Brute 281

Chapter 281 

Atasha’s POV 

I didn’t know what was happening but I knew that somehow… this Nicho had gotten stronger. 

I did not wait to confirm it. 

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The moment Nicho shifted his weight, I moved, cutting to the side and forcing distance between us. His head snapped toward me immediately, eyes tracking too smoothly, too precisely, and he came at me without hesitation, sword raised as if the previous dismantling had been nothing more than a delay. 

He was faster this time. 

The first clash rang through the chamber, steel slamming into steel with enough force to rattle my arms. I twisted away before he could lock me in place, slashing low, then high, aiming for joints instead of flesh. 

The blade bit into his thigh and should have slowed him. It did not. He turned into the strike, using the momentum to drive his shoulder into my chest, sending me stumbling backward across the stone. 

I caught myself before I fell and ran. 

The pull hit immediately. 

It wrapped around my chest like a tightening grip, dragging at my balance, tugging me sideways toward the darker corridor behind me even as my legs tried to carry me away from it. 

My breath hitched, my vision blurring at the edges as I fought both Nicho and whatever was trying to pull me back into that place. 

I veered sharply, barely avoiding a downward strike that split stone where my head had been. 

Nicho followed without breaking pace, his movements jerky but relentless, stitched joints snapping into place faster than before. 

I slashed again, severing his hand at the wrist, but the body barely reacted. The sword clattered to the ground, and he lunged with the remaining arm, fingers clawing for my throat. 

I ducked and rolled, came up hard, and ran again. 

Each step away from that direction felt like running through resistance, like the air itself was thickening around me. My heart pounded unevenly, pain flaring through my chest as the pull intensified, yanking at my focus, trying to turn me back even as Nicho closed the distance behind me. 

I stumbled. 

I hit the ground on one knee, breath tearing out of me, and Nicho was on me instantly, his weight slamming me flat. 

I brought my sword up just in time to block his arm as it came down, bone and steel grinding together inches 

10:23 Mon, Feb 9 

Chapter 281 

from my face. 

: 

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His strength had increased. I could feel it now, the force behind each movement heavier, more confident, like something else was learning how to use him better. 

My arms shook as I shoved him off and scrambled backward, forcing myself up despite the scream of protest in my muscles. I could not keep this up. I could feel it. My body was burning through everything I had left just to stay upright. 

The pull surged again, sharp enough that my head snapped toward the dark cave. 

That hesitation almost killed me. 

Nicho lunged, faster than before, his arm hooking around my shoulder and yanking me sideways. Pain exploded down my arm as I slammed into the stone wall. My sword skidded from my grasp and clattered across the ground. 

I pushed off the wall and turned, empty–handed, already bracing for impact. 

It never came. 

Steel flashed through the space between us. 

The sound was unmistakable. 

A clean, brutal cut. 

Nicho’s head separated from his body in a single strike, the force carrying it away as it spun across the stone and struck the ground near the spring. The body froze mid–motion, arms still raised, then collapsed forward in a heap that did not move again. 

For a heartbeat, the chamber went still. 

I sagged, breath shuddering out of me as the pressure on my chest finally eased, my knees threatening to give way now that the fight had stopped. 

Cassian stood where Nicho had been, sword still raised, his posture rigid, his eyes locked on the fallen body as if he did not trust it to stay down. 

Then he turned toward me. 

Relief hit so hard it made my head spin. My knees buckled, and I took a step toward him without thinking, the world narrowing to the fact that he was here, that he was alive. 

“Cassian-” I started. 

He took one step forward. 

Then his sword slipped from his hand. 

The sound of it hitting stone was sharp and final, and before I could reach him, his body pitched forward and 

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Chapter 281 

hit the ground hard, unmoving, right at my feet. 

I dropped beside him so fast my knees scraped stone. 

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Cassian’s body was heavy and unresponsive, his head turned slightly to the side, lashes still, lips parted. I gripped his shoulder, then his jaw, forcing him onto his back because I needed his chest clear and his airway 

open. 

His skin felt warmer than it should have, heat trapped under armor and blood and dust, and when my fingers brushed the side of his neck, the pulse I found was there but unstable, racing and then faltering like it could not decide whether to hold on. 

My hands shook as I pressed my palm to his sternum. 

Power surged out of me before I even fully gathered it, spilling into him in a rush that made my vision white at the edges. 

I forced it tighter, focused it into the places that mattered, into the blood and muscle and nerves that had been carrying him through fight after fight without rest. 

The scrape marks and bruises were nothing. The problem was deeper. I could feel it the moment my ability touched him, that foul bite clinging to his veins like oil. 

Poison. 

I clenched my teeth and pushed harder, dragging it out the way I had done too many times before, except this was not the thin poison of small beasts or a careless cut. This had weight to it. It resisted, clinging to him. 

My breath came fast, sharp in my throat. I did not stop. 

I forced the poison out in slow pulls. It moved under my power in thick streams I could not see with my eyes but could feel with my bones, collecting at the edges of his body, at the fingertips, at the cuts along his knuckles, at the torn line of skin where something had scratched his neck earlier. 

The pull from the dark corridor returned immediately, pressing into my chest like a hook sinking deeper each time I ignored it. It tightened while I worked, tugging at my ribs, tugging at my focus, trying to twist my head toward that corridor again. I stayed bent over Cassian. 

My mouth tasted like metal. 

I bit down hard on my lower lip and pushed again, drawing out the last stubborn threads of poison that clung to his heart like a parasite. 

Cassian’s body jerked once under my palm,it almost made me pull back, but I did not. I leaned in and held him down, pouring what I had left into stabilizing his breathing, forcing his blood to move normally again, forcing his body to remember it was not done fighting. 

Then, my head started to spin. 

The cave shifted around me as if the ground was rolling again, and for a second I could not tell if it was another tremor or the price of draining myself too far. I blinked hard, eyes burning, and kept my hand 

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Chapter 281 

pressed to him. 

“Come back,” I whispered. “Cassian, come back.” 

His pulse surged under my fingers. 

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His chest lifted in a shallow breath that sounded wrong, strained, like his lungs were waking reluctantly. Relief hit me so hard my arms almost gave out. I pulled my hand back just enough to brace myself, swallowing past the nausea rising in my throat. 

The pressure in my chest snapped tighter. 

It dragged at me so violently this time that my shoulder twisted, my spine arching as if something had grabbed me from inside and tried to pull me off him. 

I grunted through clenched teeth and forced myself back down, forcing my attention onto Cassian’s face, onto his lashes, onto the faint tension gathering between his brows as his body struggled to climb back to consciousness. 

Then I heard it. 

A wet scrape against stone, followed by the soft, wrong sound of joints shifting where joints should not have been able to shift anymore. 

My gaze jerked up despite myself. 

Nicho’s body was moving. 

The headless corpse lay where it had fallen, but the torso was pushing itself upright. Threads and seams along its neck pulsed as if something inside was trying to knit a new shape into place. The smaller beasts that had been hovering near the spring scattered, hissing and darting back as the body straightened fully, headless, yet somehow aware, turning slightly as if it could still sense where I was. 

My stomach dropped. 

I sucked in a breath and pushed myself up on one elbow, my other hand still hovering over Cassian’s chest because letting go felt like betrayal. 

The headless body took one step. 

Then another. 

I forced my eyes to focus. 

Behind the headless body, near the edge of the clearing where the light from the insects thinned, another figure stood. 

At first I thought it was another illusion, another stitch–work trick meant to confuse me, because the outline was too familiar for the cave to be kind about it. Was I hallucinating? I narrowed at the figure… 

It was the King. 

10:23 Mon, Feb 9 

Chapter 281 

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He stood behind Nicho’s headless body as if he had been there the whole time, watching in silence. 

My mouth opened, but no sound came out. 

The room tipped again. The pressure in my chest turned into a crushing ache, and the last of my strength drained out through my fingertips where it still hovered over Cassian. 

I reached for Cassian’s face, trying to hold on to something real. 

My fingers missed. 

Check out my new novel: To Love a Tyrant 

Written under the same universe as To Marry a Monster. 

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