The Heir's Breeder

1

I hate my name. Fate. Fate brought my parents together. Fate brought me into the world. Fate finally gave them a daughter. So they named their last child after the thing that was so precious to them.

Fate has a horrible sense of humor.

When I shifted for the first time and my scent started to show at eight, Fate decided to give me the worst fate possible: breeder. Highly coveted because of the lack of fertility amongst werewolf females, I spent two years in hiding before one of the sellers found me. There was next to nothing that could have been done. My parents had no rank and no ten-year-old gets marked to stake a claim. Most wolves don't get marked period.

I have always been the youngest in the barn the sellers used to house us. My sisters are more fertile, but I am the only breeder. Their heats expose them—my scent does.

The barn has housed me for nine years; I rarely leave it. There is enough room for me to walk around and no insulation so I get "fresh" air. We are all coveted. Males pay entirely too much to breed one of my sisters. Just one pregnancy costs an arm and a leg, rarely is anyone bought and taken. The only way out is when you are deemed "too old" to breed. They are lucky to be gone, but I wish their fate wasn't the same as mine.

For my sisters, they are on rotation to be bred. In order to guarantee a pup as much as possible, they are only available during a heat cycle, giving them three months of reprieve. I am not the same— my heat will guarantee a pup. Breeding at any time has such a high likelihood of producing a pup, that I do not need to align to those times.

No one has paid for me, yet. My first heat happened just over a month ago, which means I can officially bare pups. Males have come for me. They started the very next day after my heat finished. I've had to stand in the room with them. The sellers poke and prod at me so the males can examine my body, standard for any female being sold, and then I just stand there while they try to haggle the price down. It never works. The sellers will not budge on my price, I am too valuable.

So I was not concerned when they pulled me today. It was colder outside than in the barn and my eyes hurt from the sunlight. I wrapped my arms around my bare body and followed, head down—submissive. They never check if I am following them and I could run now. It's not the guards that stop me from that, it's the world. There is nowhere where I would be safe. At least here I know what is going on. At least here I am treated with some value.

That thought makes me wince: my sisters are not.

The male waiting in the room is small— smaller. Though all males are taller than me. He is average in every way possible, except for his clothes. He dresses like he has money, but so do a lot of males. My seller wastes no time once we enter, immediately giving information about be, height, age weight. No name. According to the sellers, I have none. My sisters still use my name but no one else.

Then the male examines my body. Any part he wants to see, he is allowed. The seller moves me to his pleasure, lifting my arm, raising my leg, and turning me around until the male is happy. Once the male indicates that he is satisfied, my seller starts on how much I cost.

"How much to buy her permanently," the male asks. My face goes pale. No one had asked this yet. I am deathly still and the world goes quiet save for some ringing in my ears. To own me. Permanently. Surely I would never be permanently sold. It would cost too much, the sellers can profit more if I stay here. And this male? He disgusts me in every way. I do not want to spend the rest of my life in service to him.

Hands wrap around my arms and I am moved around. Thank goodness, they are taking me away—no deal was made.

Only, we don't go back the way we came. My seller takes me down a different corridor. We enter a room I had never been to before. A female comes up to me and drags me past a wall jutting out in the middle of the room and pulls me under a nozzle. Cold water rains down on me and the female violently scrubs my skin raw. She pours the water on my head too and puts some substance in it before immediately rinsing it out. Afterward, she quickly dries me off and then puts something over my body. For the first time in years, I am wearing clothes. A thin, small dress that barely covers me, but it is still clothes.