I Killed the Alpha King's Father, Then He Bought Me at Auction novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Sold at Dry Fork
Chained at a rogue auction, a killer is bought by the son of the king he murdered, who locks him in the dead man's rooms.
The silver chain lay across Kit's throat.
It had been there six hours, and the skin under it was blistered raw.
"Lot nine," the auctioneer called. "One rogue tracker, twenty-five, no pack, no papers."
"Fastest wolf in the Rockies, and the Crown has a price on his head."
Kit stood on the plank block with his wrists locked behind him and looked at nobody.
The old assay hall at Dry Fork stank of wet fur, cigarette smoke and silver polish.
A hundred wolves sat on folding chairs in the half dark and looked at him.
"Who'll open at ten thousand?"
"Ten," said a man up front.
"Twelve," said a woman by the stove.
The hunter who had caught him leaned on the rail, grinning, and rolled a silver stud between his fingers.
Kit pulled his lip back and showed the hunter all his teeth.
The hunter jerked the chain, and the burn flared white down Kit's neck and into his chest.
He did not make a sound.
"Thirty," someone said.
"Forty."
"Sixty thousand," said a voice from the back of the hall.
It was a low voice, calm and unhurried.
Kit knew it, though he had never heard it.
The room went quiet in a wave, from the back to the front.
"Sixty to the gentleman in the coat," the auctioneer said. "Do I hear seventy?"
"Seventy," said the man by the stove.
"A hundred and forty," said the voice, and it did not sound as if its owner had looked up.
Nobody bid after that.
The auctioneer's gavel shook in his hand.
"Sold," he said. "To the, ah. To the gentleman."
Chairs scraped. People stood and got out of the way.
A man came down the aisle in a black wool coat with snow melting on the shoulders.
He was very tall, with swept-back black hair and a short dark beard.
His eyes were amber, and they were fixed on Kit the whole way.
Kit knew him then.
Everyone in the Rockies knew his face from the posters nailed up in every truck stop.
Ewan MacLachlan, Alpha King of the Bitterroot Crown, crowned the night his father died.
Kit's mouth went dry.
The hunter had stopped grinning.
"Your Majesty," he said, and bowed his head. "I didn't know you were here."
Ewan took the end of the chain out of the hunter's hand without looking at him.
He climbed the three steps to the block.
Up close he smelled of pine smoke and cold air.
Under it was something older, and Kit's wolf went flat to the floor inside him.
Ewan lifted his free hand and set it on the back of Kit's neck.
His palm lay right over the burn, and it was hot, and heavy, and steady.
Kit's knees almost went.
He hated that they almost went.
"Does it hurt?" Ewan said, very quietly.
"No."
"Liar."
His thumb pressed once into the blistered skin, and Kit's whole body locked.
Then Ewan bent until his mouth was beside Kit's ear, close enough that nobody else in the hall could hear.
"I know what you did," he said.
Kit turned his head and met those amber eyes from two inches away.
He could have said a hundred things.
He could have begged, and the king might even have listened.
"Then you know where to find me," Kit said. "You just paid for it."
Something moved in Ewan's face, and his hand tightened.
He reached into his coat and pulled out a pair of steel cutters.
He snipped the silver chain at Kit's throat, and it dropped off the block with a clink.
The hunter swore and dived after it.
"Nobody puts silver on him again," Ewan said, to the whole hall.
He did not raise his voice, and every wolf in the room flinched.
Then he took Kit by the back of the neck and walked him off the block.
The drive to Redhorn Lodge took three hours through the dark.
Kit sat in the back of the king's truck with his wrists still bound, and neither of them said a word.
Garth Overton drove.
He was big and sandy-bearded, and he glanced at the mirror every few minutes.
Ewan sat next to Kit with one arm along the seat.
He did not touch him, but Kit felt the heat of him down his whole left side.
The lodge came up out of the snow, three storeys of black timber and grey stone, with every window lit.
Ewan took him up the stairs himself.
They passed no guards and no servants.
Only a stout old woman with white hair stood aside in a doorway, watching with her mouth pressed flat.
At the top of the house Ewan unlocked a heavy door at the end of the hall.
Inside was a bedroom with an iron-framed bed, a stone fireplace, and a narrow window with bars on the outside.
A leather chair sat by the hearth.
The whole room smelled of an old man, long gone, and of the bitter ghost of something else.
Kit's stomach turned over.
He knew exactly whose room this was.
"These were his," Ewan said.
He cut the bindings from Kit's wrists with one claw, and the cord fell on the rug.
"You'll stay in them."
"I figured."
"You don't leave, and you don't talk to anyone but me and Dorrie."
He stood in the doorway with the hall light behind him, and his eyes had gone from amber to a dull gold.
"I could have killed you at the block."
"You could."
"I paid a hundred and forty thousand so that I wouldn't."
His voice cracked on the last word, only a hair, and he heard it himself.
"Three years ago I found my father in the snow with his throat open, Sorrel."
"His blood was still warm. He was smiling."
Kit said nothing.
"Nobody smiles like that," Ewan said. "So you'll tell me why, and you'll stay in this room until you do."
The door shut, and the key turned.
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