All Chapters of BOUGHT BY CRUELEST ALPHA: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

A careless movement. A graze of skin on wood. The scar along my ribs—the one shaped like Kieran's knife—splinters with a sound like breaking glass. Golden light spills out, thick as honey, and suddenly I'm not in my sanctuary anymore. I'm there . The grove. The blood. Arthur's last breath steaming in the winter air. And— Oh god. A Council harvester stumbles through the memory with me, her eyes wide with someone else's horror. She reaches for me, her fingers passing through my chest like I'm the ghost here. The geode's light pulses, pulling her deeper into the past. "Lily!" The Child's voice cuts through the memory like a knife. Their hand clamps around my wrist, yanking me back to the present. The harvester doesn't follow. The geode lies at our feet, its crystalline surface fogged with trapped echoes. The harvester's face presses against the interior, mouth open in a silent scream. The Child pales. "They're mining your scars." I don't need to ask who. The Council'

A low, insistent buzz that isn't sound—it's her . The Archivist's ghost in the wires, whispering through every screen, every flickering light. I press my scarred palms to the nearest data terminal and feel her, a slick, silver presence slithering through Eos's newborn systems. The Child gasps beside me. Their star-flecked eyes reflect something I can't see—Order's nascent consciousness, Eos's newest concept, writhing under the Archivist's invasion. "She's merging with it," they whisper. I know what that means. The Archivist always wanted to be a god. Now she's grafting her twisted ideals onto the purest expression of structure Eos could conceive. The terminal explodes under my hands. Glass shards bite into my palms, but the pain barely registers—my scars are too busy screaming in resonance with the chaos. Black veins throb up my arms, reacting to the corruption spreading through Eos's core. We have to move. Eos's consciousness isn't a place. It's a feeling —the sensati

"Seventeen cycles," I echo. My voice sounds flat. Dead. "Time enough.""Time for what ?" The Child whirls, starlight flaring from their eyes, scorching the deck. "To say goodbye? To tend your flowers ?" The scorn is a physical blow. "We fight! We always fight!"I touch an aster petal. Soft. Fragile. Real. "Fight what, Child? The end of physics? The last tick of the clock?" I turn to them. See the desperation warping their usually composed features. The raw, human terror beneath the cosmic power. "Some things… you just run out of time for."Eos whimpers. The Child slams a fist against the bulkhead. The metal groans, buckles. "NO! We find a way! We bend the rules! We break the damn universe if we have to!" Their light pulses erratically. Dangerous. Uncontrolled. The sheer, futile defiance of it cracks the numbness in my chest. A sharp pang. Not fear for myself. For them . Lost in the storm.I reach out. Not with power. Just my scarred hand. Towards their light. "Child. Please. Do

The Child knows. That thought scrapes across my mind. Raw. I turn, muscles screaming against the unnatural stillness. Little Eira huddles against the bulkhead, knees drawn up, face buried. Her small body trembles. Not crying. Too scared for tears. Her eyes… gods, her eyes are wide open, staring at nothing, seeing everything that’s being eaten. She feels it. The Unraveler. That’s the name that bloomed in her terrified mind, whispered into mine like frostbite. A thing that doesn’t hunt flesh. Hunts is. Hunts reality. Chewing through the fabric of everything like old cloth. It’s not out there. It is the silence. The absence. And it’s spreading. Galactic cluster by cluster. Gone.Panic claws up my throat, metallic and sour. Think. Lily, think. But the silence presses down, smothering thought. It leaches warmth, leaches hope. My hands shake, useless. Anchor points. Need something real. Something solid in this dissolving hell. My gaze snags on the faint, silvery traceries crisscrossing my a

Creatures of starlight and shadow flit through the impossible canopy – beautiful, alien, hungry.And their hunger… it finds me. The anchor. The source. The weak point.A tendril, soft as velvet moonlight, wraps around my wrist. Gentle. Insidious. It doesn’t squeeze. It siphons. A cold pull, deep in my gut, like roots draining marrow. My breath hitches. A wave of dizziness washes over me, leaving my legs trembling jelly. The vibrant green of a nearby leaf seems to dim slightly. Fed. By me."Stop…" The word rasps out, weak. The tendril pulses faintly, a contented thrum against my too-sensitive skin. It doesn’t stop. Another vine brushes my ankle. Another cold pull. My vision swims. Colors bleed at the edges. I feel thinner. Frailer. Like paper held too close to a flame. Eira stands amidst the burgeoning chaos, small face tight with concentration. Her eyes, wide and ancient, track the movements of a predator-bloom unfurling razor-sharp petals near a cluster of Eos’s smaller children. Sh