Claimed by the Alpha and the Vampire Prince: Masquerading as a Man Chapter 81: Market Of Horrors

CLARE – POV

I woke to the sound of dripping.

Not water — thicker. Slower. Wet, rhythmic splatters echoing off stone.

My eyes fluttered open, then imdiately squeezed shut again. The dim torchlight stung, and the air... gods, the air was wrong. Not just cold — rotten. Like mold and at and the acidic burn of old blood.

I was lying on my side. Bars curved around . Iron. Thick. Close together. A cage.

A dog cage.

No... bigger than that.

For sothing bigger.

Like .

Voices muttered beyond the bars. Low. Gravelly. Foreign. The kind of language that slithered through the ear canal like oil and left you feeling filthy just for hearing it.

I opened my eyes again — slowly this ti.

They were going to tear apart.

I could feel it—like a promise, thick in the air. The two... things—hulking and misshapen, their jaws stretched too wide, teeth yellowed and jagged—crawled toward my cage on all fours. Saliva dripped in long strings from their mouths, eyes glowing with a hunger I wasn’t ant to understand.

I backed into the corner of the cage, the bars cold and rusted behind . My fingers curled so tightly around the wire sh my nails bled. They weren’t wolves, or goblins, or anything I could na. Just monsters. Raw and wrong.

They were inches away.

Then—a voice.

Harsh, guttural, and loud enough to crack the tension like a whip. It ca from behind them, snapping through the air like fire. The creatures froze mid-lunge, whimpering as if struck. They fell back imdiately, cowering. Their tails—yes, tails—tucked between their hind legs. Like dogs caught disobeying.

I couldn’t understand the words. The language was coarse and full of glottal stops, like rocks scraping together. But the aning was clear enough.

Obey.

I looked up. The one who had spoken stood taller than the others, cloaked in shadow and tattered fur, skin gray and gnarled. Its eyes were glassy black—no whites, no pupils, just void. It didn’t look at . It didn’t need to.

It owned everything in this place.

And it had just saved .

My relief lasted all of five seconds.

Because then I looked around.

Rows and rows of cages. Dozens of them. So held two people. Others only one. All humans. Most were silent, faces pale and hollowed out with terror. So were crying so softly I thought it was wind. Others just stared. Like their minds had already gone sowhere else.

Humans.

So sat in stunned silence, others sobbed or rocked or prayed in whispers. A few had already given up, eyes hollow, chins dropped against chests. One girl on the cage beside — couldn’t have been older than fifteen — was clawing at the cage floor like she was trying to dig her way to hell. Maybe she thought it would be better there.

And maybe she was right.

A movent caught my eye.

A group of goblins — at least ten of them — were gathered just a few feet away. They weren’t child-sized anymore. No, up close they were wrongly proportioned — spindly limbs, distended bellies, long fingers that twitched constantly like spiders. Their eyes glead black, soulless. One gnawed absentmindedly on sothing pale and limp in its claws. I didn’t look too closely.

Above us, torchlight danced on stone. The air was cold, damp, tallic. I realized, with a sick twist, that the cages were stacked on each other. Like kennels. Like we were strays waiting to be picked.

From sowhere in the distance, I heard chains dragging.

Three figures entered, robed and hunched. Old won—or what might have once resembled won. Their skin sagged like lted wax, covered in warts and open sores. One was missing an eye. Another carried a staff with a child’s jawbone tied to the top. The third dragged a pouch that whimpered.

They moved with glee. Grinning with cracked, rotted teeth.

"Show us the stock," one of them croaked.

My heart hamred.

Then ca a sound worse than any of their words.

Cackling.

The three grotesque figures approached — old won, hunched and twisted, like ti itself had tried to strangle them but hadn’t quite finished the job. Their skin was grayish-green, hanging in loose folds. Their hair looked like it had been yanked from corpses.

"We’ll take the fat ones," one crooned, her voice thick and syrupy. "The ones with at."

Another cackled, lifting a twisted finger to point toward a trembling man in the next cage. "That one will roast nicely. Reminds of the village boy I fed to my garden last season."

The goblins obliged, dragging him out, ignoring his screams. He kicked and begged. I couldn’t look. I couldn’t.

Thank god I was slender. Thank god I looked like I hadn’t eaten properly in weeks.

Their eyes passed over like I wasn’t even there.

But it wasn’t rcy.

It was postponent.

A goblin—shorter than the others, eyes gleaming with greed—hurried forward and began unlocking cages. Humans were pulled out one at a ti. A woman scread. A man tried to run and was struck in the leg with a barbed rod, crumpling instantly.

"Ten," one of the hags said. "We need ten with at. No bones. No sick ones."

The goblin nodded eagerly. "Yes, yes. All fresh. All scared. Fear makes the blood sweeter, no?"

They began choosing.

I couldn’t breathe. I pressed so far into the corner of my cage I thought my ribs would break. I tried to make myself small. Invisible.

They didn’t even glance at .

Too thin.

Thank God.

Ten people were taken. Screaming. Pleading. One woman tried to cling to the bars of another cage, sobbing, begging the others to help her. Her nails ripped from her fingers as she was dragged away.

And no one helped.

Because we couldn’t.

I saw where they were taken. Beyond a stone arch lit with flickering green fire. Beyond it, I heard tal grinding. And boiling. And screams.

The sll that ca back after the door swung shut was... cooked flesh.

One man in the cage across from started to scream then. Just scread and scread and scread until he passed out.

I envied him.

I don’t know how much ti passed. Hours. Maybe more.

They didn’t feed us. Water ca once, in filthy bowls shoved between bars. So drank. Others didn’t care anymore.

A girl next to —couldn’t have been older than sixteen—whimpered through the dark. "Where are we?"

No one answered.

What could we say?

This wasn’t Earth anymore. Not the one we knew.

This was below.

A market. A dungeon. A warehouse. A hell for humans where monsters traded us like stolen goods.

I saw things. Vampires. Witches. Things with wings. Things with too many teeth. They ca and went. Bargaining. Haggling. Laughing.

I was invisible in my cage. Too skinny. Too quiet. For now.

But that wouldn’t last forever.

One day, soone would look in and say: "That one."

And there would be nothing I could do.

The cage gave too much ti to think.

About Reed. About blaze. The two creatures I have co to be accustod to. Better the devil I knew than this horror I am currently in.

I told myself one of them would co. I whispered it to myself like a prayer every ti the fear got too big.

But a darker voice always answered: What if they don’t? What if they can’t?

Or worse: What if the think you’re already dead?

That one broke more than the hunger.

But sothing inside wouldn’t let go. Not yet. A single thread of defiance—tiny but strong—held upright.

They didn’t co for that night.

The ten they dragged away were enough to satisfy the hag buyers—for now. But I could still hear them. Their screams never really left. They soaked into the stone. Into the iron bars. Into .

Sleep didn’t co. Not really. I kept drifting in and out of this half-world, caught between fear and hallucination. Every ti I closed my eyes, I was back in the archway, watching skin boil and bones break in bubbling cauldrons. They hadn’t even waited for the screaming to stop before they started chanting.

at. Just at.

My stomach curled. I stopped counting ti. Days, hours, years — all aningless here. The only thing that mattered was when they ca to check the cages. They walked past, tapping the bars like they were inspecting livestock. So laughed. So sniffed the air like dogs.

I started wishing I were soone else. Anyone else.

I started wishing I were dead.

Then sothing changed.

It was faint at first — like thunder rolling far away. But it grew louder. A sound not ant for this place. A howl that wasn’t goblin or hag or vampire.

It was sothing like a howl.

But not normal.

It rattled the bars. Set the torches flickering. Made the goblins freeze in place.

I felt it in my chest before I understood it. A heat that moved under my skin like lightning. My breath caught, and I knew sothing terrible had been unleashed.