Sold as the Alpha King's Breeder

*Saoirse*

I found myself lost in an endless expanse of inky darkness, my body no longer under my control. My limbs felt like lead weights, heavy and unresponsive, yet I remained excruciatingly aware of my body’s every movement.

It was like being trapped in a waking nightmare. I desperately wanted to run but found myself frozen in place.

Through the suffocating gloom, I watched in horror as my arms reached out and my legs carried me down a strange stone passageway. I had become a helpless passenger in my own skin, a marionette dancing to someone else’s twisted tune.

I tried to scream, to call out for help, but my jaw wouldn’t budge. My voice was locked away, smothered by an unseen force.

I thought, “What’s happening to me?’ My mind raced with rising panic. I strained to clench my hands into fists to fight against whatever vile entity had hijacked my body. Instead, I felt my fingers calmly smooth back my unruly red curls. Even the familiar tingle of my magic, the comforting power that always thrummed just beneath my skin, had been extinguished.

"Axureon, it is I, Shylah, your mate." The words spilled from my mouth in my voice, but they weren’t mine. I hadn’t spoken.

With sickening clarity, I realized the horrible truth. Shylah didn’t just lend me her strength to battle our foes and liberate the dragons. She stole my body and took my magic for herself.”

“Shylah, release me now! You can’t do this!” I demanded, my inner voice cracking with desperation and rage. But my objections went unheard, ricocheting uselessly inside the confines of my mind.

In all my years of magical training, I had never encountered a foe like this—an ancient dragon spirit of immeasurable power. And now she wielded my considerable magic against me. Bile stung the back of my throat, and dread knotted my stomach.

In front of me, lit by guttering torches, stood Axureon. The formidable dragon warrior looked haggard from the battle, his armor pitted and stained crimson. Shock flashed across his angular features as Shylah approached him in my body, moving with a sinuous grace entirely foreign to me.

"Shylah, I... How?" Axureon sputtered, his composure cracked wide open.

Shylah lifted my hand to stroke his battered cheek with my slender fingers. I cringed inwardly at the intimacy, revulsion shuddering through me at being an unwilling puppet in their reunion.

I focused every ounce of my willpower on the stunned man before me, silently begging him to see through Shylah’s cruel trick. “Axureon, please, you have to help me! You’re the only one who can stop her!”

But Axureon only blinked, a tentative smile tugging at his mouth as he gazed into my eyes and saw his lost love instead of me. "It feels just like when we first met, but this body..."

I screamed in my mind, telling him that it was me, I was trapped, and to snap out of it. I threw all my strength into twitching a muscle, wiggling a toe, anything to signal my distress. But Shylah’s hold never faltered.

"I’ve come back to save our people in their darkest hour," Shylah proclaimed in my voice, the words ringing with a conviction I didn’t feel. She clasped Axureon’s large, calloused hand, rubbing her thumb over his knuckles in an achingly familiar gesture weighed down by centuries of history.

Axureon’s eyes shimmered, but he stopped short of pulling her into his arms. "But this isn’t your true form. The girl you inhabit, Saoirse–"

"Hush, my love," Shylah cut him off with a dazzling smile that made my stomach roil. "I am only borrowing this mortal body temporarily. The girl is perfectly fine."

It was lies, vicious lies. If I could have railed and cursed at that moment, my anguished screams would have shaken the castle stones. Surely Axureon’s long years had granted him the wisdom to see through such a flimsy deception.

But as Shylah slid my palm up to cup his grizzled jaw, Axureon sighed and leaned into the caress, his doubts melting away like morning mist. They stood so close that I could feel the heat of him. I could see the way they gravitated toward each other like celestial bodies caught in a dance as old as time.

Staring into the endless depths of Axureon’s eyes, I felt myself plummeting into the yawning abyss of despair. In that crystallized moment of agony, my thoughts snagged on Rhys—loving, steadfast Rhys who had fled our wedding without a backward glance.

The memory tore at my heart afresh, the wound still weeping. After everything we had endured together, a foolish part of me still yearned for him to come bursting in like a storybook hero and save me from this living hell. Hadn’t his love driven him to fight against my marriage to Aleric, to claw his way to my side?

I wrenched my mind away from that fruitless line of thought. I couldn’t afford the distraction when I needed every scrap of my focus and determination. Rhys had abandoned me. I was in this battle alone.

"Shylah..." Axureon’s eyes drifted shut, his face etched with longing and sorrow. "As much as I wish things were different, you know we can’t let Saoirse remain trapped. You must release her–"

"No more talk of such trivialities." Shylah silenced him with my fingertip against his lips. I reeled at the sensation, bile climbing up my constricted throat. "Our people are relying on us to lead them to victory against Pyroth. Have you forgotten the oaths we swore to always place their survival above our desires?"

I felt the zealous light that kindled in my eyes then. It was so fierce and fanatical that it sent chills skittering down my spine.

Axureon flinched as if struck. Squaring his broad shoulders, he shook off the last vestiges of his resistance. "You are right, as ever. Forgive my selfishness. The needs of our people must take precedence."

“Axureon, you can’t fall for her poisonous lies! Look at me, really look and see that I’m here,” I pleaded silently, frantically, throwing myself against the intangible bars of my mental cage again and again. But my struggles were as useless as a moth battering itself against a glass jar.

Shylah felt my futile rebellion, the ghost of a smirk playing at the edges of her mouth. "I’m pleased we are of one accord. Now, take me to your war room. We have much to plan if we hope to crush Pyroth before he can rally his forces."

His features hardening with grim resolve, Axureon proffered his arm. As Shylah placed my hand in the crook of his elbow, I redoubled my efforts to break free, fighting until exhaustion crashed over me in a thick black fog. I felt myself sinking, drowning...

I resurfaced to find myself standing over an enormous map table, Shylah’s eyes darting between the carved figurines representing our troops and resources. I couldn’t guess how much time had slipped by as I drifted in that depthless void.

"Our numbers are too few. We must gain more support from the outlying villages if we are to stand a chance," Axureon was saying, his fingers drumming an agitated beat against the weathered oak.

"Then go and rally them to our cause. I expect regular reports on your progress," Shylah replied, cool and clipped. My hands moved to trace a path across the western reaches of the map. "I will be coordinating the forging of new weapons here. If we act swiftly, Pyroth and his horde will be ashes scattered in the wind before they can draw more breath."

Axureon snapped a brisk nod, but I caught the wounded glimmer in his eyes at Shylah’s abrupt dismissal. It was a sting I knew all too keenly from Rhys casually brushing aside my counsel like a bothersome gnat.

At the thought of him, fresh agony pierced my chest, almost bringing me to my metaphorical knees. Even now, every beat of my heart cried out for Rhys.

"Disciples! To me!" Shylah’s peremptory summons scattered my bleak thoughts like crows from a field. The two dragons from the rescue mission appeared before us, heads inclined in wary obeisance.

"How may we serve, my lady?" Jeida murmured.

"Take wing at once and comb the land for a sorceress skilled in spirit magic. This mortal husk still houses the girl’s stubbornly clinging soul. It must be cut out and discarded like rotted flesh if I am to claim this form for my own."

“No!” My psychic scream exploded, raw and ragged with primal dread. “Shylah, you vicious hag, I won’t let you erase me from existence!”

I scrabbled for every shred of arcane energy still sparking through my consciousness and launched it at the malevolent force subsuming my soul. But as with all my previous attempts, Shylah batted away the assault with ease.

Hopelessness crashed over me, a towering wave of icy desperation dragging me down into its lightless depths.

As Jeida and Lyten took wing on their deplorable mission, I felt myself sinking ever deeper into that frigid abyss. Inch by excruciating inch, I was losing myself, my identity unraveling like a spool of gossamer thread. Not one of the dragons I had gambled everything to save even marked my silenced screams.

Scalding tears stung my eyes, but Shylah refused to let them fall, her control absolute. “Please, someone, anyone, see me,” I whispered, but my fading pleas vanished into the void like mist under the rising sun. “Rhys, my heart, I need you now more than ever. Don’t let Shylah destroy me. Don’t let her take me from you, from our child.”

Only silence greeted me, a silence so vast and uncaring it snatched the breath from my lungs and withered my flickering soul. Saoirse, once so fierce and vibrant, was guttered out like a dying star, swallowed whole by pitiless oblivion.

As Shylah strode from the room in my stolen skin, her savage satisfaction rolled off her in palpable waves. And I, a prisoner in my own body, could only howl my despair into the void as the suffocating dark dragged me under again.

I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss, the weight of my despair crushing me from all sides. The silence was deafening, broken only by the distant echo of my futile screams. I tried to cling to the memories of my old life, to the people I loved, but they slipped through my fingers like grains of sand, scattering into the darkness.

Rhys’ face flickered before me, his eyes filled with the love and devotion I missed so much. I would have given anything to see him one last time, to feel his arms around me and hear him whisper that everything would be alright. But he was gone, and I was alone, trapped in a nightmare from which there was no waking.

As I drifted in that black void, I felt a sudden flicker of movement inside me, a tiny flutter of life that cut through the despair like a beacon in the dark. My child... Our child... A fierce, protective love surged through me, giving me the strength to fight again.

“I won’t let Shylah win,” I vowed silently, gathering the tattered remnants of my will. “I’ll find a way back to my body, back to my baby. I’ll fight for every breath, every heartbeat, until I’m free of this hell. And then, I’ll make Shylah pay for every moment of suffering she inflicted on us.”

With that final, defiant thought, I surrendered myself to the darkness, conserving my energy for the battles to come. I knew the road ahead would be long and treacherous, but I refused to give up hope. For my sake and the sake of my unborn child, I would never stop fighting to reclaim what was mine.

As I sank into the depths of my mind, I clung to that glimmer of determination like a drowning woman clutching a lifeline. Shylah may have stolen my body, but she could never crush my spirit. With a final, silent prayer to the Moon Goddess for strength, I let the void take me, ready to face whatever horrors lay ahead.

For now, I would endure. But someday, I would rise again, and heaven help anyone who stood in my way.