Chapter 62

Sarah POV

“Put it on, or you’ll get the Taser and we’ll put it on you ourselves,” the leader said.

We were in a small room, just she and I and a new guard, a gamma male, who didn’t bother to look at me and held a weird-looking contraption in his hands. There were no windows, only the one door and a small bench on which was draped what looked like a weird cross between the “sexy nurse” Halloween costume and a dominatrix, complete with black fishnet stockings and a large black flogger.

They’d taken off my handcuffs, which now dangled from the leading guard’s hands, so with slow, careful movements I took off my dress and laid it, thinking of Chloe and Grace and our shopping trip, next to the costume. Then I sat and took off my shoes and sheer stockings. I saw I could leave my bra and panties on, which was something, I supposed.

The black vinyl dress with its multiple straps went over my head and zipped up the back. (I didn’t ask for help with it.) Then came the fishnets and a pair of ridiculously high black stilettos boots I swear took five minutes to lace up. I stood.

The guard looked pointedly at the flogger. I picked it up.

“You’re very much going to regret this,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “You’re a human, fit only for fucking or eating. Shut your mouth, and do what you’re told.”

“You’re disgusting,” I spat.

She smiled, and it was a little horrifying. I realized she’d filed her teeth, an outlawed practice.

“When he’s fucked and whipped you to death,” she said, “I’m going to eat your heart.”

The other guard walked over then and shoved the thing in his hands over my head. It was a metal-and-plastic mask I heard him lock into place. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe, and a hand of ice shoved itself through my chest.

I was shoved out into the gilded hallway where two more gamma attendants awaited me. I recognized neither, but I still shouted through the mask, “I am Sarah Astor, goddess-mother of the Zane Cavendish family! Let me go!”

Of course, they laughed.

“That’s a good one,” the one on the left said. “Tell that to your buyer. He’ll get a kick out of it.”

“You’ve got a great body for a human,” the other one said, casually reaching out to squeeze my right breast.

“Hands off!” the first one said. “You know the meat’s only for alphas and betas.”

The groper actually looked chastised. What kind of stupid, loyal criminals were these?

Yet another attendant—no, it was the one I’d seen earlier with the plague mask—came through a door, looked me over with satisfaction, and nodded to the guards.

“VIP Suite 2.”

A guard each took my arms, and they marched me to an ornate, unmarked door that swung open wide to reveal dozens of pairs, and trios, and larger groups of people doing, well, just about everything sexual one could imagine and many things most people could not.

Two beta males had a woman tied to a pole and were taking turns biting her and whipping her. There was a general free-for-all of human and wolf males over on a large sofa. I saw Canary Girl being forced to fellate a large wolf while various humans were bent over furniture and used in various ways.

The reek of sweat and sex made me want to gag, but I forced myself to look around, trying to memorize the masks the wolves were wearing, their heights, and their bodies to identify later. All the humans were wearing the same black mask I had over my head.

But the real difference was the noise. While the wolves were grunting and shouting out things like, “Yeah!” the humans were quiet, almost lethargic. I was pretty sure they’d been drugged.

In fact, within twenty seconds of my entering the room, a little boy, no more than seven staggered away from a beta and then fell to the floor. One of the many plague-masks attendants quickly walked over, picked him up, and bore him from the room. The beta looked briefly disappointed, then grabbed a passing teenage girl and threw her to the floor.

I looked around, realizing I was instinctively looking for Zane, as though he would be with these pathetic excuses for wolves. Instead, I spied a platform in the corner on which the belly dancer form before had been lashed to a cross. Two werewolves stood on either side of her naked body, making little cuts on her arms and legs and then licking up the blood.

I ran to her, outrage burning in my blood as I saw the way her head lolled from side to side, as though she were fighting off whatever drugs they had given her. Some other werewolves were watching the whole thing calling out suggestions.

A tall, broad alpha she-wolf grabbed me with a laugh.

“What’s this?” she asked and twirled me around to face her through my mask. “Don’t think I’ve smelled you before, little one.” She leaned and took a long sniff as though I were a bouquet of flowers.

She leaned back. “How about I—”

I swung and cut her across the face with the flogger they’d made me take. It was light, a prop more than an implement of pain, but I made sure to put my weight behind it. I could tell I drew blood even as her head snapped to the side.

“What the hell, you little piece of shit?” She stared at me incredulously. “How dare you?!” She snatched the flogger from my hand and pulled her arm back.

A hand snapped onto her wrist, and she turned to look at a plague-masked attendant.

“This one is reserved for a special buyer,” the attendant explained. “He wants her fire undiminished.”

She shook him off and snapped the flogger at him. “He can go fuck himself! No human strikes a wolf, especially not a bought-and-paid-for whore like this!”

“I’m not a whore!” I shouted. “I am Sarah Astor! I am the goddess- mother to the children of—”

Someone grabbed my mask and wrenched my head back, which hurt terribly.

“You’re whatever your buyer wants you to be,” a deep voice hissed in my ear. “And it’s time you found out.”