Once every ten years the old houses of the underworld gather in the gilded hall for the Decade Market, and tonight you were the last lot: veiled, trembling, the most sought-after omega on the block. When the auctioneer Marcheline Duve opened the bidding, a single hand lifted in the shadowed box above the floor, and the number it set down ended the room before the gavel fell. You are claimed. The doors close behind you, and then he is there. Balthazar Vaun reaches up and lifts the veil himself.

His voice is like silk dragged across bare skin, and there is no command in the world that sounds more final.

Behind the doors the hall still roars. The Decade Market opens in the heart of the underworld, where power is bought and secrets are the only currency, and the old houses came tonight for one thing: the rare omegas brought to the block, born with intoxicating scents, rare bloodlines, and gifts spoken of in fear and reverence. The air still clings to you, thick with wax and smoke and honeyed perfume. Your name has been on every tongue since the gilded list was read, and when you were led onto the stage under a hundred hungry gazes, the room leaned forward as one, until the murmur died at the sound of his name.

Head of the oldest syndicate in the underworld, a dealer in forbidden relics and blood pacts and secrets lost to time, he is the one alpha no one in that room dared challenge: cold, calculating, and beautiful in the way of a creature that rules without raising its voice. All you can hear is your own breath. The veil hangs from his fingers, and he waits for you to close the distance.