Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
REIYANA
C onsciousness came in uneven waves, dragging her upward. Her head throbbed with the ship’s sway, each pulse hammering behind her temples, throat raw with every swallow. She shifted, pain flaring at her wrists where coarse bindings bit into her skin.
Instinct urged her to move, and she managed to roll onto her side.
Her wrists, bound together, pressed awkwardly against her chest, but at least she wasn’t tethered to anything.
Fire licked up her arms, limbs sluggish and distant—like she no longer fully belonged to her body, only to the ache it carried.
A voice slipped through the haze, low and familiar. Soft, almost like a whisper of goodnight.
“You’re awake?”
Her eyelids fluttered as the world around her swam in muted, unfocused shadows. The room tilted slightly, and she blinked hard, forcing her vision into clarity. It took several heartbeats before the cabin’s dim light resolved into a shape.
Castiel.
He lounged in a chair tucked in the corner. His coat lay draped across its back; his waistcoat unbuttoned, shirt open at the collar. He looked unsettlingly relaxed, as though her presence, wrist-bound and vulnerable on the bed, was nothing out of the ordinary.
She lifted her arms again, only to feel the rough bite of a rope, coarse fibres gnawing at her skin. Panic rippled through her.
“Wh-What . . . ?” Her voice cracked. She swallowed hard, but her throat remained parched, her words rough and slurred. “Why . . . are my hands tied?”
His gaze betrayed nothing, as if her question required no more effort than one might give an idle remark about the weather.
“So you won’t do anything reckless.”
The detached tone of his answer, the illogicality of it, hit like a slap. She shook the ropes, panic surging with each attempt, but every shift only drove the restraints tighter, chafing her.
Her pulse thudded in her ears, mind racing to catch up.
“Untie me,” she croaked, desperate to inject some authority into her voice despite its rawness. “If this is a joke, it’s long outlasted its amusement, Castiel.”
He didn’t move, didn’t blink.
“No. Not until we reach our destination.”
His eerie composure chilled her. This wasn’t the Castiel she knew. Something in him had shifted. Where warmth once lived, only cold, sharp edges remained.
It felt like staring into familiar eyes, yet meeting a stranger instead.
“B-Batteron?”
He leaned back and exhaled slowly, as though their exchange tired him. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
Her fingers fumbled against the ropes, the sedative clinging to her mind, heavy and stubborn. She pushed herself up, but halfway to sitting, a wave of nausea slammed into her.
A thick, inescapable uneasiness coiled through the air, tightening with every sluggish beat of her heart. She knew this feeling. She’d felt it before—the quiet tug of instinct, the warning she had brushed aside too many times, mistaking it for nothing more than nerves.
But this wasn’t nerves. This was dread —sharp and coiling rapidly around her .
Her sluggish mind raced, grasping for explanations, each darker than the last. Was he taking her elsewhere? Bashkor? The whispers of its underground Omega auctions surfaced—women paraded like livestock, their fates sealed with coin and cruelty.
Had Castiel fallen into a debt so deep he’d sell her to escape it?
The thought twisted her gut.
Could he truly be that conniving? Could he hand her over to strangers and let her disappear—for the right price?
“Are you in trouble?” The words came out thin, shaky, each syllable scraping against the dryness in her throat. “If you are, maybe I can help.”
She hated how small she sounded, but it was all she had left to offer. “Is it money? I can ask my father?—”
His laugh cracked through the air. She flinched, instinctively pulling back as if the sound itself could bruise. There’d been warmth in that laugh once—bright and familiar, something she’d clung to during moments of doubt.
Now, it was a weapon, honed and merciless.
“By gods, Reiya.” His voice was soft, pitying, and that pity stung worse than the laughter. “You really don’t know anything, do you?”
His words pressed down like a hand around her throat. She raked her brain for another handful of explanations but came up empty.
“I couldn’t care less about money,” he continued, with the cadence of someone explaining a simple truth to a child.
“My goals aren’t so pedestrian. This—” His voice dropped lower, every syllable deliberate and final, as if stating a law etched into stone.
“This is bigger than you, bigger than me, bigger than your father. Bigger than the kingdom, even.”
Reiya’s heart faltered, tripping over the gravity of his words. Bigger than the kingdom?
Her thoughts churned, confusion unravelling into something far darker—a gnawing fear burrowing deep into her chest. What could be so vast, so all-powerful, that it had driven him to betray her?
Castiel rose from the chair with unsettling ease, each step unhurried, as if they had all the time in the world. Did they? If Batteron wasn’t their true destination, what was? How long did she have before their arrival?
When he reached the bed, his gaze softened—not with kindness, but with a twisted shade of pity, like someone offering condolences out of politeness, not care.
“Don’t fret,” he murmured fondly, as if appeasing a frightened pet. “I promised to take you away from Aethonia—I’ve kept my word. You feared marrying an Alpha—now you’ll never have to.”
The sinister undertone curdled her stomach. Her throat tightened as truth settled over her.
“The elopement . . .” Her voice crumbled into a whisper. “It was never real.”
He scoffed. “More like an impossible dream. A fantasy.”
Heat surged to her cheeks, burning with humiliation as she pressed her eyes shut, as if darkness could soften the sting. The roaring in her ears drown out all the noise.
She looked up. “I don’t understand. I thought you loved me . . .”
For the briefest moment, his eyes flickered. Was it guilt? Compassion? Another round of pity? But just as quickly, it was gone, replaced by that same detached mask.
“You’re a necessary part of the plan, Reiya. Nothing more.”
His voice was low, almost gentle. She caught the way his mouth curved, not with kindness but with something colder—a smile meant to belittle, to shrink her down to something small and disposable.
Pain lanced through her ribs. What plan? Had she been nothing more to Castiel—a tool, a stepping stone toward something larger?
The bitter irony twisted inside her. She’d spent so long believing she was only a tool in everyone else’s life—her family, the court, the Alphas.
But not Castiel. Never Castiel.
He was supposed to be different .
“If you felt nothing for me, why agree to take me with you?”
Those lips curved into a thin, humourless smile. “I didn’t agree to take you.”
His gaze stayed steady, the words soft but deliberate. “You coming with me has always been the goal. You wanted freedom, and I let you think you were the one choosing it.”
Her lungs worked in stuttering rhythm, the air trapped in her throat.
“You manipulated me?” The accusation trembled on her lips, but even as she said it, the truth had already settled—cold, undeniable.
Castiel shrugged. “You were always going to run. I simply made sure to hold the door open.”
“So, all those words of love . . .” Her throat tightened, but she forced the question out. “They meant nothing?”
For a fleeting moment, a shadow passed across his eyes, but it vanished before she could grasp it.
“Let’s not pretend,” he said smoothly. “Not when you don’t love me either.”
The quiet finality of his words sliced through her.
It couldn’t be.
And yet—her heart stammered, a cold prickle of realization racing up her spine.
She shook her head, desperation clawing its way into her voice. “That’s not true. I?—”
“If you loved me,” he cut in, calm as ever, as though he had known this for years and had long accepted it. “You wouldn’t have waited. You would’ve chosen me the moment you presented as an Omega. But you didn’t. You stayed in your palace, bemoaning your duty—until fear finally drove you to me.”
A flicker of air snagged in her lungs. Fingers curled into her palms. “That’s not fair.”
Even as she said it, doubt seeped in like smoke, filling cracks she hadn’t realized were there.
Castiel’s lips curved, but the smile was empty, hollow. “Isn’t it? You came to me because I was safe. Because I wasn’t an Alpha.”
A slow, creeping chill spread through her limbs. “You think I used you?”
“I know you did. And I let you.”
The truth punched the air from her lungs as the room tilted .
His knuckle brushed against her bound wrist, his voice gentler now, but no less damning.
“It’s not your fault, dove. We both found what we needed. You found the illusion of freedom in me, and I found use in you. Now we can stop pretending we were ever more than that.”
Her pulse pounded, an immediate protest rising in her throat. No. She wanted to reject it outright, to tell him he was wrong—that what they had was real.
But the words wouldn’t come.
Her breath wavered, Castiel’s words swallowing her like a heavy shroud. Maybe, in some ways, he was right—maybe she’d clung to him for safety, for something familiar in a world that had shifted beneath her feet.
But that wasn’t all they’d been.
The memories surfaced unbidden, flickering through her mind.
For a moment, they were children again, racing barefoot through the palace gardens, Castiel’s laughter trailing behind her like wind chimes caught in a breeze.
She remembered the day they’d built a little raft together, Castiel insisting it would sail across the pond like a real ship.
It sank within minutes, but he’d laughed so hard she’d joined in, their shared failure sweeter than any triumph.