Brute 245

Chapter 245 

ATASHA’S POV 

The ones that could kill us? 

The words kept circling inside my head like a blade that refused to leave my throat. They did not make sense, and yet the man’s reaction made them feel terrifyingly real. 

His face twisted, eyes darting between Cassian and me as if he was seeing the world break apart in front of him. 

“How dare you,” he snarled, voice cracking with rage and panic at the same time. “How dare you betray our kind!” 

He tried to take a step forward, but his legs buckled. 

Then he dropped to his knees as if the cave floor had suddenly turned into water beneath him. 

Blood poured from his mouth in thick bursts, splattering onto the stone. He gagged hard enough that his shoulders shook. He coughed again, choking, vomiting more and more until it looked like his body could not decide whether it wanted to heal or fall apart. 

His hands clawed at his own chest where Cassian’s blade had gone through him, fingers pressing against skin that should have knitted shut by now. 

It did not. 

He made a sound like he wanted to laugh again, like he was trying to force arrogance back into his face, but it broke into another violent cough. 

Then he collapsed forward. 

His forehead hit the stone with a heavy thud, and for a heartbeat, the cave went almost silent except for my own ragged breathing. 

Then Cassian moved. 

One moment he was several steps away, sword still in his hand, and the next he was at my side, crouching down and gripping my shoulders like he needed to confirm I was real. 

“Are you hurt?” he asked, but the question was too fast, too urgent to be calm. 

I swallowed, forcing air into lungs that still felt bruised. I nodded, because I was not broken, and because it was easier than trying to explain how close I had been to blacking out. 

His hand slid to the back of my head, then to my cheek, checking for injuries like his body was doing it on 

instinct. 

Then he pulled me up and into him. 

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Chapter 245 

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The moment his arms closed around me, the shaking in my hands finally made sense. It was delayed fear, delayed relief, delayed everything my body had refused to feel while fighting. 

His heartbeat was steady under my ear, calm in a way that made me want to cry and laugh at the same time. For a second, I just listened to it, grounding myself in the fact that he was here. 

He was alive. 

I had been so sure something had happened to him when the bond started flickering like it was being strangled. 

Cassian’s breath brushed the top of my head. “I’m sorry I was late,” he said. 

A weak sound escaped me, half a chuckle and half a breath. “You weren’t,” I said, because if I admitted how scared I had been, I might not be able to stop. 

Cassian’s arms tightened for a moment, as if he heard what I did not say. 

Then a sound cut through the air. 

A wet hiss. 

Cassian stiffened instantly. His head snapped toward the body on the ground. 

So did mine. 

The man was not lying still anymore. 

His skin was changing. 

It did not look like normal decay. It looked like something was eating him from the inside, breaking him down too quickly, turning flesh into slick, bubbling rot. Dark patches spread across his neck and chest, collapsing inward, and then the color shifted. 

Green. 

That same dull, sickly green. 

His body started to sink into itself, dissolving like it had been dropped into acid. The stone beneath him darkened, then began to smoke. The smell hit right after. It was sharp and poisonous, thick enough that it caught in my throat even though my body tried to burn it away. 

The puddle grew. 

It spread outward in slow, crawling movement, as if the poison had weight and hunger. 

My stomach dropped. “Cassian,” I said quickly. “We have to get out.” 

Cassian nodded. He was already moving. 

The green poison began to steam, and then the steam thickened into fumes that crept along the cave floor 

15:28 Mon, Jan 12 

Chapter 245 

before rising, curling toward us like it knew where we were. 

Cassian did not waste another heartbeat. 

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He scooped me up into his arms as if I weighed nothing and turned, running toward the cave mouth at full speed. 

My arms wrapped around his neck automatically. The motion jolted pain through my ribs, but I bit it back and forced myself to focus. 

The fumes were spreading fast. 

They rolled over stone and climbed the walls, filling the air with a sharp sting that made my eyes burn. It felt like breathing needles. My ability flared, trying to keep up, trying to protect my lungs before the poison could settle. 

Cassian’s pace did not slow. 

Still, I could feel the change in his breathing, the way his chest rose a fraction harder as the fumes caught him 

too. 

I tightened my hold. “Your lungs-” I started, but I did not finish the sentence. 

I did not need to. 

I pushed my ability into him. 

Warmth surged from my core into his body through the contact between us, flowing into his throat, his chest, his lungs. I could feel the poison trying to cling to him, trying to sink in, and my ability tore through it the way fire tore through dry cloth. 

Cassian exhaled sharply as if he felt it, but he did not look at me. He just ran faster. 

Over his shoulder, I looked back. 

The man was almost gone. 

What remained of him was a collapsing shape half–submerged in a spreading pool of green poison, and the fumes had become so thick that they blurred the torchlight. The cave behind us turned into a choking tunnel of poison and smoke. 

It felt like the cave itself was trying to swallow everything inside it. 

Then the air changed. 

We broke through the mouth of the cave, and cold night rushed into my face. 

For a heartbeat, it felt like I had been dropped into another world. 

The smell of sulfur hit first, strong enough to make my nose sting, mixed with blood so thick it sat on the back of my tongue. My stomach turned as my eyes adjusted to the dark outside–and then I saw it. 

Chapter 245 

Carnage spread across the ground outside the cave. 

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Bodies were scattered in every direction, torn and broken, some piled where they had fallen, others dragged across the dirt as if they had tried and failed to crawl away. Blood soaked into the earth, thick and dark, the metallic stench clinging to the air so heavily it burned my throat. 

They were not soldiers. 

They were not villagers. 

They were Demon Fangs. 

Their wolf forms lay twisted and grotesque, jaws locked open mid–snarl, limbs bent at unnatural angles, fur matted with blood and mud. Some had deep, clean wounds carved through their chests. Others had their throats torn out entirely, the violence precise and merciless in a way that left no doubt about what had happened here. 

The trap. 

This was the trap. 

A pack of Demon Fangs thrown here as a wall of violence, the kind that no ordinary rescue party would be able to cut through without losing people. 

I did not need anyone to explain what happened. 

I could see the clean brutality of it. 

The angle of the cuts. 

The way the bodies were placed like obstacles that had been removed. 

Cassian had carved through them alone. 

He set me down carefully, but his hand stayed at my waist as if he still did not trust the ground to hold me. 

Then, a presence moved to the side. 

Rio stepped out of the shadows near the trees, armor marked with blood and dirt, eyes scanning the area like he expected more enemies to appear. 

“Your Highness,” Rio said, voice steady. “Everything is done.” 

Cassian gave him a short nod. “Continue following the others,” he said. “No gaps.” 

Rio nodded, accepting the order without argument, and disappeared again without another word, moving like a shadow among shadows. 

Cassian turned back to me. 

His gaze swept over my face, my throat, my wrists where the rope had bruised me, then down to the blood on 

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Chapter 245 

my mouth that my ability had already started erasing. 

Then his eyes locked on mine. 

“Is this still part of your plan?” he asked. 

My mouth opened… but nothing came out. 

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