Baby System: I'm the Beast World's Only Hope!-Chapter 224: Episode : Never an US?

"I am doing this for us!" Roxy cried, trying to pull her wrist free from his grip. "Caspian, please, you’re twisting my words. I just want the lineage to be secure! I just want—"

"Stop."

Caspian exhaled the word, and the weight of it crushed the air out of the room.

He released her wrist, not with a shove, but with a slow, deliberate letting go that felt far worse. He drifted back a few inches, putting a terrifying amount of distance between them.

"Do not lie to me, Roxy," he said, his voice flat. "Not anymore. I have spent months telling myself lies. I told myself your sadness was just the adjustment. I told myself the way you stare at the surface was just curiosity."

He looked at her, his golden eyes dull, stripped of their usual shine.

"But I know," he whispered. "I know you are not happy here. I know you hate the pressure. I know you hate the dark. I know that every time I touch you, you have to force yourself not to flinch."

...

He gestured to the room.

"You do not see a home," Caspian stated. "You see a cage. And you do not see a husband. You see a jailer."

Roxy opened her mouth to argue, to spin another web of half-truths, but the words died in her throat.

Because he was right.

He saw her. He truly, completely saw her. And the realization that her performance had failed, that he had known all along and loved her anyway, didn’t make her feel better. It made her feel worse.

"You think..." Roxy started, her voice trembling. Her hands balled into fists at her sides. "You think this is easy?"

"I think you are surviving," Caspian said softly. "I think you married me to survive. I think you are carrying my child to survive."

Something inside Roxy snapped.

The guilt, the fear, the twenty-seven-day countdown, the exhaustion of pretending to be a fish when she was a human, it all boiled over.

"Fuck!" Roxy sighed in exasperation..

She shoved herself off the wall, getting right in his face. Her hair floated wildly around her, mirroring the chaos in her mind.

"Are you fucking complaining right now?!" she shouted, poking a finger into his chest. "After everything I’ve done? And endured! I am carrying a baby in a body that wasn’t designed for it!"

"Roxy—"

"No! Shut the fuck up!" she roared, her eyes blazing with hysterical tears. "What the fuck do you have me do, Caspian?! Put on a smile? Pretend I don’t miss the sun every single second of every single day?"

She was hyperventilating now.

"I am drowning!" she screamed. "I am drowning in your world! And you have the audacity to stand there and look hurt because I tried to find you a girlfriend? I tried to give you an out, you idiot! I tried to give you someone who actually belongs here!"

Caspian stared at her. He didn’t recoil from her anger. He absorbed it. He looked at her heaving chest, her red face, the raw, unfiltered misery radiating off her.

"Do you find me lacking?" he asked quietly.

The question cut through her shouting like a knife.

"What?" Roxy panted.

"Do you find me... inadequate?" Caspian asked, his voice breaking. He spread his arms, exposing his scarred chest, his powerful tail, his everything. "Is it my strength? My wealth? Am I not enough of a King for you? Is my love too heavy? Tell me, Roxy. What is the defect?"

He looked so earnest. He looked so ready to fix whatever was broken, to tear down the world if it meant making her smile.

And that was the problem. He couldn’t fix it. He couldn’t fix any of it.

Cause Roxy never planned to be here in the first place.

"YES," she hissed.

The word hung in the water, poisonous and absolute.

Caspian flinched as if she had struck him.

"Yes," Roxy repeated, her voice dropping to a venomous whisper. "Because you are a fucking fish, Caspian."

She saw the light die in his eyes. But she couldn’t stop. The floodgates were open, and all the resentment she had buried was pouring out.

"You are cold," she spat. "Your skin is cold. Your world is cold. I touch you and it feels like I’m hugging a marble statue. I want warmth! I want fire! I want legs!"

She grabbed her own tail, digging her nails into the pink scales until she almost drew blood.

"I hate this!" she cried, shaking her tail. "I hate having a tail! I hate the pressure! I am a mammal, Caspian! I am not one of you! And no matter how many pearls you give me, no matter how many people I feed... I will never be one of you!"

Caspian stood frozen. He looked down at his own hands, webbed, clawed, alien. He looked at his tail. For the first time in his life, he looked at his own body with shame.

"I cannot change what I am," he whispered.

"I know!" Roxy sobbed, a harsh, ugly sound. "And that’s why it doesn’t work! That’s why it will never work!"

She was panting hard, her chest heaving. The silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating.

But the demon in her mind wasn’t done. It whispered that she hadn’t pushed him far enough. If she stopped now, he might still try to comfort her. He might still try to "make it work."

She needed to burn the bridge. She needed to nuke it from orbit.

She looked up at him, her eyes cold and dead.

"You saved me from drowning," she said, her voice devoid of emotion. "You think you’re a hero."

Caspian looked up, hope flickering faintly. "I did. I saved you."

"I never needed you to save me," Roxy lied.

The lie tasted like bile. It was the worst thing she could say. It invalidated everything they had built. It invalidated his greatest act of love.

"If I knew," she continued, her voice trembling as she delivered the final blow, "if I knew that ’saving me’ meant dragging me down into this dark, wet hell... if I knew I would end up like this..."

She stared directly into his golden eyes.

"I would rather die."

The silence that followed was total.

Caspian didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. He just stared at her.

The color drained from his face, leaving him grey. His posture, usually so proud and kingly, collapsed. His shoulders slumped. His fins flattened against his body.

He looked like a man who had just been gutted.

He looked at Roxy. He didn’t see his wife anymore. He didn’t see his Queen. He saw a stranger who hated him. He saw a prisoner who wished for death rather than his embrace.

Roxy stood there, breathing hard, her hands shaking. She waited for him to yell. She waited for him to strike her. She waited for him to lock her up.

Instead, Caspian let out a long, shuddering breath.

He slowly lowered his arms. He looked down at the floor, unable to meet her gaze anymore.

"I see," he whispered.

He turned away from her. He swam toward the door, his movements slow and sluggish, like an old man carrying a mountain on his back.

He placed his hand on the handle. He paused. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

He didn’t look back at her. He couldn’t.

"So," Caspian said, his voice barely audible, a ghost of a sound in the quiet room. "There was never an us?"