She shut her eyes, willing the sensation to pass. Colourful sparks exploded behind her eyelids. The ship’s hum grew faint, like it was drifting away. The bottle slipped from her grasp, wine sloshing over the wood as it rolled onto the floor.
Her legs buckled, the world tipped over. Before she could steady herself, the cold kiss of the floor met her palms.
Everything went dark.
Chapter Nine
REIYANA
Consciousness 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. Hiscoat 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 wasdread—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?
