Brute 301

Chapter 301 

Atasha’s POV 

Waking felt wrong. 

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Not because pain greeted me, because it did not. Waking felt wrong because my body felt… restored, like I had slept for days in clean sheets while someone else carried the weight of the world for me. 

My limbs were warm. My head was clear. My lungs filled without that familiar tightness that came after pushing my ability too far. 

For a moment I lay still, blinking at fabric above me, trying to understand why the ceiling looked soft. 

Then memory hit. 

Cassian’s shout tore through my skull, and my eyes flew open so fast my vision blurred. The stone. The light. Xylas’s face cracking apart. Cassian on the ground with a blade in his stomach. My hands on the seal. The warmth turned into pressure. The cave shook under us. My knees give out. 

My body jerked upright before my mind finished catching up. 

A canopy moved with me, gauzy fabric swaying overhead, and my breath caught because I was not in a war tent and I was not under open rock. I was in a bed. A real bed. Heavy blankets pooled around my waist. Pillows pressed against my back. The air smelled faintly of clean linen and herbs, not blood and damp stone. 

Panic surged through me in a hot wave. 

I threw the blankets aside and swung my legs over the edge, feet hitting a smooth floor that felt like polished wood or stone that had been scrubbed until it lost its grit. My hands shook as I pushed myself to stand, because the room around me made no sense with what I remembered. 

This was not the north. That was my first thought, because the north had always carried a different kind of cold, a different weight in the air. 

The room was dim but not dark. Light seeped in from the outside through tall windows covered with thin curtains, turning the air a pale gold as if dawn had been sitting there for a while, patient, waiting for me to open my eyes. 

The canopy draped above the bed was a deep neutral color, the fabric thick enough to block drafts. The bed itself was too large, too carefully made, and the frame was carved with patterns that looked old, not decorative, but purposeful, as if someone had built it to last through generations. 

A small table sat near the bedside with a glass of water. 

I turned my head, searching for weapons out of instinct, searching for signs of an enemy, searching for anything that told me I had not been taken while unconscious. 

Then I heard voices. 

Not inside the room, but close. 

Hushed murmurs outside the door, layered with movement that sounded controlled, careful, like people trying not to wake someone they expected to be fragile. 

My stomach tightened. 

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2:50 pm DD 

Chapter 301 

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A familiar ache crawled up my throat because it immediately reminded me of one thing. It used to mean Grace was there, sitting nearby, pretending she was not worried, pretending she was not waiting for me to breathe steadily again. 

Grace would always find a way to be the first face I saw when I woke, even when she was exhausted, even when she was supposed to be doing something else. 

Grace was gone. 

The thought did not come with a scream this time. It came with a quiet, steady grief that felt heavier than any injury. 

I stepped toward the door, but my hand stopped halfway, hovering in the air as if touching the handle would make the loss real all over again. My chest tightened. I pressed my palm there, right over my sternum, expecting the bond to flare at the movement, expecting that pull toward Cassian to answer my panic the way it always did. 

The bond had never been silent. It had always been there in the background, like a pressure and a thread, a reminder that no matter how far I ran, part of me was tied to him. 

I waited for it. 

I waited for the familiar heat. I waited for the tug that sharpened when he was near and strained when he was hurt. I waited for the pull that always made my breathing change. 

Nothing came. 

My fingers pressed harder into my chest. My heartbeat remained steady, unbothered. My skin remained calm. The inside of me remained empty where the bond should have been. 

My breath caught, my throat tightened so fast I nearly gagged. 

No. 

That word tried to form, but it did not leave my mouth. It stayed trapped behind my teeth because fear made it difficult to 

breathe. 

I took a step back from the door, then another, and my gaze flicked wildly around the room as if the bond might be hidden somewhere, as if it might be waiting in the corners with the rest of the impossible things that kept happening to me, 

I pressed my palm to my chest again, slower this time, trying to feel anything at all. 

Still nothing. 

The silence inside me felt wrong in a way I did not have language for. It felt like reaching for a limb and finding empty air. It felt like standing on a cliff edge and realizing the ground had shifted while I slept. 

My eyes stung. 

Cassian. 

The name surged up with the memory of blood and stone and his voice breaking on mine. The panic returned. If I could not feel him, then I did not know where he was. 

If I could not feel him, then I did not know if he was alive. 

The voices outside the door lowered further. I swallowed, forcing air into my lungs. 

Then I moved toward the door again. 

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2:51 pm DDD 

Chapter 301 

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My fingers wrapped around the handle and turned it before I could think long enough to hesitate. The latch clicked, louder han it should have in the quiet corridor beyond, and I pulled the door open in one motion. 

The door swung inward at the same time a hand reached for it from the other side. 

For a second, we both froze. 

Cassian stood there, close enough that if I had stepped forward without looking, I would have walked straight into him. His and was still half lifted, fingers curled as if he had been about to knock or push the door open himself. He looked different ›nly in the ways that mattered; there were fresh bandages visible beneath the collar of his shirt. His face, however, was the ame. He looked alive and focused. Fixed entirely on me. 

His eyes widened. 

Mine burned. 

The silence between us lasted less than a heartbeat, but it felt like the space between falling and impact. I searched his face or signs of weakness, for pallor, for the tightness of someone forcing himself upright against pain. I found none that rightened me enough to step back. 

He was standing. He was breathing. He was here. 

The relief hit so hard that my vision blurred. 

did not speak. I did not ask if he was hurt. I did not ask what had happened or where we were. I stepped forward and closed he distance in one movement that felt more instinct than decision. 

My arms wrapped around him, fingers gripping into the fabric at his back as if I expected him to disappear if I did not hold 

im tightly enough. 

The impact forced a breath out of both of us. I pressed my face against his chest, right over where I knew his heart beat, the ound of it grounded me more than anything else in that moment. 

He reacted instantly. 

His arms came around me with a force that almost knocked me off balance, one hand splaying across my upper back, the >ther locking around my waist and pulling me flush against him. He held me so tightly that my ribs protested and my lungs truggled to expand, but I did not tell him to loosen his grip. 

f anything, I tightened mine. 

His body was solid and warm under my hands. Not fading. Not cold. Not slipping away. I felt the rise and fall of his breathing against my cheek, felt the way his chest expanded and pressed into me as if he was trying to anchor himself the same way I was. 

For a moment, neither of us spoke. 

The corridor around us had gone silent. The hushed voices that had been there seconds ago had retreated further down the hall, either dismissed or understanding enough to give us space. I did not care which. 

Cassian’s hand slid up into my hair, fingers tangling near the back of my head as he pressed me closer. His chin lowered until it rested against the crown of my head, the exhale that left him was not steady. 

It was strained. 

“You’re awake,” he said finally, his voice was rougher than I had ever heard it. 

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12:51 pm DDDD 

Chapter 301 

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I nodded against him, but I did not pull away to answer properly. I was afraid that if I moved even an inch, the emptiness in my chest would swallow the relief I felt from touching him. “I am.” I mumbled. 

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