It took the vessel roughly three to four more days to finally reach land.
It groaned as it scraped against the dock.Mist rolled in thick...wet, heavy, copper scented. Not like ocean mist. This stank of sothing darker. Rotting. Tainted.The taste of salt was overpowered by blood in the air.A signature strait of the Forgotten lands!
Kieran crouched beside Vera in the shadows, his ears trained. His fingers tapped silently on the floor, claws half extended, body tensed.
They had arrived where none from their world were supposed to be found. Yet there was this ’supply chain’ that functioned on a regular basis.
A Council eting was on the cards... but first Kieran had to get Autumn... at all cost... and his gut was screaming that he was close.
This dock... it looked like sothing torn straight from the pages of hell.
The wood beneath the cargo ship was soaked black, warped by decades...no, maybe centuries of soaking up blood and bile. Mangled hooks hung from tal chains, swaying gently in the breeze like wind chis ,calling death. Severed limbs lay strewn across the shallows.
Nobody ever tried cleaning up... apparently.
Kieran’s gaze flicked out through the slats in the hull. His breath fogged the air in front of him. "This place..." he muttered.
Vera shivered beside him, eyes scanning the periter.
A horn bellowed above. tal chains groaned. Then ca the sounds of winches turning and locks being released.
One by one, the sarcophagus-like boxes began to be lowered onto the dock...one crate at a ti.
Kieran pressed deeper into the shadows, pulling Vera down with him.
"I swear," Vera whispered, " she’s a tough one. Look how they are handling those boxes..." (she was clearly referring to the girl Kieran had bound)
They watched as the handlers descended.They didn’t speak.One by one, they unlocked the sarcophagi.One by one, the girls were yanked out.
So whimpered.
So sobbed.
So didn’t move at all.
Kieran’s jaw locked as his gaze darted from one broken figure to another. Dark hair. No. Blonde. Too tall. Too young.Too pale. Wrong curls...
Damn the Moon. Please... not her.
He wasn’t sure what terrified him more...finding Autumn here... or not finding her at all.
"Third row," Vera whispered, nudging him.
He looked.
A girl stumbled out. Dark curls. Pale. Too pale. Her hands went protectively to her abdon as she doubled over.
Kieran’s heart stopped for a mont!
Was it ...?
She turned. Face half lit by the flare of a torch.
Not her!!!
A deep sigh escaped as he breathed again after that montary pause.
But his relief was short lived. Because now...he was back to zero...right where he had begun.
As they watched, it seed like the girls weren’t just drugged. They were being sorted.
Catalogued.
Processed.
The cries grew louder now. One girl tried to run. They let her. Let her sprint halfway across the dock...then a spike jutted up from the ground and skewered her through the ankle. She dropped, howling.
Another handler dragged her back by the hair, head bouncing against the floor like a rag doll.
Vera looked away, fists clenched. "We have to move,Alpha," she hissed.
Kieran shook his head. "Not yet."
He looked back at the dock.
Another crate opened.
Another girl was pulled out.
Still no Autumn.
Vera leaned in. "What if she is not here...I an at all...shouldn’t we go back and look sowhere else?"
"She is," Kieran said, too fast. Too sure.
"You don’t know that..."
"True.But I have a feeling...," he snapped. "Sowhere... she is here...She has to be."
The handlers began sorting the girls. So were dragged toward a structure at the far end of the dock. The rest were pushed into lines. Tagged. Numbered.
So stripped.
Another girl scread as a bracelet burned into her wrist. A number glowed against her skin.
"Fucking monsters," Vera muttered. "They are branding them like cattle."
Kieran’s eyes sharpened. "We follow the branded. The ones that go inside...those are marked for more than just slavery."
"What if they already have her inside?" Vera’s voice cracked.
"Just..." Kieran gritted through his teeth. " Just do as I say! "
He reached down, preparing to offboard...ready to follow wherever the line led."Ti to earn your part," he muttered as his ring tinged, the girl he had bound, ca to his clear view.
The girl swallowed.She paused before erging onto the dock, looking back at Kieran one last ti.
"Unload them," a man barked. "And check the chains. Last batch, two got loose."
Chains clinked.Feet shuffled through muck... blood... filth.
The girls were dragged forward...chained at the ankles and wrists, bound together like a herd of cattle being led to slaughter. Their hair was tangled, their faces sared with soot and tear tracks, eyes hollow from fear and...unspoken horrors.
Kieran and Vera followed at a distance, hooded,low.They kept their movents fluid beneath the swaths of torn canvas they had draped over themselves. They didn’t speak. Didn’t breathe too loud.Every footstep seed priced.
The stench was getting worse the further they moved.
Vera’s boots squelched through a puddle of dark liquid.She didn’t ask what it was...just gagged quietly. Her hand trembled against her chest, clutching the vial of masking scent they had already used twice in the last couple of days.
She leaned towards Kieran. "They are going to sll through it if we get too close."
Kieran didn’t answer. Instead, he ducked his hand into a mound of ash piled near the base of an old shrine they passed.He rubbed the ash between his fingers, then scooped more and sared it across his own face.
Then he turned to Vera.
"Don’t," she said, backing up slightly.
"You want to blend in or not?" Kieran muttered, and without waiting, he grabbed her chin and sared the black soot across her cheeks, down her nose, and into her brow.
"Damn! Fuck!!! It reeks!" she snapped under her breath, jerking her face away.
"Good," he whispered. "ans it’s gonna work."
They kept moving, weaving between the shadows of warped wooden stalls and burnt out tents. This wasn’t a dockyard anymore. It was a bazaar...though not like any market they had ever seen on their land.
Flesh for coin. Pain for pleasure.
Everywhere they looked, it looked like a twisted reality. There were cages...stacked. Girls, boys, won, even creatures Kieran couldn’t na. Most were gagged, tagged, so with brands that still sizzled.
"Don’t look too long," Kieran muttered, yanking Vera back as her eyes lingered on a stall where a child was being shaved and painted like a doll.
The Wolves there were simply... eerie. They were taller... bulkier... their skin, face, hair... all looked very... very different.
Suddenly Kieran’s eyes looked with a hunched back brute.Kieran stilled but then bowed slightly.Submissive. Non-threatening.
The brute held his gaze for a second too long... then huffed and moved on.
"That was a close one," Vera whispered.
Kieran was about to respond but then stilled...they saw sothing.
It was a large structure in the center of the market covered in banners stitched from skin.
Its entrance arched like the mouth of a skull. Guards flanked the entrance. Above the archway, they noticed a symbol ...a bleeding eye inside a crescent moon.
Kieran grabbed Vera’s arm. "We need to get inside."
Vera narrowed her eyes. "Is that...an auction house?"
He nodded grimly. "Looks like it."
They saw the girls being hurled inside.One girl stumbled. The handler kicked her in the gut. She folded.
Kieran’s claws flexed.But Vera grabbed his wrist.
They lted into the crowd again, slipping between the vendors. No one noticed...Kieran skillfully picked up ( stole would be the correct word) a small sack of dirt, bones, and what looked like powdered silver...a near extinct charm recipe. He sared so on the back of his hands.
Disgusting.
But it worked.
The closer they got to the entrance, the more the guards ignored them.
"That door..." Vera whispered. "How do we get in?"
Kieran watched the line of handlers dragging the girls in. His eyes darkened. "Sa way they do."
Vera looked at him in horror. "You want to get captured?!"
"No," he said. "We are going to pretend to be handlers. See that cloak stall?"
Vera turned,followed his finger, then nodded."We grab two," Kieran said. "And we walk them in...be confident...act like we belong."
Vera blinked. "Alpha...this is...insane."
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