The auction hammer sounds like a gunshot.
Crack.
It splits the air of the so-called charity ballroom, and for a second, the world tilts. Crystal chandeliers glitter overhead. Champagne flutes clink. Men in tailored suits applaud politely, as if a human life hasn’t just been sold like a rare painting.
“Sold. Lot Twelve. Twelve million dollars.”
My lungs forget how to work.
I’m standing among the servers—head bowed, shoulders curved inward, the perfect forgettable Omega assistant. Soft smile. Submissive posture. The scent I wear tonight is artificial lavender and heat-dulled vanilla, sprayed carefully at my pulse points. Weak. Unthreatening. Exactly what an Omega like me is supposed to be.
Except I’m not one.
Inside the golden cage at the center of the room, my sister lifts her head.
Sophia.
Her silver-blonde hair spills over bare shoulders. A diamond-studded suppression collar circles her throat, pulsing faintly blue with every panicked breath. Her eyes—my eyes—are too big for her face, glassy with terror. She looks nineteen because she is nineteen. She looks breakable because they’ve made her that way.
The applause swells.
I want to scream her name. I want to tear the cage apart with my hands. Instead, I grip the tray of champagne so hard my fingers go numb.
The buyer rises.
Alexander Sterling.
Even before he stands, I know it’s him. I’ve known his presence the way prey knows a predator—silent, heavy, unavoidable. He’s seated in the front row, posture relaxed, one hand resting casually on the arm of his chair as if he hasn’t just outbid oil tycoons and royalty alike.
He’s my boss.
For three years, I’ve been his secretary. His schedule keeper. His shadow. I’ve fetched his coffee, filtered his calls, watched him swallow suppressant pills with clenched jaws and shaking hands when he thought no one was looking.
Sterling Pharmaceuticals’ golden Alpha. The man who owns the largest inhibitor empire in the world.
And now, the man who owns my sister.
My vision tunnels. The room smells wrong—too sharp, too thick. Alpha pheromones spike with excitement, hunger, ownership. The suppression spray on my neck starts to itch beneath my collar, reacting to the pressure of my rising pulse.
No. Not now.
I step back, heart slamming. My fingers brush the small device taped inside my sleeve. Crude. Illegal. My own design. A pheromone-frequency disruptor, tuned in secret after midnight, built from stolen lab parts and desperation.
I told myself I’d never use it.
I activate it anyway.
A low hum vibrates through the tray. Glass trembles. The lights flicker.
For one beautiful, impossible second, the room falters.
Then alarms scream.
Red lights slam down from the ceiling. Guards shout. Guests panic, masks of civility cracking as instinct overrides decorum.
“Security breach!”
I drop the tray and run.
I don’t get far.
A hand closes around my wrist like iron. I’m yanked backward, slammed into a wall draped in black velvet. The world spins, and suddenly he’s there—too close, too solid, his presence swallowing the air from my lungs.
Alexander Sterling smells like frost and smoke and something dangerously alive beneath it.
“Found you,” he says softly.
His eyes are the color of storm clouds, dark and merciless. Not angry. Satisfied.
He drags me through a hidden door, down a narrow corridor, into a soundproofed room that reeks of Alpha dominance and secrets. The door slams shut behind us.
I twist, fight. It’s useless.
He pins me against the table, one arm braced beside my head. His gaze drops to my neck.
“I’ve been tracking this scent for three years,” he murmurs. “An Omega who never cycles. Never submits. Never breaks.”
My heart hammers so hard I think it might shatter my ribs.
“That’s impossible,” I whisper, clinging to the lie I’ve lived my entire adult life inside.
He smiles. It’s not kind.
With a sharp motion, he peels back the skin-toned patch at the base of my neck. The fake gland cover. The last line of my disguise.
Cold air kisses bare skin.
The room goes silent.
“No gland,” he says, awe threading through his voice like a fault line. “No Omega markers.”
His eyes blaze.
“Beta,” he breathes. “No. Worse. Better.”
I shake. Rage, terror, humiliation crash together inside me. “Let my sister go.”
His gaze flicks up, sharp. “Sophia Carter?”
The way he says her name tells me everything.
“You bought her,” I choke. “You—”
“I bought bait,” he corrects calmly. “And it worked.”
The floor drops out from under me.
“I needed you,” Alexander continues, voice steady, almost reverent. “A mind that isn’t ruled by pheromones. A body immune to Alpha imprinting. Someone who can finish what my researchers can’t.”
His fingers hover just above my skin, not touching, somehow worse.
“A suppressant without side effects,” he says. “A cure.”
I laugh, broken and hysterical. “So you enslave my sister?”
His jaw tightens. “I keep her alive.”
The door monitor flickers. On the screen, Sophia is being wheeled away, eyes wide, lips trembling as she searches the room for me.
Guilt claws through my chest.
I failed her.
Again.
Alexander leans in, his forehead almost touching mine. “You’re coming with me, Luna Carter,” he says softly. “And you’re going to save me.”
Outside, the sirens wail louder.
Inside, something in me fractures—and something else sharpens, cold and furious and unbreakable.
If this is war, then I will burn his golden cage to the ground.