All Chapters of BOUGHT BY CRUELEST ALPHA: Chapter 131 - Chapter 137

The silence is not an absence. It is a presence. A third entity in the room with us, thick and heavy as wet wool. It has a taste. Metallic. Like sucking on a battery. Like blood on the tongue.The Warden’s warning is a ghost in my mind, already fading under the oppressive weight of the quiet. Twelve hours. Absolute silence. Not a word. Not a projected thought. Not even a strong emotion. The anomaly is a psychic predator. It feeds on resonance. On connection. Your bond is a beacon. Mute it, or it will find you.So we sit. Back to back on the cold deck, as instructed. A position of trust. A position of defense. I can feel the solid weight of him, the rise and fall of his breath. Our shared heart—thump-thump, thump-thump—is the only sound in the entire universe. It’s too loud. Each beat is a drum, a gong, a screaming announcement of our presence. I try to slow it, to calm it, but the effort itself is a spike of anxiety that vibrates through the Graft. I feel Arthur flinch.Stop. Feel not

It’s not a gentle sharing. It’s a violent usurpation. One moment, Arthur is standing by the bed, his face a mask of concern. The next, his eyes widen. A violent shudder wracks his powerful frame. His skin, usually so warm and alive, pales to a sickly gray.“Lily?” he slurs, his voice thick, unfamiliar. He stumbles, catching himself on the bedpost. “I feel… strange.”The role-reversal is instantaneous and bizarre. I am the veteran of fragility. This is my native land. But him? His reborn body, forged in cosmic energy and starlight, has never known something so… banal. So physical. It reacts not with grace, but with a violent, panicked rejection.His fever spikes higher than mine. His chills are seismic, shaking the bed. Through the Graft, I feel it all. The ache in his muscles is a dull, throbbing echo of my own. The pounding in his head is a second, more brutal drum alongside mine. But laced with his experience is a layer of pure, unadulterated panic. His body doesn’t understand this

It’s just there. One morning. Where a wall of throbbing, veined stone was, now there is a door. Plain. Unvarnished wood. A simple brass knob. It doesn’t belong. It’s an obscenity of normalcy in our living cathedral of flesh and stone.We both feel it at the same time. A jolt through the Graft. Not recognition. The opposite. A void. A blank spot in our shared perception. This thing was not made by us. Not by our love, our pain, our power. It is alien. Not with sound. With promise. The idea slips into the space between our thoughts, cool and smooth as a knife blade.*Your life without the Graft. Your individual selves. Just turn the key.*The key. It’s in the lock. A simple, old-fashioned iron key.The temptation is not a thought. It’s a physical pull. A yawning hunger in the pit of my stomach that has nothing to do with Arthur, and everything to do with *me*. Just Lily. Alone in her own skin. The terrifying, glorious silence of her own mind. No shared heartbeat. No borrowed pain. No c