All Chapters of BOUGHT BY CRUELEST ALPHA: Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

I am the prison. The boundary-realm. The walls. The air. The roots beneath. And the Unraveler is inside me.It shouldn’t hurt. I’m not flesh anymore. Not really. But it does. Gods, it does. Every drip of ichor is a needle of wrongness burrowing into the fabric of me, warping the trees into grotesque, pulsing things, turning the rivers into sluggish veins of half-clotted time. I can feel the infection spreading—tendrils of corruption threading through my borders, whispering in a voice that isn’t sound, just pressure against the inside of my skull.Lily.Not my name. Not really. Just the shape of it, warped and hollow. The Unraveler doesn’t speak. It echoes.I try to ignore it. Focus on the pain instead. The physical wrongness of the ichor seeping into the soil, the way the air shudders when I breathe (do I breathe? I don’t know anymore). The Child is here, somewhere—small and bright and terrified, flitting through the mutated undergrowth like a ghost. I feel her presence like a hand pr

The Garden’s wild magic has always felt like sunlight through leaves—warm, messy, alive. Now it’s… sharp. A wire pulled too tight. Every breath feels like it might cut me from the inside.He’s here. Or—what’s left of him.I can’t look straight at Arthur without my stomach folding in on itself. The edges of him bleed into the air, like smoke trying to decide if it wants to be shadow or flame. His eyes aren’t his eyes. Not the brown that used to ground me. They’re glassy, pale green, light bending wrong in them, and when he tilts his head the way he used to when he was teasing me, it’s not teasing now. It’s calculation.The Council’s corruption has wrapped around him like barbed wire, threaded into the shape of a man I remember holding my hand on the ridge above the old city, whispering about building something better. My chest hurts. Not from the running—though I’ve been running since the wards fell—but from the way memory keeps stabbing through me.He takes a step forward. Not loud. N

"He never loved you, Lily. Just the power he sensed. Kieran was always mine."My heart jackhammers, just like then. Betrayal, hot and sour, floods my mouth. I spin, reaching for the energy dagger hidden in my boot sheath – the one I used last time, the time before, the time before that. But my fingers brush empty leather. Where—?The scene flickers. Not the penthouse. The sterile white lab. Arthur, eyes cold and alien, holding the neural inhibitor. "This will make you pliable, my dear. Necessary sacrifices." The prick on my neck. The terrifying numbness spreading. I lash out with a psychic scream, just like last loop—Flicker. Dissolution. The deck plates cold. My hand… blurring. Dissolving into void-motes. The Child’s distant, horrified gaze. The crushing loneliness. I try to hold onto me, just like before—Snap.Back to the marble. Arthur’s smug smile. Kieran’s face, pale and agonized in the doorway behind him, trapped, mouthing ‘Run!’ like always. The loop resets. The trap closes.

A Garden. My Garden. But… wrong. So terribly wrong. The vibrant, weeping chaos of my wild growth is mirrored here in razor-sharp order. Crystal trees grow in mathematically precise grids, leaves like shards of stained glass catching sterile light. Rivers flow in straight lines, bubbling with engineered nutrients, devoid of sentient fish or whispering currents. Vines snake with predatory efficiency, thorns gleaming like surgical steel. It’s a Null Garden. Cloned. Grown from the tissue they scraped off me during a hundred captures, a thousand experiments. My stolen flesh, twisted into this… this parasite.The pull intensifies. A grinding suction deep in my cosmic gut. It’s not just draining. It’s claiming. Recognizing its source material. Seeing me as… fuel. A component to be assimilated. My realm shudders. Mountains groan as if roots are being pulled. Rivers slow, their waters pulled towards the geometric horror looming in the void. Failure isn't death. It's becoming lunch for my own r

The pressure is… everywhere. Inside. Outside. Me. The fused agony of the Unraveler vibrates through every atom, a constant, silent scream vibrating in the roots of the black aster deep in its heart. A counterpoint: the Wild Gardener’s furious thrashing. It tears at the merged Gardens within me, fractal thorns ripping through weeping memory-vines, supernova eyes blazing hatred at the very walls of its existence. My realm-body groans, mountains cracking like eggshells, rivers of ichor and sterile coolant boiling into steam. A cosmic powder keg. And I am the fuse, the casing, the explosion waiting.Can’t hold. Can’t hold. CAN’T HOLD!The plea isn't spoken. It radiates. A psychic shriek tearing from my fracturing consciousness, aimed at the only anchor left. The Child. Diminished, aged, a flickering ember of starlight standing on the shuddering observation deck – the last stable point in my dissolving self. Their face, lined with cosmic aeons and recent sorrow, is a mask of impossible wei