Sold as the Alpha King's Breeder

Chapter 4 : There's Something About Her

*Jared*

There was a point in my life when returning from a bounty hunt was met with raucous abandonment. Parties were held for days, drinks seemed bottomless, and the celebrations were lively and unending, at least until our crew had to set off again.

It wasn't like that now, at least not for me. I felt the strain of what had been a two-week long journey just to locate the man we'd been paid to kill as I sat down at my desk in my study, letting the fatigue inch its way up my legs.

I was young. It shouldn't be this way. But I was on borrowed time. I'd gone too hard, done too much. Rescuing Eliza, who clearly believed she did not need saving, hadn't made things easier, that was for damn sure.

We'd only been home for three days and already she was making a name for herself. Miriam had nothing but good things to say about her, and the other servants and maids I employed in my house seemed to love her, if not slightly fear her. I'd only seen her a few times since we'd returned, and all in passing. She was social, well-mannered, and aimed to please.

But not when it came to me.

There was something about her that made me tense with suspicion. There was something in that blue-green gaze of hers that cut me to my soul. It was a constant, silent challenge of violence if I even looked at her the wrong way. But I couldn't help myself.

I'd run into her this morning on my way to the kitchen to pick up a quick breakfast before meeting Archer and Brandt for training. She'd been leaning on the kitchen counter, chatting amiably with Giselle, a young black-haired woman who was the house gossip.

Eliza hadn't even looked in my direction when I entered the room. Her body didn't go rigid with fear. She simply went on, talking loudly about men and their “swelling egos,” her eyes flicking in my direction for a fraction of a second before turning back to Giselle.

Eliza herself wasn't a threat to the safety of my people and my crew.

But that mouth was going to be a problem.

“Well, I like her,” Archer mused as he flopped down on the couch in my study. He crossed his legs, his ankle resting on his opposite knee. “I've never heard a woman cuss like that before."

"She might belong on the crew," Brandt added, his eyes slowly meeting mine. I gave him a look as I brought a cup of coffee to my lips, shaking my head.

“She has the mouth for it. The personality, too. That mop of hers blends right in with the lowland heather,” Archer laughed as he waved his hand over his hair, alluding to the wild, unruly mess of thick brown curls she didn’t even try to keep contained. “She's a riot. I wonder who sold her—"

I clutched the coffee cup tight enough to cause a small crack to form along its base, but I hid it from the two men sitting across the room from me. I'd almost washed the memory of the breeder auction from my mind-almost. Things like that tend to linger, to fester in your soul. I detested the disgusting practice of selling and buying women. It wasn't even legal anymore in most places, not since Alpha King Alexander took the throne.

“I find it unlikely anyone sold her,” I said casually. “Someone is probably looking for her. She's educated, I believe, and it's obvious she's used to being fed regularly.” I hated the way the words tasted, but there was no way around it. This conversation needed to be had.

“Her father, perhaps? But where could she even be from? What was she doing this far—"

“I don't know, Archer,” I ground out, tapping my fingers on my desk. Brandt was unusually quiet tonight, so I turned my attention to him, raising my brows as I willed him to add to the conversation.

“Maybe she ran away from home,” he mused, shrugging helplessly.

“That's not a bad thought, actually,” Archer nodded, stretching his arms across the back of the couch. “Look, Jared. All I know is I've never met a woman like her in these parts.”

"Giselle" Brandt began, but Archer waved him away.

"Giselle is different. She's mouthy, sure, but she's a gossip. She doesn't have that look in her eyes, you know? Eliza looks like she's-like she's—"

“Calculating... like every move we make, and everything we say," I began, leaning back in my chair, "is being stored in some mental library for later use?”

"Yes, exactly!"

“Then she's a spy?” Brandt scoffed, shaking his head. “If she's a spy, then she's a damn good actor" Archer and Brandt continued to speculate, their words dancing around the snug room and ricocheting off the glass panes of the display cases lining the walls, broken up by ceiling height bookshelves.

Eliza could be a spy. It was, at least based on what little I knew about her at all, the most logical explanation to her state and behavior. That, or she was an educated, high ranking member of some affluent pack overseen by the Alpha King himself, and someone would be looking for her, eventually coming here.

“I'm taking her to Aeris,” I said without much thought.

Archer turned to look at me, his mouth ajar in surprise.

I shrugged, pulling a ledger from the pile of books on my desk. “Don't act so surprised.”

"Why would we take her with us?"

“I'm not taking her with us to retrieve our bounty prize,” I corrected, dipping a quill in a jar of ink. “I'm giving her to Aeris. His brother bought her, after all, and likely with the funds he stole from Aeris. That would make her his property.” The words tasted like acid against my tongue. It was true, however, and I was not in a position to put my entire crew at risk by keeping her here in the event Aeris found out what his brother had been spending his stolen loot on.

I could see the silent argument behind Archer's eyes as he stared me down from across the room, that blue gaze narrowed in anger and suspicion. We'd taken in women like Eliza before. We'd given them a home, jobs, and in many cases they'd found their mates within our ranks and settled down to start families in the outlying village.

“If someone is looking for Eliza," I continued, “I can't have them looking here, not when half of our men have bounties on their own heads. It's done."

Archer crossed his arms, but nodded in reluctant agreement. Brandt, on the other hand, was staring blankly at the sheet of paper I'd been toying with without even noticing I'd been doing it. I set it down.

"And Aeris has what you need for sure?" Archer said hotly. I shrugged, tapping my fingers on the sketch I'd been erasing and redrawing for years now.

“I have his word-"

"And Aeris's words are so trustworthy?"

Archer was fuming. I knew this situation ran a little deeper for him than most. Orphaned before his first birthday, he'd grown up in an orphanage not far from our own village. He left to join my crew when he was seventeen, but he'd left someone behind, making her a promise that in the end, he couldn't keep.

Scarlett had been one of the women who'd come to live with us, but she'd endured horrors that left her scarred. She barely spoke, and never to Archer. Scarlett had never forgiven him for leaving her behind, and he'd never forgiven himself.

But Eliza was different. This situation was different. And I didn't have time to ponder the what-ifs. "We leave in a week's time, and just the four of us. Eliza has yet to come into her wolf by all accounts, so we'll have to make the journey on foot," I said with a resigned sigh.

Archer chewed his lower lip before shrugging, and Brandt simply blinked up into the light of the dusty chandelier above our heads.

“Well, I'm hungry. It's already past dinner,” Archer said as he rose and stretched. Brandt followed suit, dipping his head to me in farewell. I stood from my desk to follow the men out, but stopped at the threshold to my study, noticing a figure standing flush with the wall across the hallway.

Archer and Brandt hadn't noticed her. They walked by without a passing glance. But I saw her, and I lingered for a moment, wondering if she was going to drop the basket of laundry she was holding in surprise if she turned and caught my gaze.

Eliza was beautiful, I gave her that. She had soft facial features and eyes that seemed a little too large for her face, fanned by dark lashes and dark brows. Her face was innocent, childlike, which was a startling contrast to her voice and personality. Her hair was just as ill-behaved as I found her to be, sticking up and springing loose from the knotted bun of curls she wore at the crown of her head. Sea-green eyes slowly moved my way as I turned my back to her and stepped back into my study. She hadn't noticed that I'd seen her, and that was probably a good thing. I didn't want to have to explain that this area of the house was generally off-limits. Sure, she could drop off my laundry in my bedroom, but my study?

This place was strictly off-limits to even the maids. I wasn't going to risk giving her a single glimpse of what was inside in the event she was truly a spy.

I rounded my desk and sat back down, pulling the paper I'd been toying with earlier in front of me. I looked down at it for the millionth time.

I traced the outline of the amulet I'd drawn over, and over, and over again. I had no memory of it, nothing tangible. But it was all I had to go on, and unlocking its secrets was the only way I was going to save my own life.

The amulet itself would be ancient, from the time of Lycaon himself. Maybe it had only been just a piece of jewelry at one point in time. Some rich woman may have worn it around her neck. I didn't truly know its history, and it honestly didn't matter.

I had a single piece of it, locked away in a box beneath the floorboards under my desk. The two other pieces were missing, and without them, I'd lose everything in a matter of months.