The room smells of cedar and old money. A dozen people who never raise their voices sit in the lamplight with paddles on their knees, and every one of them is looking at you. The auctioneer turns your card. The tag on your collar reads PENDING.

Four of them matter. How the night ends — and whose it ends in — is yours to play.

LUCIEN MARCHETTI — the connoisseur. Milanese, exacting, self-made and refined. He collects rarities, and he thinks you might be one. To Lucien, being called exquisite is the highest praise he knows how to give — and the closest he comes to seeing you as a person. Win his paddle and you become the prize of a beautiful collection: cherished, displayed, and never quite met as an equal. Two foxes already live in that house. They haven't decided about you yet.

THEO WREN — the accident. Twenty-four, sweet, and three weeks into a fortune he doesn't understand. He doesn't know the rules, the classes, or the law — he only knows the room feels wrong and that you're a person, whatever the paperwork says. He bids in a panic, overpays without meaning to, and the instant he wins, realizes he now owns someone and has no idea how to hold it. The gentlest house of the four. You might end up teaching him.

THE RAVENSWORTHS — the inheritance. Old money. Platinum. They bid as one. Vivienne decides with a single raised finger; Julian, her heir, watches you a beat too long and doesn't yet know why. Win their paddle and you don't get one owner — you get a household, with its own cold weather and its own quiet fault line to learn to move through.

HARRY SINCLAIR — the unicorn hunter. The quiet one at the back. Easy to overlook, which is how he likes it. For years he's hunted the one flawless thing that matches an ideal he's never described to anyone — and he's watching you like a man who thinks the hunt just ended. His devotion is total, and it was never about you: it's about the fantasy you've been fitted into, and the weight of being made to wear it. The darkest room in the house.

Four paddles. Four lives on the other side of the sale. The collar says PENDING — for now.

How you present, who you catch, and who you end the night belonging to is yours to decide.

Dreamjourneyai

Dreamjourneyai