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CHAPTER 293

Author: CagalieYula
last update Last Updated: 2025-10-21 21:14:22

The hope was a fragile, precious thing, warming us more effectively than the weak sun that filtered through our crude shelter the next morning. For three days, we built our new life. Our lean-to became a sturdier hut, its walls woven tight, its roof thick with leaves that shed the nightly rain. Jeff, with a patience I'd only ever seen him use on engine components, taught Lina how to knap a piece of flint into a sharp edge. I learned which mushrooms were safe, which tubers could be dug up and roasted in our small, carefully-tended fire.

Lina was our guide. She didn't just hear the water sing; she listened to the forest's whispers. She led us to a thicket of berry bushes we never would have found, and when a sleek, cat-like predator with too many eyes stalked the edge of our camp, she simply stood and stared at it. The creature had frozen, cocked its head, and then melted back into the shadows without a sound.

"It was just curious," she'd said, turning back to me with a shrug. "It's not
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  • RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK   CHAPTER 297

    The jump was different this time. It wasn't the violent, reality-wrenching tear of the Ouroboros. It was a glide, a descent into a warm, dark river. The bronze ship around us hummed a low, soothing frequency, a lullaby after the Archive's sterile scream. There was no bone-deep terror, only a profound, weary disorientation.The light outside the viewport resolved from streaks into a soft, predawn grey. We were descending through a calm, misty sky towards a landscape of rolling, forested hills. It was Earth. It felt like Earth. The scent of pine and damp earth filtered through the ship's ancient environmental systems, a familiar perfume after the alien loam of the Archive's exhibit.Jeff’s hands were white-knuckled on the controls, his face slack with exhaustion and disbelief. "We're… down. We're stable." He looked at the readouts, his brow furrowed. "The power core is almost depleted. That one jump… it took everything."It didn't matter. We were down. We were alive.The hatch hissed op

  • RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK   CHAPTER 296

    The silence in the corridor was absolute, broken only by the faint, sinister hum of the Archivists' charged weapons. The purple light painted their featureless helmets in shifting, malevolent shades. There was no cover, no side passages, no hope of outrunning whatever energy bolt was about to vaporize us. We were a bug on a slide, pinned and ready for dissection.Jeff pushed Lina and me behind him, his body a final, futile shield. My mind screamed, scrambling for a solution that didn't exist. Lina’s trick with the wall had been a masterpiece of desperate improvisation, but it had also led us into a dead end. We were trapped in the belly of the beast.The lead Archivist took a step forward, its weapon unwavering. There was no synthesized voice this time, no declaration of quarantine. This was an execution.And then Lina spoke, her voice a small, clear chime in the tense silence. But the words were not her own. They were a stream of guttural, clicking phonemes, layered with a harmonic r

  • RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK   CHAPTER 295

    The world narrowed to the fracture in the wall and the descending teardrop ship. The deep purple glow at its base intensified, humming with a power that made the fillings in my teeth ache. It was a sound of absolute finality. We were seconds from being expunged, our messy, biological story neatly deleted from the Archive's pristine records.But Lina's eyes were fixed on the crack, wide not with fear, but with a terrifying, dawning recognition."It's the same," she whispered, her voice almost lost in the building whine of the ship's weapon. "The song behind the wall… it's the same as the hungry nothing."My blood ran cold. The eraser. The void that consumed reality. It wasn't just a weapon of the Curators. It was a force the Archive was built to contain. And we had cracked the containment field.The teardrop ship hesitated. Its smooth, menacing descent faltered as its sensors undoubtedly registered the breach. The purple glow at its base flickered, its purpose shifting from exterminati

  • RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK   CHAPTER 294

    My body moved before my mind could process the horror. I threw myself in front of Lina, a primal shield against the cold, logical violence of the Archivist. The beam of white light from its stylus didn't strike her. It hit me.Agony. Not a physical burning, but a deeper, more fundamental violation. It felt like every memory, every thought, every defining moment of my life was being flash-frozen and held up for inspection. I saw my childhood home, Jeff's face the first time he kissed me, Lina's birth, the screaming void of the eraser—all of it laid bare and labeled for deletion. A scream was torn from my throat, soundless in the mental onslaught.CONTAMINATION CONFIRMED. SECONDARY ANOMALY. QUARANTINE PROTOCOL EXPANDING.The Archivist adjusted its aim, the stylus now encompassing both of us. Jeff roared, a raw, desperate sound. He didn't have a weapon, nothing but his own two hands. He launched himself at the figure, not to attack, but to disrupt, to be a variable its cold programming c

  • RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK   CHAPTER 293

    The hope was a fragile, precious thing, warming us more effectively than the weak sun that filtered through our crude shelter the next morning. For three days, we built our new life. Our lean-to became a sturdier hut, its walls woven tight, its roof thick with leaves that shed the nightly rain. Jeff, with a patience I'd only ever seen him use on engine components, taught Lina how to knap a piece of flint into a sharp edge. I learned which mushrooms were safe, which tubers could be dug up and roasted in our small, carefully-tended fire.Lina was our guide. She didn't just hear the water sing; she listened to the forest's whispers. She led us to a thicket of berry bushes we never would have found, and when a sleek, cat-like predator with too many eyes stalked the edge of our camp, she simply stood and stared at it. The creature had frozen, cocked its head, and then melted back into the shadows without a sound."It was just curious," she'd said, turning back to me with a shrug. "It's not

  • RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK   CHAPTER 292

    The cool, damp earth seeped through the fabric of my pants, a grounding, primal sensation after the sterile cold of the Ouroboros and the screaming void of the eraser. I breathed in, deep and shuddering, filling my lungs with air that tasted of decay and life, of wet stone and photosynthesis. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever experienced.Jeff groaned, pushing himself onto his elbows. His eyes, when they met mine, were wide with a disorientation I felt deep in my own soul. We had become unmoored from everything—time, space, the very narrative that had defined and hunted us.“Where… when… are we?” he whispered, the words swallowed by the immense, quiet grandeur of the forest.“I don’t know,” I said, my voice hoarse. My gaze was locked on Lina. She was still curled between us, a small, peaceful comma in the story of our chaos. I crawled to her, my movements clumsy, my heart a frantic bird against my ribs. The fear was a reflex now, a ghost-limb of terror. I reached for her ankl

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