All Chapters of BOUGHT BY CRUELEST ALPHA: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Trees twist like broken bones against a sky the color of a bruise. The air crackles, dry and sharp, tasting of ozone and… old graves. Cursed earth. Blighted things.Then the altar shifts . Not stone settling. A movement within .My breath hitches, lodges somewhere beneath my ribs. Can’t move. Can’t look away. Earth cracks, spills open like a wound. Dark tendrils writhe, thick as roots, glistening wet. They knot, pull, build . A shape coalescing from the muck and shadow. A torso, limbs… a head. Sculpted from the grove’s corrupted heart.Recognition hits like a physical blow. Stomach lurches, bile scalds my throat. Arthur. But not. Oh god, not him. Not really. His face… familiar angles warped. Skin the grey-green of drowned flesh, textured like rough bark. Moss clings where hair should be, veins beneath pulse with a sickly, phosphorescent light. Eyes open. Pupils like shattered obsidian, reflecting nothing but the swirling dark above. Yet… the line of his jaw. The curve of his brow

The Child stands rigid before the largest tear in the air, a jagged rip revealing not sky, but a chaotic, churning vortex of color and void. The Weaver’s tapestry. Or what’s left of it. Their small hands clutch the Mirror shard, knuckles white. Their usual soft light is frantic, strobing. "Go," I rasp, the word scraping my raw throat. "Slow it down. Anchor… I’m here." The promise feels flimsy, stupid, against the unraveling roar. They don’t look back. Just step into the tear. Vanished. Leaving me alone. Alone with the screaming air and the threads.And the threads… they’re mine now. Not metaphorically. Physically. As the Child crosses the threshold, a dozen glowing strands whip down from the ceiling, lashing around my wrists, my arms, my torso. Not binding. Connecting . Searing cold and burning heat all at once. The fabric of here , tied directly into my nervous system. I feel the sanctuary’s agony. Every stone groaning. Every fraying thread a live wire jolting up my spine. I stag

The familiar paths are gone, swallowed by writhing masses of thorned vines thicker than my arm, glistening with a viscous, iridescent slime that burns where it spatters. The air tastes like rust and gangrene, thick enough to choke on. My connection to the roots – that deep, grounding thrum that was Arthur’s gift, his tether – it’s become a live wire of agony. Every dying gasp of the forest, every inch of corruption Arthur forces into it to fight back, jolts through me. My teeth rattle. My vision blurs white with pain. It’s like my own nerves are being pulled out, thread by screaming thread, tied to the grove’s death throes. Move. Have to move. The thought is sluggish, fighting the current of shared agony. The Child flickers beside me, their light dim and cold, fractured by the Tapestry’s wound. They don’t speak. Don’t need to. The grove isn’t just dying. It’s turning. Sentient. Hostile. The vines lash out like serpents. Roots erupt from the corrupted earth, snapping like whips. Tree

I’m in the ruins. Not the grove. Not the sanctuary. My ruins. The wreckage of my own mind. Prison blocks lie in shattered heaps, their walls blown inward, the psychic equivalent of twisted rebar jutting from broken concrete. The corridors that once held Alpha, Hierarch, the Kin—gone. Just jagged edges leading into void. The air hums with residual energy, the aftertaste of detonation. My skin prickles with it. My breath comes in shallow, useless gasps. I don’t have a body here. Not really. I’m just… awareness. A ghost in the rubble. Move. Find something. Before they do. They. Corrupted Arthur. The Devourer’s essence. Both wounded. Both furious. Both still here , somewhere in this wasteland. I feel them like pressure changes before a storm—Arthur’s rage a low, grinding tremor, the Devourer’s hunger a sucking pull against the edges of the void. I drift forward—no, not forward, toward —because direction doesn’t exist here. Just fragments. Echoes. A glint in the deb

My hands shake. Not from exhaustion. From absence . For years, I felt the roots. The deep, anchoring pulse of Arthur’s power woven through this earth. Now there’s just… silence. A hollow where the connection used to live. A shadow falls across the patch of dead earth I’ve been trying to revive. The Child stands over me, holding a dented watering can salvaged from the ruins. Their light is dim today, flickering at the edges like a candle fighting the wind. They don’t speak. Just tilt the can. Water spills over the rim, splashing my boots. "Thanks," I mutter, but the water soaks into the dust and vanishes instantly. Like the ground is drinking memories instead of liquid. The Child crouches beside me, setting the can down with exaggerated care. Their fingers brush the soil, tentative. They’ve been doing that lately—touching things like they’re relearning texture. Like they’re afraid their hands might pass right through solid matter. "Does it hurt?" they ask. I don’t pretend