Page 59 of Betrayed Auctioned Mate

“I could sleep here for a week,” she says against my shoulder. Her slight frame curls around me like a koala.

“We should rest properly,” I say, though the words feel heavy on my tongue. I don’t want this to end. “There’s still a lot to do tomorrow.”

She nods, but neither of us moves. Instead, we lie there in the coalescing light, watching the world brighten under us.

Chapter 29 - Keira

Over the coming weeks, something happens to me. I can’t quite tell what it is, but something significant changes within me, slowly and then all at once.

I move into Ado’s suite. We don’t necessarily mean for it to happen—it just does.

We take each day slowly, or at least, we try to. The reality of the thing is messier. My life seems to be moving incredibly slowly at the same time as it’s passing through my fingers like water.

“You can always go back to your room,” he tells me every night, before we retire to bed. “I can sleep on the couch.”

“You’d swear you hardly knew me,” I laugh. We make it a habit.

Summer is coming fast now, but simultaneously, acutely, the anger that once burned so fiercely inside me cools, hardening and clearing like a sheet of molten glass. It’s as if I can suddenly see through it to the other side where once there was only the hot, opaque glow of my rage.

It’s not that the memories of my captivity all those years ago, of the auction, of being taken, of feeling utterly powerless, have disappeared. They’re still there, imprinted in the back of my mind. But they no longer hold the same power over me they once did.

I have fewer nightmares. Ado won’t say it, but he’s having less of them too.

What’s most surprising, though, is how I’ve come to accept the blood bond—not just as a fact of my life, but as something that has shaped it for the better. At first, I thought Iwould always resent it, that it would be this chain binding me to Ado against my will. But now, knowing all that I know, knowing all that he’d do for me… it’s not like that at all. It feels more like a fountain than a tether, releasing energy and warmth into my life more than it holds it down. I stop fighting it. I let it spread out beneath me, and I spread my arms and fall.

With this peace comes the realization that I love Ado.

I love him like coming home after a long journey: fully, completely, in a way that leaves me breathless. It’s not the sudden, overwhelming love of a storybook romance but a quiet, steady thing that’s grown over time, nurtured by every shared memory, every word unspoken but understood.

Sometimes, I still find myself looking back. I don’t know when it started—maybe it was there from the beginning, long before either of us realized it. But I know it’s real now, as real as the blood flowing through our veins.

I try to tell him all the time. I want him to know it’s real.

The pack has become my family, too, in ways I never imagined. I am added to the sacred group chat—my biggest victory since moving to Rosecreek, I joke—and welcomed with open arms as not only Ado’s mate, but a member of the pack in my own right.

The girls are thrilled. Olivia has become a sister to me; her quiet strength is something I’ve come to rely on. She’s been through so much herself, and she understands me in a way that only someone who’s walked a similar path can. We don’t always have to talk about it, but I know she’s there when I need her, and I’m there for her, too.

“You, Rosa, and I have to go for a girls’ trip sometime soon, out to the mountains,” Olivia promises me one morning over breakfast. “We’d be an unstoppable team.”

I imagine running the mountains with them, transformed, the wind in our faces, the stars blinking over this new world I get to live in. There’s nothing I’d love more.

“You need to have that purple-haired baby first,” I tease, and she bursts out laughing as if there’s a joke I’m not yet in on but will be soon.

Maisie, too, has become a close friend. Her sweet nature and gentle presence are a balm to my soul. She’s shy at times, but we’ve grown close through the quiet times, the shared cups of tea late at night when neither of us could sleep. She’s been a steady presence, always there with a kind word or a soft smile when I needed it most.

One day, she told me bashfully that I made her feel braver. It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.

I get along with the boys just fine. Half of the time, it’s like nothing has changed since our army days, when I was one of them, and it wasn’t up for discussion. On my first day back in the gym after our ordeal, sparring with Rafael, I manage to flip him onto the mat within the first ten seconds, and Percy hollers from the sidelines—he hoists me onto his shoulders, and I scream, cackling, as laughter ricochets around the high echoing walls like bells announcing my victory.

I’ve been on my own for so long that sometimes, early in the morning, when the world is still dark, I wake and think I’m back where I was. Did I sleep through my alarm? My sight blurry with sleep, I hear the phantom buzz of people and cars on the street outside, under my tower block.

I move, and Ado’s strong arms slide around my waist.

“Morning,” he mutters against the back of my neck, then falls asleep again.

Every day, I find myself relying more and more on the people around me. I wake up to the smell of coffee brewing in the kitchen, Olivia already up and working. She and Byron are house-hunting for a place in downtown Rosecreek where they can have and raise their baby, whose gender they’ve decided will stay a surprise until it’s born.

We share quiet mornings together, the silence between us comfortable and easy. We talk sometimes, but more often than not, it’s the unspoken understanding that brings us closer.

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