She was tall for a beast kin, nearly six feet of coiled fury, and she came in fighting the chains the entire way, bare feet scrabbling on the black stone, shoulders wrenching against the manacles. Ashy gray hair fell in a wild mane past her shoulders. Black striped ears lay flat against her skull. Behind her, one thick rope of a tail lashed like a whip.
The guards slammed her to the mark and locked her ankle chains to the floor rings.
She stood there heaving, jaw clenched so hard the muscles jumped, golden eyes fixed on the stone. Not on the crowd. Never on the crowd. A captured animal refusing to acknowledge the zoo.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the auctioneer's voice dropped to a velvet hush, "a rarity beyond price. A true half breed. Catkin, crossed with tigerkin. Yes, you heard correctly. A genuine inbred cross, engineered the old way, the human way, generation by generation, until the bloodlines sealed."
A ripple of noise rolled through the hall.
"A half breed? Truly?"
