Semua Bab BOUGHT BY CRUELEST ALPHA: Bab 41 - Bab 50

The First Alpha is a trapped star going supernova inside me, burning white-hot fury, clawing at the walls of my mind, my soul, the very air. Every breath tastes like ash and ozone, scrapes my lungs raw. The air crackles, alive with frantic energy, snapping blue-white sparks off the bone-white bars that glow with the Child’s desperate power.Hold. Just hold.But the Child… gods, the Child. Their small hand grips mine, slick with sweat or tears or both, trembling violently. I feel their terror, a raw, jagged thing sawing through the psychic link we’re clinging to. Feel the immense, crushing weight of anchoring my soul while the Alpha tries to tear it free. It’s too much. Too big for them. Their little whimpers are knives in my heart. I’m hurting them. I’m killing them."Annnchoooorrr…" The Alpha’s voice is a landslide in my head, grinding, immense. He hurls himself against my consciousness. The bone cage shrieks, a high-pitched fracture spiderwebbing up one bar. Outside, the bleeding fo

Whispers. Always whispers. From the walls. From the dark corners where the shadows pool too thickly. From the cracks in my own mind. Fragments drift past, sharp and meaningless. Kieran’s face, younger, holding a knife slick with blood that looks like mine. Arthur’s roar, choked off. The Child’s first cry. Then gone. Slipping through the holes in my memory like water through shattered glass.The Child tugs my hand. Their fingers are cold. Too cold. "This way, Mama. The wards… they itch less here."Itch. That’s one word for it. The asylum’s magic scrapes against my raw spirit. Wards meant to hide, to protect, recoiling from the damage. From the absence the Alpha left. Sometimes, when the Child’s power flares – a panicked spark to push back a creeping shadow or quiet a sudden scream from the walls – the wards shriek. Like metal tearing. The air tastes like burnt hair.I stumble after them. My legs feel like damp sand. Leadership sits wrong on their small shoulders. Too heavy. I see it in

Arthur’s voice slithers through the trees, a rasp of bark and wind. "They know we’re coming." I don’t see him. Not fully. Just glimpsesa shadow between the trunks, the glint of eyes like dark water, fingers that are more root than flesh. He’s not a man anymore. The forest ate him. Chewed him up and remade him into something wilder, angrier. Something that hates. The Child stops. Their breath hitches. The Mirror shard trembles, its surface swirling with fractured images a sky choked with smoke, wolves with hollow eyes, a great black maw opening in the earth. "It’s starting," they whisper. The air changes. A pressure, thick and wet, pressing against my eardrums. The scent of ozone and rotting meat. The eclipse isn’t here yet, but the world knows it’s coming. The trees shudder. The ground beneath us hums, a low, sick vibration that travels up my legs, into my ribs, rattling my teeth. Then A howl. Not from the forest. From inside me. The Alpha’s voice, Kieran’s voice, the en

The Child floats.Not flying. Drifting. Suspended a few feet above the epicenter of the blast crater, where the Hierarch detonated, where the Kieran-Alpha entity finally shattered. \Their small body is limp, arms outstretched, head lolled back. Eyes wide open, blind and glowing with an impossible light – cold, pure, terrifyingly empty. The Weaver’s power. It pours through them, a river of chaotic energy trying to contain the dissolving storm of the entity’s remnants, Kieran’s fractured soul-shards, and the land’s unleashed curse. It’s too much. It’s eating them alive from the inside."Too big," I try to rasp, but my throat is shredded. The words are dust. Too big for them. Taking them. Leaving nothing.The storm rages around them. Not wind. Essence. Tendrils of shadow that scream with the Alpha’s rage. Shards of light that weep with Kieran’s regret. Gouts of dark earth and crimson sap – the battlefield’s ancient, festering pain. It whips, lashes, threatens to tear the Child apart or

They coil in the hollow spaces of my ribs, slither behind my eyes, press against the inside of my skull like fingers testing the strength of glass. Kieran’s voice is the worst. Not the Alpha’s growl, not the land’s weepinghis. My brother’s ghost, trapped in the prison of my bones, murmuring apologies, pleas, fragments of memories that sting like salt in a wound."Lily, I didn’t mean""You left me""The knife was supposed to save you"I dig my nails into my palms. The sharp bite of pain is an anchor. Real. The wooden cup in my other hand trembles, water sloshing over the rim. I’m supposed to be drinking. Resting. Healing.I haven’t slept in three days.Across the fire, the Child sits too still. Their fingers trace patterns in the dirtnot random. Symbols. Weaver’s glyphs. Their eyes are distant, fixed on something beyond the flames, beyond the crumbling walls of this makeshift sanctuary. They haven’t spoken since dawn. Not a word. Not even when I burned breakfast, when the wind howled t