The Spoilt Beauty And Her Beasts

Children.

The thought came first and hit hardest.

At once, her hand moved unconsciously toward her stomach beneath the table.

Cyrus noticed immediately.

Of course he did.

He had already been watching her too closely from the beginning, the way he always did these days. The moment she went still, the moment her breathing changed, the moment her fingers moved differently, his eyes were already on her face.

"Is something wrong?" he asked softly.

His voice was low, but that one sentence still made several people at the table glance over.

Isabella lifted her eyes and looked at him.

For one second, she almost answered honestly.

Then she stopped.

Because no.

Not yet.

So she only said, "No."

Cyrus did not relax.

That was because her answer and her body did not match at all. Her voice had been calm, but her eyes had changed too much. So he looked at the bowl, then at her face again, and asked more gently, "Do you not like it?"

Isabella still did not answer.

That was when Cyrus made a soft sound in his throat and reached for the spoon.

"Fine," he said quietly. "I’ll blow on it for you if it’s too hot."

He said it in such a normal, tender way that nobody around them thought much of it at first.

Because this was how he was.

He was always touching, adjusting, helping, bringing, feeding, steadying, warming, checking. The others had long gotten used to the way he hovered around Isabella like she was made of something rare and precious.

And this time, Isabella did not stop him.

That alone said enough to her, because part of her wanted to know.

Snakes were poisonous creatures.

Cyrus also had special blood running in him.

If anyone at this table could sense something wrong in the food, it should be him.

So she sat there very still and let him take the spoon.

The room was still not yet suspicious.

Kian watched because he always watched, but his face remained calm for now.

Zyran was lazily leaning back at first, though one eye had already narrowed just slightly because even he had noticed that Isabella’s silence felt strange.

Osiris, who was normally not the sharpest at these quieter kinds of danger, only frowned a little because he could tell something was off from the mood between Isabella and Cyrus.

Glimora who had been pouting lifted her little head from near Isabella’s leg and stared too.

Cyrus brought the spoon up.

The steam brushed his face.

He leaned in as if to blow on it first.

Then his whole expression changed.

It changed so suddenly and so sharply that the room felt it before anyone even understood why.

His pink eyes narrowed into thin, dangerous lines.

The pupils in them shrank.

Every softness in his face disappeared.

At the same time, the tip of his tongue flicked once, almost too fast for ordinary eyes to catch, and the red coils of his tail beneath and beside the table tightened so hard that the wood gave a small sound under the pressure.

Isabella saw it and felt something inside her chest settle.

He knew.

Cyrus lowered the spoon very slowly.

Then he turned, not to the healer, not to Zara, but to Ophelia.

That was what made the room grow tense all at once.

Because Cyrus’s face looked wrong now.

Not angry in a loud way.

Worse.

Cold.

Cold in a way that made it clear his body was restraining violence by force.

"Did you let anyone near the food?" he asked.

The sentence was simple.

But the way he asked it made everyone at the table go still.

Ophelia looked up at once, completely confused.

For one brief second, she did not even understand what he meant. She had only been watching the room in that soft uncertain way of hers, still trying to understand the currents beneath everything. Now all of Cyrus’s attention had turned on her, and because his voice had become so serious so quickly, her heart jumped at once.

"No," she said.

Then she blinked and looked from Cyrus to Isabella and back again.

Her voice became smaller. "I did not let anyone near the food."

The air in the room changed again.

That was because everybody there knew Cyrus.

And everybody knew that he would never ask something like that without reason.

Kian straightened at once.

His hand, which had been resting behind Isabella’s chair, moved to her shoulder with frightening speed, and the motion was so instinctive that it almost looked beast-like. He did not ask what was wrong yet. First he touched her, first he made sure she was still there, first he placed himself more firmly at her side.

Zyran stopped lounging.

That alone was enough to show how serious the moment had become.

He sat forward slowly, red eyes sharp now, all laziness gone from them. The light teasing smile he wore so often had vanished too, and in its place was the expression of a predator who had suddenly smelled blood.

Osiris’s face darkened.

He had not understood the danger one breath ago.

Now he did.

And once he did, the heat in him changed at once.

The room itself seemed to feel warmer because anger in him was always too close to fire.

Even Glimora stood up.

Her fur along the back of her neck rose little by little while she stared at the bowl, then at the healer, then back at Isabella. A low sound began in her throat.

Luca, who had been standing closer to the wall with one hand still holding a bowl from earlier, froze too.

Shelia’s eyes widened.

Valen instinctively moved closer to Ophelia.

Zara, felt every bit of tension gather in the room like a trap closing, but she kept her face exactly the same. That took effort. A terrible amount of effort. Because the first moment Cyrus’s face changed, she had already understood that something had gone wrong.

He had sensed it.

Of course he had.

Snake beastman.

And not an ordinary one either.

Her stomach turned inside her, but outwardly she only looked confused like everyone else.

Ophelia, meanwhile, had gone pale.

This was because Cyrus’s question had cracked something open in her mind.

At first she truly wanted to say no with confidence.

She had watched the food.

She had done what he asked.

She had stood there.

But then she froze.

Because memory returned.

Not all at once, but fast enough to make her blood run cold.

She remembered the healer.

She remembered the cut on her hand.

She remembered turning away.

She remembered leaving for the cloth.

And even though she had not truly gone far and even though she had only stepped away for a moment, the memory landed so hard that her whole body stiffened.

Her fingers curled.

Her ears trembled.

And the color in her face faded more.

Shelia saw it first.

"Ophelia?" she said quietly.

Ophelia’s mouth opened, then shut.

Because she had just remembered.

She had remembered that she did leave the healer alone with the food.

Not for long.

Not completely.

And yet enough.