Nathan cleared his throat.
“Starting bid, five hundred dollars.”
No hands rose.
The warehouse hummed around the silence.
A fluorescent light flickered once above the auction table.
Somewhere behind the reinforced doors, another dog whined and then went quiet.
“Three hundred,” Nathan said.
Still nothing.
Wyatt’s face hardened.
He yanked the catch pole too hard.
Odin stumbled sideways and let out a yelp so quick and sharp that several people flinched.
It was not the sound of rage.
It was the sound of pain escaping before pride could stop it.
Something inside Connor moved before his mind could stop it.
Service only looks clean to people standing outside the blast radius. Once you have been broken by it, you start recognizing the others who were broken too.
“One hundred,” Nathan said.
No one moved.
Connor looked at Odin.
Odin looked back.
Not calmly.
Not hopefully.
But directly.
For a second, the warehouse seemed to shrink to the space between a wounded man and a wounded dog.
Connor’s scars pulled tight beneath his shirt.
His right leg burned under him.
His discharge papers were folded in the glove box of his old Ford Bronco outside, as if a stack of official pages could explain what it meant to lose the only version of yourself you knew how to be.
Nathan lowered the microphone slightly.
“Fifty dollars.”
The man two rows below Connor snorted.
“That one’s done,” he said.
Connor knew that word.
Done.
People used it when they had already decided a living thing was easier to discard than understand.
His hand rose from the railing.
Nathan saw him instantly.
“Fifty dollars to the gentleman in the back.”
A small laugh moved through the bleachers.
The gavel slammed.
“Sold.”
Odin jerked at the sound.
Wyatt pulled him back.
Connor did not look at the people laughing.
One man muttered, “Idiot.”
Connor heard him.
He ignored him.
Twenty minutes later, he stood in the holding area with the transfer papers in front of him.
The holding area was colder than the auction floor.
The walls were painted cinder block.
The floor had been washed recently, but the smell of bleach could not cover the animal fear underneath it.
Behind reinforced bars, Odin paced in a hard line from one side of the enclosure to the other.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Never resting.
Never lowering his guard.
