The Alpha's Auction: Buying Back My Mate

Come back. Right now. Your husband's lost it. I kept washing the cat.

He was never all that normal to begin with.

He's selling your son. Tonight. On the black market.

I jabbed the return key, cursing the whole way down. And there, in the back corner of the markettwo white tigers. One big. One small.

The big one was soaked in his own blood. A little sign propped against his paw. One line, painted large:

SELLING THE CUB EARLY. SAVING UP TO BURY THE FATHER.

Chapter 1

My husband was selling our son. I wanted to reach clear across two worlds and smack the sense back into him. Absurd. And a little sick.

But right then? I just stood in the corner. And asked the Weaver.

"What happened to him? All that blood."

[ It answered fast, hands-clean: "I didn't touch himhe's been out here picking fights like something rabid! Wrecked the fox shifters' shop, dumped boiling water into the merfolk tank, then stood there and screamed himself hoarse at the whole avian clan!" ]

I laughed. The furious kind. Wonderful. Land, sea, and skyhe'd skipped exactly no one.

[ The Weaver sighed. "That child is this world's male leadand he's about to get auctioned off by his own father before he's grown. Your assignment, host: stop Silas spiraling, put your son back on the growth arc I wrote." ]

The growth arc. Right. I pulled in a slow breath and started walking. Not a chance I'd signed off on that garbage.

But first, I had to earn the right to stay.

[ "Waitdon't blow your cover! In this state he might actually hit you. Thank the ledger you've got a new face." ]

The Weaver really had Silas pegged for the gentle type. If he knew who I was, he wouldn't hit me.

He'd tear me apart.

"Then mask my scent while you're at it."

[ "Already done! Don't out yourself and he'll never place you." ]

Famous last words. I walked up to the sign and stopped. The big tiger's nose gave the faintest twitch. Then he groaned, sick and low, and cracked one eye open.

The look in it was meant to be vicious. But under all that blood, it landed closer to a bluff. Silas hated wearing his beast form. Hurt this bad, he probably couldn't hold anything else.

His voice came out a rasp. "Buying?"

I glanced at the small one beside him. A tiger cub that wary shouldn't have been sleeping that dead.

Reading the question off my face, Silas said, flat: "He's alive. Just drugged him quiet."

"Do you have some kind of ser" I caught the heat in my own voice halfway through. Fixed my mouth. "How much?"

His tail flicked, once. His tell, for when the mood's gone bad. "How much do you figure a funeral runs these days?"

The wounds were too much to look at. I looked away. "I figure you're not dying yet. No need to sell the cub to bury yourself."

He scoffed. And shifted to human. Every gash that had crowded his coat now sat on human skinsomehow worse. Somehow uglier.

Sharp brows. Bloodless lips. A grin with nothing behind it: "Who knows. A washed-up joke like me, no mate and enemies in every corner."

"The world's been trying to put me in the ground for years. Might finally get its wish."

""

[ The Weaver muttered, "Incredible. Aren't every one of those enemies self-inflicted?!" ]

Whether the shift cost him too much or not, one of his wounds split clean open, blood running. It made my own eyes sting.

"Then don't die yet. Turns out I need a manservantI'll take the pair of you. Father and son."

Silas raised a brow. "You rich?"

[ The Weaver yelped, "Host, be careful! What if the mad tiger names some outrageous number?!" ]

I shrugged, answering only the Weaver: "You want me here to clean up your mess. So whatever he chargesit comes out of your budget."

In the end, the Weaver coughed up a full year's salary. And just like that, they were mine to take home. The cub who already had my whole heart.

And the man who'd rip me to shreds the day he finally placed the face under this new one.

Chapter 2

So, standing there staring at the sad little walk-up, I couldn't even manage a curse.

[ The Weaver, for once, sounded almost sheepish: "I'm tapped out, okay? A roof's a roof." ]

Behind me, Silas, in that fully punchable tone: "Huh. Not a rich widow after all."

"Buying us didn't wipe out your whole savings, did it? No budget left for any other shifters now?"

I didn't dignify it. Carried Finn inside. Sank onto the busted couchand still couldn't make my arms let go.

Back home, I'd taken work at a vet clinic. Held the cats and dogs there when the ache got bad, tried to fill the hole with fur that wasn't his. It was never the same.

This was my child.

"You like him that much?" Silas dropped down beside me, no manners about it, fresh blood soaking into the old cushions.

I frowned. "Go deal with your wounds."

"Don't know how." A pause. "When I had a wife, she did it for me."

Bull. He'd never lost a fight in his life. A few months out of sight, and he was not just weakerhe was auctioning off our son.

I couldn't find a kind face for him. "SilasI didn't buy you so you could play lord of the manor."

The air went quiet for a few seconds. Right when I braced for him to blow, he said, unreadable: "I never told you my name. How'd you know it?"

I stalled for half a beat. Then smiled. "Half the shifter markets banned you on the same day. You really don't know how famous you are?"

On the way over, the Weaver hadn't shut upfrom how Silas went feral picking fights, to how clan after clan tossed the mad tiger on the blacklist, old ties and all. By the end, it was cackling like it had cracked.

I figured Silas had nearly driven the thing insane. But this husband of minereflection was never his strong suit.

Right on cue, he sneered: "That's on them for being weak. A ban. How childish. I could kick their doors to splinters."

"Sure. So mighty you're bleeding through the couch."

"That's because I" He caught himself. Turned his head, irritable. "Where's the medkit?"

"No idea. Go find it."

Finallya little quiet. I looked down at the fuzzy weight in my lap. Shifter kids grow fast. Three short months and Finn was a size bigger.

Taller in his human shape too, probably. A little terror, this one. And a hopeless mama's boy.

For years now, running the Weaver's script, I'd played the spoiled wife and the world's most negligent motherbut let anyone say one wrong word about me, and Finn would launch straight at their throat.

Silas was worse. Everyone said the S-rank apex lived like a whipped dog at my feet. Nothing in him but devotion, morning to night.

His packmate, exasperated past hope: "If she shaved you bald one day, you'd just lean into her hand and ask if her arm was tiredwouldn't you?!"

The whole world thought Silas had no limits where I was concerned. Only I knew the truth. It was just that I'd never hit his line.

Silas grew up dragged from nowhere to nowhere. Sold into the black market by his own blood before he was old enough to remember. He crawled back from the edge of death more times than either of us could count.

So of everything in this world, he hated betrayal most.

He told me oncein bed, in the low voice he saved for sweet nothings: "Wife. If you ever left me for someone elseI'd burn this whole world down to the ground."

"Every last thing in it. But I'd never lay a finger on you."

And me?

I died on the road, on my way to meet another shifter.

Chapter 3

[ "He told a whole banquet that the heiress's eyes looked like a pair of searchlights." That was the Weaverdays later, still livid. ]

To understand why, you have to back up.

I'd woken on a hospital bed. Back in the real world. Dazed. Asked why it hadn't warned me my time was up.

[ "The storyline runs itself," it said. "You were meant to go offline the second you'd reeled Silas in and birthed the male lead. I stretched it three extra years for you." ]

"And after? What happens to them?"

[ "Silas 'finds' the evidence you betrayed him, gives up on love, cycles Finn through an endless string of stepmothers. And the boy twists into something dark and starts his own villain arc." ]

Then it was gone. Before I could get a single word in about that psychotic little plot. I never imagined I'd get a way back in.

The son, still normal. The husband, gone off the deep end first, hawking his own cub.

I ran a hand over Finn's fur. "So. Did Silas actually start lining up stepmothers?"

A long, guilty silence.

"Weaver?"

[ "The women the storyline arranged? He scared off EIGHT of them!" ]

The searchlight heiress was only the first.

[ "A broke little wallflower fainted at his doorhe told her to roll around a couple more times and sweep the step clean while she was down there!" ]

[ "The white-fox clan's second daughter floated a marriage alliance, and he said the thought of a wife going all furry scared him. He's a furry tiger himself!" ]

Rant delivered, no room for me to get a word in, the Weaver tacked on:

[ "Your husband is a menace to my entire storyline!" ]

The menace himself came back in, medkit in hand. Blew the dust off the lid with a look of pure disgust. Then hooked a hand under his hem and pulled his shirt off.

""

I looked. Looked away. Looked back. And somewhere in the back-and-forth, I accidentally met his eyes.

Back when we were together, holding a look longer than ten seconds was all it ever took to land us in bed. My throat went dry. I hurriedly scrubbed a hand over Finn's fur and dropped my gaze. "Do you have any shame at all?"

Silas scoffed, soft. "People get careless, right before the end."

He pressed the wound salve into himself with zero care, hissing now and then. Pathetic-looking. I hugged Finn tighter and changed the subject. "Why isn't the cub awake yet?"

Silas went still. "Didn't feel like listening to him fuss. Put him under a bit too deep."

""

It took one full breath, in and out, to talk myself out of slapping him. I laid Finn down on the master bed. Went and took a shower.

Came back outand heard water running in the guest bath. No idea what Silas thought he was doing, being so precious about it, wounds and all. Showering nowdidn't that just rinse off everything he'd put on?

I pushed open the balcony door and stood in a night breeze that was exactly the right temperature. A stranger's face. A scent the Weaver swore it had masked.

So why did I keep catching Silas looking at me like he already knew?

I called up the Weaver.

Chapter 4

"Your storyline's already a wreck. Still set on this?"

[ "Of course!" The Weaver, rock-firm. "This is the highest emotional-value line from my whole early sim! My upgrades run entirely on that value!" ]

I hesitated a beat. Then said it anyway. "Silas not wanting a stepmother for Finn, could that be because"

[ "Oh, pleasebecause he hates you too much! Hates every woman by association! Once he's through this phase, he'll find a new wife out of pure spite. I just moved too fast. And you are not to interfere with the storyline, or the penalty backlashes straight onto the male lead." ]

"You"

"You're a lot like my wife."

The voice behind me cut clean through my silent standoff with the Weaver. I turned. Silas had come out at some point.

He closed the distance, step by step. Until he stopped right in front of me. My eyes landed on the clean line of his collarbone. I curled my palm in. "Oh? Like her how?"

"She called Qi Anan 'cub,' too."

My heartbeat kicked up. I opened my mouthand he tipped my chin up, tilted it side to side.

"But you're not as pretty as she was."

No kidding. Back then I was a transplanted soul, wearing a face the Weaver built for easy seduction. This facethis was the real me.

Colorface, I grumbled, privately. I pushed his hand off and gentled my voice. "You've brought your wife up an awful lot. You love her that much?"

Silas stared at me, gaze gone heavy and dark. "Her? She's just a bad woman."

"Though." His tone pivoted. He leaned in, slight. Curved his lips at a distance where I could feel him breathe.

"She trained me up nicely. And since you paid good money for mewant to give it a try?"

He smiled at me, pure seduction. Exactly like every time in bed he'd coaxed me into just a little more. Beauty like that held me hostage for a solid minute before I snapped out of it.

To Silas, I was a stranger. A woman who'd bought him and his son. And here he was, already all but throwing himself into service? Zero self-respect!

Thisthis preening flirt was the man who'd scared off eight stepmothers?

Just as I moved to shove him offa delighted little shout rang out from the bed inside. "Mama!"

Before I could even turn to look, a cannonball of a fuzzball came tearing over. Shoved Silas clean aside and latched onto my leg.

My heart went soft. I bent to scoop the cub upand he tipped his face up, nose working a secondthen flung his arms loose all at once and stumbled a step back.

"Wrong! You don't have Mama's smell!"

Then he shifted, right where he stood. Sprang up and raked a claw across Silas. That wild, gorgeous face of his father's picked up a few blood streaks in an instant.

The little white tiger bared his teeth. "You dog of a man! I thought you were the only one who got to be this close to Mama! I look away for one second and you go find me a stepmother?!"

[ The Weaver yelped: "Well, wellso it's MY male lead sabotaging the stepmother pipeline! No wonderwomen picked to Silas's exact taste, failing one after another!" ]

I had no attention to spare for the Weaver. Because Silas worked his jaw, lifted a hand, wiped his cheek. Then looked at the blood on his fingertipand smiled.

A smile with absolutely nothing good behind it. Sure enough. He moved fast, snatched Finn up by the scruff.

And just as this disaster of a father wound up for some hands-on disciplineI rose onto my toes and planted a kiss on Silas's cheek.

Chapter 5

Then, while he was still off-balance, I snatched Finn away.

The cub shrieked and thrashed. "Let go of me, you awful woman! I'll k"

I pressed the little fuzzball to my chest. Slid past a dumbstruck Silas, bolted into the spare room, and locked the door.

[ The Weaver howled: "How could you kiss Silas?! If he actually gets interested in you, how am I supposed to set the male lead up with a stepmother?" ]

"As far as those two know, I'm a stranger anyway." I let it sit. "So I'll be the stepmother."

[ "Hostdo you take me for an idiot? Let the real mother play the stepmother, and how does the male lead ever get his cold, loveless childhood?" ]

I rolled my eyes. Looked down. And found the cub had gone quiet at some point.

Fuzzy little head tipped back. Huge eyes fixed on me, not blinking. Maybe from staring too longthat bright gaze had gone glassy and wet.

Forget being his mother. Nobody alive holds up under that. To hell with his father's cold childhood.

I ran a loving hand over the cub's head.

I parted my lips. "The truth is, I'm your