The Spoilt Beauty And Her Beasts-Chapter 645: Is he trying to kill the post or himself?
Winter had fully settled over the Lion Village by now. The snow no longer looked new or pretty.
After being stepped on day after day by dozens of feet, dragged through by sleds of wood and meat, and mixed with ashes from the cooking fires, it had become a rough white blanket with patches of dirt and slush everywhere. Even so, the village looked more alive than it had ever looked before.
From above, the place no longer resembled the small poor village it used to be.
There were stronger walls now, taller watchtowers, more houses, more smoke rising from more fireplaces, and more people moving around with purpose. The paths between houses had been packed down properly. The storage pits had covers. The meat smoking sheds stood in neat rows. Even the women’s sewing area, which used to look like a random pile of hides and complaints, now looked busy and organized.
It was still not a city.
But it had already stopped looking like a simple village.
Even outsiders who passed by from a distance could tell that something was changing here. The once small village had become the kind of place that made other people stop walking and stare for a little too long.
At the training ground behind the stone palace, however, one person did not care at all about how much the village had changed.
Cyrus was still training.
He had been training harder these days, so hard that even the village males who usually respected his quiet strength had started looking at him strangely. He was not training like someone trying to improve little by little. He was training like someone trying to beat something back into a cage with his bare hands.
His long tail had cut deep marks into the snow and dirt around the training ground. Some of the wooden posts Isabella and the men had set up as practice targets were already splintered or broken. A large flat stone at the side even had a crack running through it now.
That crack had not been there before.
Cyrus stood in the center of the training ground with sweat running down the side of his face despite the cold. His shirt clung to his back, and his hair stuck slightly to his temples. His breathing was rough, but his eyes were worse. Those pink eyes of his looked too bright, too fixed, like he was staring not at the practice post in front of him, but at something only he could see.
He struck again.
A hard sound rang out as his hand slammed into the wooden post. The post shook violently. Snow fell from the top and scattered across his shoulders.
He struck again.
This time, his tail lashed too, wrapping around the post with enough force to make the wood groan.
Not far away, a few younger village males who had come to spar with each other had already stopped what they were doing. They stood there awkwardly, watching Cyrus with worried expressions.
One of them leaned closer to the other and whispered, "Has he been doing this all morning?"
The other nodded stiffly. "Since sunrise."
The first male swallowed. "Is he trying to kill the post or himself?"
Honestly speaking, it looked like both.
Cyrus barely paused between movements. Every time his body slowed even slightly, he forced it faster again. He was testing his strength, testing his speed, testing how much power he could pull up without losing himself. He was not trying to become better. He was trying to become safer.
Ever since that night attack, the memory had not left him.
That burst of speed.
That suffocating aura.
The way killing that man had felt so easy, so natural, so horribly good.
Cyrus hated it. He knew what he was and he hated it so much. He hated that his master could be right when ever he had labeled him as nothing but a monster.
So he trained harder and harder, as if exhaustion alone could beat the answer out of his own blood.
But blood did not work like that.
The more he pushed, the more his chest tightened. The more his body remembered things his mind wanted to avoid. His arms ached. His shoulders burned. His vision kept sharpening and blurring by turns.
Still, he did not stop.
"If I cannot control it," he thought, breath ragged, "then I do not deserve to stay by her side."
That thought alone was enough to make him strike again.
Inside the palace, Isabella was trying to sort dried herbs with Shelia and Ophelia while also pretending not to be tired.
This pretending was not very successful.
Her belly had grown enough that standing up, sitting down, and even turning too fast had become irritating little tasks that all required patience.
Unfortunately, patience was not always one of Isabella’s best qualities. Especially not when her back hurt, her legs felt heavy, and the babies inside her had recently developed a new hobby of kicking her bladder for entertainment.
"These children are really unfilial," Isabella muttered while holding up a bunch of dried leaves and squinting at them. "They are not even born yet, and they already know how to bully their mother."
Ophelia, who was sitting cross-legged nearby, immediately looked at Isabella’s belly with sparkling eyes. "Maybe they just want attention!"
Shelia snorted softly. "Then they already take after the males." 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚
That was actually true.
Isabella could not even argue.
Right at that moment, another hard thud rang out from outside.
Then another.
Then another.
Shelia frowned and turned her head toward the training ground. "He is still going?"
Isabella’s hand paused.
She had heard the sounds for a while now, but she had been trying not to think too much about it because whenever she thought about Cyrus lately, her heart started doing annoying things. Not the romantic kind only. The worried kind.
The deeply worried kind.
"He has been at it since morning," Shelia added, voice lower now. "Even my brother told him to rest earlier, but he said he was fine."
Isabella’s brows slowly pulled together.
Fine?
That man had the worst relationship with the word fine.
If he smiled softly and said he was fine, that usually meant he was one breath away from collapsing emotionally and physically but still wanted to feed her soup first.
Another sound came from outside, harder than the last one.
Ophelia jumped slightly. "That sounded painful."
"Yes," Isabella said flatly. "Because it was."
