The Spoilt Beauty And Her Beasts

He still said nothing.

Yet the warmth and strength in that one action were enough.

After that, they stepped outside again.

And that was when they saw the fight.

Or rather, what was left of it.

A crowd had gathered near one side, and in the middle of it stood the refugees Isabella had taken in weeks ago. They were porters and broken people and those who had once arrived here with nothing but fear and hunger, and by now they had long stopped acting like outsiders. They had built lives here. They had slept under these roofs. They had eaten this food. They had worked and healed and slowly begun calling this place home.

Now they stood with bruised knuckles and hard faces.

On the other side were some of the people from the earlier alliance village. Those same people who had already shown signs of carrying poison in their hearts.

The moment Isabella saw the tension in the air, she already understood.

She had been expecting this.

She had known it would happen sooner or later, because people like that were never content to simply stay still and breathe. They had to pry, test, tempt, and damage.

Still, seeing it happen this quickly made her feel deeply irritated.

Before she could speak, Kian moved first.

He slipped one arm around her with practiced care and kept her slightly behind him, then he asked in a voice that carried a king’s authority very clearly, "What happened?"

The refugees immediately straightened.

That alone showed who they had already chosen in their hearts.

One of the men, his lip split and one eye darkening, looked first at Isabella, then at Kian, then said in a rough voice, "They tried to buy us."

Kian’s face did not change.

"Explain."

The man swallowed, then continued, "They came talking about bigger places, easier lives, richer villages, saying if we gave them information and helped them from inside, then they could take us away from here later and make us live better than this."

At that, a few of the alliance people looked uneasy.

Because once the words were spoken clearly, they sounded exactly as ugly as they truly were.

The refugee man’s expression hardened more.

"They thought we would betray our goddess for promises."

The moment he said that word, goddess, several of the others around him nodded fiercely.

Isabella, who had already suspected this would happen, still felt her chest soften a little.

Because they had not fallen for it.

These people had come here broken, hungry, and frightened. They had been given warmth, food, work, protection, and dignity. And now, when outside hands tried to pull at them with lies and shiny promises, they had chosen to fight instead.

That meant something.

A lot, actually.

Another refugee woman stepped forward and said, "Lady Isabella gave us life. Before coming here, I never imagined I could have a roof, food every day, and people who looked at us like we were something. Why would we sell that away?"

Her voice shook with anger and emotion together.

The others around her looked the same.

Some had bruises.

Some had blood on their mouths or knuckles.

None of them looked ashamed.

If anything, they looked offended that anyone had thought they were cheap enough to buy.

And because of that, Isabella actually felt happy.

The kind that made her feel that maybe all her effort had truly planted roots in this place.

Then she turned her eyes toward the people who had tried to stir trouble.

And her eyes went cold.

The soft happiness she had felt earlier when she realized that the porters and refugees had chosen her over shiny lies disappeared at once, and what replaced it was the kind of calm that made people more afraid than shouting ever could. She sat high on Cyrus’s thick red tail, wrapped in warm fur while snow fell around them in white silence, and yet the cold in her eyes at that moment felt sharper than the weather itself.

The beast people around them felt it too.

The refugees who had been beaten and bruised straightened with their teeth gritted, their furred ears pressed back with anger and humiliation, while some of the alliance people on the ground lowered their heads even more. The guards standing nearby also went tense. Some had claws half out already. Some had tails lashing behind them in irritation. A wolf beastman on the left even let out a low sound from his throat without realizing it, because seeing outsiders try to buy betrayal inside their home was enough to make his instincts bristle.

Kian stood beside Isabella, one arm still around her in that quiet protective way of his, and then he looked at her and asked, "What do you want done with them?"

The moment he asked that, all eyes turned to Isabella again.

Naturally they did.

This village, which could hardly still be called a village anymore, had long started moving with her will whether people spoke it openly or not. Kian was still king, and nobody in their right mind would forget that, but Isabella’s place beside him had become too obvious now. She was the one who had changed this place. She was the one who had saved people, fed people, built things, taught things, and turned broken lives into stable ones. So when punishment had to be decided, people looked at her too.

The kneeling traitors also looked at her.

Some of them looked pale. Some looked angry. Some still had that stubborn look in their eyes as if they had not fully understood how badly they had misjudged this place.

Before Isabella could say anything, another figure stepped out.

Mira.

Or rather, Zara wearing Mira’s face.

She came forward with that same soft healer expression that made her look harmless to anyone foolish enough to trust faces easily. The snow had gathered lightly over her shoulders, and because she had come with the alliance village people, her appearance there felt natural enough on the surface. Still, the moment Isabella saw her, she already understood that this woman had come because she could not bear to stay quiet when something important was happening.

Zara’s heart was already moving quickly.

This was her chance.

She had come with these people. She knew some of them. More importantly, she knew how to shape her words so that they sounded gentle while still turning the direction of a situation. That was one of the few things she still trusted in herself. If she could not have Kian’s eyes on her through beauty, then perhaps she could get attention through softness, through wisdom, through saying the "kind" thing at the right moment.

So she stepped forward and lowered her eyes slightly before speaking.