundred thousand," the broker's man said. "That was the price for a pureblood. Cash, tonight, as agreed."

"My cut was ninety," Dean said. "That clears my debt."

"Shut up, Dean."

"I'm not paying it," Costa said.

The broker's man smiled.

"Then you shouldn't have come down here, Alpha."

He lifted two fingers, and his men moved.

I have grown up in a pack house and watched a lot of fights, and I had never seen one end that fast.

Costa took the first wolf by the collar and put him through a barrel.

The second swung a bottle, and Costa caught the arm, turned it, and the bottle broke on the floor without touching anyone.

The broker's man bolted up the stairs.

There was a man in a flannel shirt standing at the top with his arms crossed.

"Evening," the man in the flannel said, and he hit him once.

It was over before I finished breathing in.

"Bram," Costa said, not turning around.

"Heard the noise," said the man in the flannel, stepping over the broker's man. "Also three Hollowmere wolves are circling the tavern. Looking for a missing girl."

My stomach dropped.

I hadn't been missing for an hour. Someone had noticed already.

Costa knelt again and took the pipe that held my cuffs in both bare hands.

"Don't," I said. "That's silver. If it touches you."

"It's not touching me," he said. "I'm holding the iron."

He pulled, and the whole pipe came out of the wall in a shower of mortar.

The cuffs stayed on my wrists, but the chain slid free.

Bram came down and cut the cuffs off with a pair of bolt cutters, careful not to let the silver touch my skin again.

I could hear the cuffs hit the floor.

I tried to stand.

My knees folded, and Costa caught me under the arms.

"I've got you," he said.

It was exactly what Dean had said in the square.

"Let go of me."

"You can't walk."

"I can walk," I said. "I can't be carried. Not by anyone tonight."

He looked at me for a long second.

Then he let go, slowly, and stood with both hands open at his sides in case I fell.

I took one step, and another, holding the wall.

On the third I looked at Dean, who was backed against a barrel with his hands up.

"Willa, please," he said. "Please, I didn't know. If I had known who you were."

"If you had known who I was."

"I never would have done it in your territory."

He meant it. That was the worst of it.

He wasn't sorry he had sold me. He was sorry he had picked the wrong buyer's ground.

"Don't touch him," I told Costa.

"I wasn't going to," he said. "He's Hollowmere's. Your pack can have him."

"He's not getting away, either."

"No." Costa's eyes went to Dean. "He's not."

Bram picked up the broker's man by the back of the jacket and dragged him up the stairs.

Costa put his shoulder against the cellar wall beside me, where I could lean without being held.

"How do you know my father's name?" I said.

"I'll tell you when you can stand on your own."

"That isn't an answer."

"It's the one I've got tonight."

We climbed the stairs one at a time.

Outside the river road was dark and warm, and the cider smell from the square drifted down the hill.

There were lights moving up the road, three pairs of them, coming fast.

I knew those trucks. I had ridden in them since I was six.

Costa looked at the headlights, and then at me, his jaw tightening.

"That's your brother," he said.

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