Steam Free Trial: Am I stuck buying it on Steam?

Hey everyone,

Looking at the some of the threads and the issues with Steam, I am afraid I already know my answer, but here goes:

I had bought a retail version of the game through Amazon (on the disc), received it, all is well. This is ARR, by the way, not Heavensward.

Before I received I was thinking on checking out the game and was on Steam, so I figured I would just get the free trial there since I was there at the time. I registered and played it for the last 7 days (about 20 hours) and had my Rogue hit level 20. Saw that they stop the leveling there and decided to register the game I received on Monday in the mail.

I go to register my game and it tells me that since my free trial is on Steam, I need a Steam key to transfer the game to full a game. Did I just waste the last 20 hours on this game because I did a free trial through Steam? Can I not register my disc code because of this?

Thanks in advance and here is to hoping my suspicions are wrong.

EDIT: I searched the forums but can't seem to find this issue. If it's out there already, I apologize.