"One dollar," I repeated, my voice barely a whisper as Logan placed my mother's urn on the auction table. The polished clay vessel gleamed under the chandelier light, the intricate patterns of her lineage—patterns I'd traced with my fingertips countless times—now displayed like trinkets for strangers to appraise.
The bidding began immediately.
"Five dollars," called a Beta from the Eastern Pack.
"Ten dollars," countered another.
Each bid felt like a knife twisting in my chest. My mother—reduced to a commodity, her remains treated with less respect than the decorative vases that had sold earlier.
"Fifty dollars," Milana's voice rang out, her red paddle flashing in the air.
I fumbled in my pocket, fingers closing around my medication bottle. My heart was racing, each beat more painful than the last. I needed to take my pill before—
"Two hundred dollars," I managed, raising my paddle with trembling hands.
Logan's eyes narrowed. "Going once..."
The room began to spin slightly. I popped open the medication bottle, tipping one of the small white pills into my palm.
"For the ashes of a rogue," Logan continued, his voice cutting through the murmurs, "going twice..."
I raised the pill to my lips, but before I could swallow it, a shadow fell across me. Milana's expensive perfume enveloped me as she stepped into the Omega section, her smile predatory.
"Such a shame," she said loudly enough for nearby wolves to hear. "Poor little Omega can't even afford to honor her mother properly."
She moved closer, her designer heels clicking against the floor. "What was she anyway? A rogue who couldn't even keep her mate? A failure who died alone?"
My vision blurred at the edges as my heart stuttered painfully. "Please," I whispered, "I need my medication."
Milana's gaze dropped to the pill cupped in my palm. Her smile widened as she deliberately placed her heel on my hand and pressed down.
"Oops," she said with mock innocence as my fingers splayed open, the precious pill rolling across the floor.
I gasped, trying to reach for it, but Milana increased the pressure, grinding her heel into my knuckles. Pain shot up my arm as tears sprang to my eyes.
"You know what's pathetic?" she continued, leaning down so only I could hear her next words. "A weak, worthless Omega who can't even protect what matters most."
Around us, pack members snickered and whispered. Some recorded the humiliation on their phones. Others looked away, unwilling to intervene.
"Let go," I pleaded, my chest tightening dangerously.
"Make me," Milana whispered back, applying more pressure.
I tried to pull away, but my strength was fading as my heart condition worsened. Black spots danced at the edges of my vision.
"Five hundred dollars," I gasped, raising my paddle with my free hand.
Logan's expression darkened. He nodded to two warriors standing nearby. "Restrain her."
The warriors moved with practiced efficiency, one grabbing my raised arm while the other twisted the paddle from my grasp.
"She has no right to participate in pack business," Logan announced to the room. "An Omega bidding on pack assets is against our laws."
"She's bidding on her own mother!" someone called from the back.
Logan's eyes flashed dangerously. "Silence!"
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a bundle of folded papers—letters, I realized with horror. My mother's letters. The ones I'd kept hidden in my apartment, her private words to me.
"Since we're discussing rogues," Logan said coldly, "let's examine what kind of woman she really was."
He unfolded one letter, his eyes scanning its contents. Then, with deliberate slowness, he held it over a candle on the auction table.
"No," I whispered, struggling against the warriors' grip.
The paper caught fire instantly, curling and blackening as Logan dropped it onto an empty plate.
"Such pathetic devotion to a rogue's life," he mocked, unfolding another letter. "Listen to this: 'My dearest Sunny, I dream of the day we'll be free from this pack's cruelty.'"
Tears streamed down my face as he burned letter after letter, each flame consuming my mother's words to me—her hopes, her fears, her love.
"Stop," I begged, my voice breaking. "Please stop."
But Logan continued methodically, his Alpha aura pulsing with cold satisfaction as he destroyed the last physical connection I had to my mother.
The room filled with the acrid smell of burning paper and the sound of my broken sobs as the warriors held me immobile, forced to watch as my past turned to ash before the entire werewolf community.
