<h4>Chapter 379: Chapter 379 MERCHANDISE</h4>


    CELESTE’S POV


    Thest thing I remembered before everything fell apart was the sound of the elevator doors sliding shut.


    Brett had walked away without looking back, leaving me standing in the hallway of the Vesper Grand Hotel with more questions than answers and my pride burning like acid in my chest.


    I chased after him without thinking.


    I never reached the elevator.


    A hand mped over my mouth from behind. Another arm wrapped around my waist, dragging me backward before I could even scream.


    Something sharp and chemical soaked into the cloth pressed against my face, and the world tilted violently as darkness rushed in.


    When I woke again, I was in chains.


    At first, I thought I was still dreaming. My head throbbed with a dull, relentless pain. Every part of my body felt heavy and sluggish, as though I had been submerged underwater for hours.


    The air smelled of oil, rust, sweat, and something sour that churned my stomach.


    It took several long seconds for the reality to settle in.


    I was sitting on the metal floor of a moving truck.


    Chains bound my wrists to the floor, and a heavy cor weighed against my throat.


    Around me were other girls—some crying quietly, some staring nkly ahead as if their minds had already retreated somewhere far away.


    That was when I realized what had happened.


    I had been taken.


    The organization that purchased us specialized in supplying beautiful women to wealthy clients.


    At least, that was the part they didn’t bother hiding. Politicians, businessmen, Alphas who valued discretion more than morality—those were the kinds of men who paid extraordinary sums to indulge themselves.


    I learned that much quickly enough.


    What I didn’t understand at first was that the brothel was only one piece of a muchrger operation.


    That truth cameter.


    At the beginning, my attention was focused on something much more immediate: surviving.


    The men guarding us treated us like livestock. Theyughed when I demanded to know where I was being taken.


    When I told them my name, when I informed them exactly who my family was, theughter only grew louder.


    No one believed me.


    Or perhaps they simply didn’t care.


    Even though Kharis was suppressed, I could still feel her sometimes, but this time, I couldn’t.


    They had drugged me before the abduction. Between the drugs and the silver restraints, I couldn’t feel her for two days.


    Two days.


    Two days where I screamed and threatened and demanded they release me.


    Two days where no one cared.


    On the third night, one of the guards came into my cell.


    He thought I was helpless.


    He was wrong.


    The moment his hands closed around my arm, something inside me snapped awake.


    I didn’t fully shift; Kharis was weak from the silver and suppression.


    But fangs emerged before I realized what was happening. The guard barely had time to scream before I tore his throat open, and blood soaked the floor.


    The entirepound descended into chaos.


    After that, everything changed.


    The leader of the organization—everyone called him Severin—took a personal interest in me.


    I never learned whether he believed my ims about my identity, but he certainly believed what he saw that night: Kharis was not an ordinary wolf.


    Noble blood carried a certain...value.


    They moved me out of the cell after that. The room they gave me was marginally morefortable, though still filthy by any reasonable standard.


    There were guards posted outside the door at all times, and cameras installed in the corners of the ceiling.


    That was where I met Olivia.


    She was assigned as my maid. At first, I assumed she was just another servant working for the organization.


    I treated her ordingly.


    Cold. Dismissive. Sometimes cruel.


    But Olivia never reacted as I expected. She met my temper with quiet patience, replying to my sharp remarks with a small, polite smile.


    It took several days before I realized something unusual was happening.


    Whenever a guard grew too aggressive, Olivia appeared. Whenever Severin lingered too long in my room, she managed to redirect the conversation or create some excuse to end the visit.


    Eventually, I confronted her.


    “Why are you helping me?” I demanded one night.


    She hesitated before answering.


    “Because I saw what your wolf did.”


    The memory of that moment still lingered vividly in my mind.


    “You’re not lying about who you are,” she said quietly. “Wolves like yours don’te from nowhere.”


    That was the first time anyone in that ce had believed me.


    When I asked why she cared, Olivia told me about her sister, a younger girl who had disappeared years earlier after being taken by traffickers.


    Olivia had spent years searching for any trace of her, and she believed the organization that held us might know what had happened.


    Helping me escape, using the Lockwood influence, she thought, might finally give her the chance to find her sister again.


    It was a desperate gamble.


    But by then, we both understood desperation.


    So we made an alliance.


    Over the following weeks, we began to n.


    She had more freedom than I did, so she memorized the guards’ patrol patterns.


    Gradually, through careful observation, she pieced together a rough map of thepound, studying it until she found the smallest possible weakness in their security.


    Somewhere along the way, our arrangement shifted into something moreplicated.


    She began treating me with a gentle affection that went far beyond what our n required.


    When my hair became tangled, she brushed it carefully.


    Whenever she could, she smuggled better food into my room.


    Sometimes I caught her watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite ce—soft, almost affectionate.


    Eventually, I realized who she must have been seeing when she looked at me: her lost sister. It exined the care in her actions, motivated by a hope to save what was left of her family through me.


    I never acknowledged it.


    But the truth was, through each endless, wretched day, Olivia turned that horror into something almost bearable. Her quiet presence fought off the worst of the loneliness, and I clung to it far tighter than I ever dared admit.


    I only understood how much that mattered when everything fell apart.


    When it was time to escape, chaos erupted through the corridors like wildfire.


    We almost made it.


    But almost wasn’t enough.


    Guards flooded thepound before we could reach the outer gate.


    Olivia stayed behind to distract them while I ran. Kharis fought with everything she had left, but the silver and the sedatives had weakened her too much—not to mention that she had been suppressed for so long.


    They caught me before I could reach freedom.


    By the time they dragged me back inside thepound, both of them—Olivia and Kharis—were gone.


    The memories, although faded now, still haunted me.


    The fierce determination in Olivia’s eyes just as the bullet tore through her body.


    The feeling of Kharis giving thest bit of her essence to protect me.


    Severin was furious.


    Several guards were dead, rms had been triggered across the entire facility, and the damage to their operations was significant.


    He had already begun nning exactly how he intended to punish me for it.


    But before he could carry it out, a buyer appeared.


    An elderly man with more money than dignity paid an enormous sum to im me exclusively as his personal concubine.


    Thepound buzzed with excitement once the deal was finalized. To them, it was a victory. A troublesome prisoner had suddenly be their most valuable sale.


    Preparations began immediately.


    They bathed me, dressed me in silk, and fastened jewelry around my throat as if I were some kind of ornament being prepared for disy.


    I sat in front of the mirror while they worked, watching my reflection with detached disbelief.


    Merchandise.


    That was what I had be.


    On the night I was meant to be presented to that man, the door opened.


    I expected to see the guards returning to escort me to whatever private suite this old man had prepared for his purchase.


    Instead, someone else stepped inside.


    She was tall, poised, dressed in elegant ck that moved around her like shadowed silk.


    Even before I fully processed her face, the sheer force of her presence filled the room with the kind of quiet authority that made everyone instinctively straighten.


    For a brief, disorienting moment, I wondered if I was hallucinating.


    “Catherine?” My voice came out hoarse with disbelief.


    She dismissed the guards with quiet authority before approaching me.


    For a moment, she simply studied my face.


    There was no shock in her expression. No concern. Only a thoughtful, measuring look that made something uneasy twist in my stomach.


    “You’ve been through quite an ordeal, Celeste,” she said gently.


    Relief crashed into me so suddenly that my knees nearly gave out.


    “What are you doing here?” I asked, still in awe.


    She never answered that question. Never exined how she’d found me and how she wielded the authority to take me.


    “If you want your wolf back,” she said softly, “you’lle with me.”


    The words stopped me cold. All other inquiries took a back seat.


    “The damage done to her can be undone,” she continued. “But not here.”


    “Where?” I asked, my mind racing as hope and suspicion collided violently in my chest.


    “In the Maldives.” Her smile was soft and sweet. "You loved it there once, remember?"


    I remembered.


    And so I went with her.


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