To Marry A Monster (by Brey Mitchell) novel Chapter 303

Chapter 303

Chapter 303

Atasha’s POV

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If I cannot even protect myself, how am I supposed to protect the people I love? How am I supposed to help Cassian? How am I supposed to protect the reason I could no longer feel the bond between us.

My hand moved to my stomach before I consciously decided to do it. The motion was subtle, almost instinctive, but once my palm rested there, I did not pull it away.

When I first woke, the absence of the bond terrified me.

searched for it the way someone reaches for a missing limb. I pressed my chest and waited for that familiar pull toward Cassian, the thread that had always existed between us whether we acknowledged it or not. I panicked when I felt nothing. I hought something had been taken from me.

But as the hours passed and the world continued without collapsing, I began to understand that the silence inside me was not emptiness.

t was change.

t was not magic flaring through my veins. It was not the seal stirring. It was not power demanding to be used.

t was something smaller.

Something alive.

stood at the edge of the castle balcony and looked down at the capital. The sun was lowering behind the rooftops, the city ontinued as it always had. Smoke drifted from chimneys. People crossed the streets. Market stalls were being packed away or the night. No one below could see how close everything had come to ending.

This estate sat just outside the capital walls. It belonged to Cassian and the royal family, though he rarely spoke of it as nything more than a retreat. From here, the city looked manageable. Contained. As if problems could be solved with listance and clear air.

Carlier, I was told that they found the King unconscious but alive. He was taken back under guard, and I am scheduled to see

im tomorrow to repair whatever damage the Shadows left behind. I will heal him because that is what I do, and because eadership cannot afford to collapse now.

While I slept, they buried the soldiers who did not survive.

Lio.

Grace.

The funeral was held without me. I did not resent that decision. I would not have been able to stand through it, and they

new it. I have already asked Cassian to take me to Grace’s grave later. I need to stand there. I need to acknowledge that she

s gone.

My hand remained over my stomach as I thought about the Shadows. The Elder informed us that the Shadows have special bility to possess a weakwilled person. This served as a warning for us to take care of the people next to us.

Sadly, when Elder Agape extended the invitation from the Fae Kingdom, I declined without hesitation.

It was not fear that guided that decision. It was not weakness, and it was not refusal to help.

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Chapter 303

It was clarity.

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For the first time, I made a choice without the bond pressing at my chest and without guilt whispering that my worth depended on what I could give to everyone else.

I know why the bond is gone.

It was not severed.

It shifted.

The stone did not take it from me. It redirected it.

My body absorbed the seal. Something inside me changed. Something inside me was protected.

I knew it the moment I woke and felt no thread tying me outward to Cassian, yet felt a quiet anchoring from within.

Footsteps approached behind me. Before I turned, a coat settled over my shoulders. The weight of it grounded me immediately.

‘It’s cold,” Cassian said. “You just woke up. You should be resting.”

I turned to face him. The sky behind him had shifted to deep orange and red, the light catching along the edges of his face. He looked tired, but not broken. There was no blood, no desperation in his stance. Only vigilance.

‘You felt it too, didn’t you,” I asked.

I did not need to explain what I meant.

He met my gaze and nodded.

When I declined the Elder’s invitation earlier, I expected questions. I expected him to argue that the world needed me, that Arecor could not stand alone, that this was larger than us.

He did not argue.

He stepped beside me and told the Elder that this was not something we could do right now.

He did it without hesitation.

I had been surprised. A part of me expected him to push. A part of me expected him to choose duty over everything else.

Then I remembered who he was.

Cassian never wanted to be a hero. He never chased glory or titles. He fought because he had to. He ruled because someone had to. He never asked me to sacrifice myself for a crown.

“You knew,” I said.

“Yes,” he answered without looking away.

“Why didn’t you say anything.”

He exhaled slowly. “I’did not want to take that realization from you.”

I frowned slightly. “Take it from me.”

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Chapter 303

“You deserved to understand it yourself,” he said. “Not because I told you. Not because anyone else did.”

The weight of that settled between us.

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He had known. He stood there while the Elder spoke of spreading passages and gathering Shadows, and he chose to back me without demanding justification.

He trusted me.

He trusted us.

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

He gave a faint smile. “Thank you.”

We did not say what we were thanking each other for. We did not need to.

His arm wrapped around my waist and pulled me closer. This was not the desperate hold from the corridor when he feared

I would vanish. This was careful. Protective without being possessive.

He lowered his head and kissed my hair.

‘The Elder left,” he said after a moment.

I nodded.

“He did not argue much, but he left a way to contact him,” Cassian continued. “If we need help.”

I did not respond immediately.

I cannot promise that I will never help them. I cannot promise that the world will remain stable. I cannot promise that the passages will not open again.

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