Time had no meaning in the dark. I tried to count how frequently I slept to gauge whether time passed, but I had no idea how many days, maybe weeks, I'd been in the dark. They didn't bring me food with any discernible pattern, and what they brought was total crap. Hunger clawed at my stomach constantly until I couldn't even sleep on the thin futon mattress they'd thrown on the floor.
My strength slowly faded until it became a chore to do my hundred crunches and push-ups and lunges, until I could barely shove to my feet when the door creaked open. They shone a light in my face and my eyes watered as I shielded my eyes. The pack alpha, a hard-eyed man without a hint of empathy in his soul, stood in the doorway of the cell. Behind him stood at least three other men, maybe more — all the ones who'd offered to mate me. Who'd sneered at the challenge of taming a lone wolf. My lip curled away from my teeth in disgust, wanting to charge through the alpha to show them I wasn't just a wolf.
And they'd clearly never tangled with a wolverine, or they wouldn't be standing there so nonchalantly.
The alpha folded his arms over his chest. "This is your last chance, girl. Cooperate, mate with one of my betas, and join the pack. That's all you've got to do."
"And if I refuse?" I staggered to my feet, even though my knees wobbled and my head swam from lack of food and sleep. Of course I would refuse, they had to know it. From the moment they'd cornered me a few weeks earlier, I'd fought to stay a lone wolf.
"There's an auction in the near future. You'll be put up for sale, and any shifter in the region can buy you." No emotion crossed his face as he said it, so casual about modern day slavery that my skin crawled. The alpha raised an eyebrow. "So you can see that the only feasible choice is clear. Better the evil you know than the evil you don't, girl."
He didn't know anything about evil. I bared my teeth more at the memories of true evil, the first time I'd been caged. The experiments, the punishments, the deaths. The walls started to close in around me. Panic bubbled up in my chest. Not only caged, but sold. To someone depraved enough to want a woman against her will.
One shot. I had one shot. I pushed away from the wall and wobbled forward a few steps, trying to see the hall behind the alpha's broad shoulders. If I could get past him, I had a shot. The beta males standing behind him would be easily scattered in the confusion. Maybe. I clenched my hands behind my back. "I need to think about it. About which one. Can I get something to eat? I can't think in here..."
The alpha made a face and glanced back. "It doesn't matter which one. Pick one and then you can eat. We'll move you to better quarters."
"The tallest one, then." I took another step.
"Fine." The alpha looked bored more than anything as he waved a hand. "We'll —"
I bolted. Rammed my shoulder into him and tried to bull my way through to the hall. I made it out of the cell as the alpha staggered back, growling in irritation, and I slammed into one of the betas. He tried to grab my shoulders, tried to pin me to the wall, but I kneed him in the gut and kept moving, even as my vision blurred and my balance tilted. God help me, I could almost see freedom.
Something jabbed my lower back and my brain shorted out. I blinked and pain spiked through every muscle, then I stared up at them from the floor as I twitched and clenched my teeth against a cry. One of the betas, the tall one, held a taser up for me to see. "Can't outrun electricity, sug."
"Nice try." The alpha's expression, dark with fury, chilled me through the pain. "Good luck with the auction."
"But —" I couldn't even finish before one of them jammed a needle in my hip and I cried out. A second needle followed, and the world grew slow and distorted around me, like deep water. It took an eternity to blink. My tongue felt enormous against my teeth, and I struggled to lift my head as they dragged me back into the dank cell. "What did you give me?"
My words slurred until even I couldn't understand what I tried to say. But the tall beta, looming over me as the world faded in and out, answered me anyway. "Tranquilizer, so you'll behave yourself, and wolfsbane, so you can't shift." He toed my side and I groaned, rolling away as nausea gripped me. "Too bad. We could have had some fun, you and I. Maybe I'll fight for you anyway at the auction. Or maybe I'll let one of those bastards take you. Think about that. If you ask nicely, I'll fight."
The cruelty in his smile didn't inspire any confidence that that would be a better deal than rolling the dice with the auction. I blinked back tears as the door creaked shut behind me and the tranquilizer numbed my limbs until I couldn't have moved even if they offered me an open path to freedom. I'd been so close to finishing my list before those bastards caught me. So damn close to being done with the past so I could finally have a future.
I tried to plan my next move, tried to imagine how I could free myself after whatever this auction was, but the sedative stole even that away and the darkness closed over my head in a rush.