Chapter 13 Sold

• Ivy woke in an unfamiliar room, soft light coming through a window she didn't recognize, and it took her several long minutes to remember where she was and how she had come to be there, the memory of the cell and the sedative and the jolting cart ride arriving in pieces before it finally settled into something whole and unbearable. When the door opened, she braced herself out of five years of practiced instinct for another wolf's cruelty, curling in on herself before she had even seen who it was.
• But the man who found her was not the master she feared. Charles studied the frightened, hollow-eyed woman his own men had delivered to his house the day before and felt something in his chest go cold with understanding, not desire, the understanding of a decent man realizing exactly what had been done in his name while his back was turned, tending his mother and never once asking his men too many questions about how they'd secured extra help so cheaply.
• "What's your name?" he asked, and something gentler than she expected moved across his face, no hunger in it at all, only a kind of tired, careful concern.