Something yanked her back, the bed groaning. A cuff around her left wrist had been connected to the bed frame. She clawed at it, but a lock kept it in place. They weren’t the same ones the alphas had put on her.
“You’re awake. Good.”That voice.
Alison turned her head to find her father walking into the room, his hands folded behind his back, his chest out. It was as if no time had passed. “Let me go,” she snapped.
He sighed, as though her reaction were disappointing and expected. “I can’t believe you really thought I wouldn’t recognize my own daughter.”
Well, that answers if he knows or not…
He grabbed the chair from the desk and pulled it over until he could sit just outside her reach. “Even twenty years isn’t enough time to forget those eyes. Besides, you’ve grown into a near-identical replica ofyour mother. When I saw you, for a moment, I almost thought you were her.”
Alison yanked the chain again but made no progress. Anger was no match for steel. “Is that what this is? Some creepy replacing-mom thing?”
He lifted his lip in disgust. “I am not some pervert, even if you wish to paint me that way so you can sleep at night knowing your father was a monster. No. You may look like your mother, but you are my daughter, and I have no such inclinations toward you.”
“So why am I here?” She sat on the bed when it became clear she wasn’t going to get free by pulling.Conserve your energy. Look for an opportunity.
“I suspected someone would try to infiltrate my auction, but I didn’t suspect it was them, not at first. They came highly recommended, and perhaps I was naïve due to liking what they said.”
“Are we doing father-daughter catch up time?”
He lifted his dark eyebrow, a look so similar to when she’d been a kid. Why had it terrified her then? Why had she cared so much back then? “I’d hoped you would have settled over the years. In fact, seeing you behaving yourself yesterday gave me hope for the first time in your life that you had learned your place. I see it was part of the ploy, however.”
“I guess neither of us is all that happy with the family we have left.”
“Indeed. Still, it wasn’t easy to catch you alone.”
Alison lowered her gaze as she worked through it. The realization hurt down to her bones. “Anne? You used her?”
“The scouts who took her were not careful. She would have brought almost nothing to the auction, assuming she survived to that point. I didn’t put it alltogether, not at first. I had heard some blonde woman had been asking questions about her. Once I realized it had to be you, the trap was only too simple to bait.”
The anger inside Alison burned through her. Anne had ended up dying because Alison had asked questions, because she’d been a target?
Geoffrey was either unaware or uncaring of Alison’s internal struggle, because he waved over someone from outside the doorway. Galen approached, a pair of bolt cutters in his hands.
Dread settled inside her. She wasn’t an idiot. Sheknewthat people holding bolt cutters around prisoners was a bad thing. She drew her hands into fists out of instinct.
Galen came closer, and when he reached for Alison, she moved.
Being one-handed made her struggle weak, but she adapted. She swung her elbow out and caught him in the jaw, then reached for the cutters. He was stronger, larger, and he had use of both his hands.
The fight didn’t last long, though the blood leaking from his mouth still pleased her, especially when she thought back to the things he’d said about her before. He pinned her to the bed, his weight enough to keep her still, his body above her chest to keep her arms locked to her sides.
“Careful, now. He could cut something on accident if you struggle too much.”
“Wouldn’t want to mar the goods,” she choked out, Galen’s weight enough to make taking full breaths hard. Still, she settled.
Escape was more important than pointless fighting.
The bolt cutters neared her throat, but it wasn’t until they closed over the small padlock there that she realized the plan.
And it set her off, again. The snap as he cut through the lock, as the collar Trent had put on her was pulled free, ran through her. She felt truly naked without it, the skin below cold in a way that sank into her.
“I can’t have you wearing a collar with the wrong name, or one I lack a key to,” he explained.
The collar was tossed to Geoffrey, who caught and examined it. “The odd thing is, I would have believed them. You weren’t faking, not entirely. I can tell, of course, the difference between a woman who submits and one who pretends. It is a valuable skill that has helped protect me from being stabbed by women biding their time.”
Galen got off her, and she managed a hard kick to his ribs before he could quite get away. He snarled back at her, but Geoffrey waved him gone. “I think the funniest part is that all I ever really wanted for you was to find your place.”
