Chapter 719: Why did you hit me?
"They made me do it. They knew I came here with them, and they knew I still had ties there. My mother is sick. She has been sick for a long time. They told me if I did not obey them, they would stop the medicine that keeps her alive. I had no choice."
The lie came out smoother after the first few words.
That was because once Zara chose a path, she knew how to walk it fully.
Her breathing shook at the right places.
Her voice trembled.
Even the way she lowered her head looked pitiful enough to touch a softer heart.
"I only wanted to save her," she whispered. "I was trapped."
Nobody in the room believed her.
That was the funny part.
Not one person.
Even Ophelia, who had once wanted to see the best in this woman, stared at her now with open hurt and confusion. Ophelia’s heart was soft, yes, but it was not blind forever. She could hear the lie in the way Zara had shaped it too quickly. She could feel it in the ugly wrongness still hanging in the room.
Cyrus’s tail slammed the ground.
The sound cracked like thunder.
Then he roared, and his voice sounded so violent that Ophelia flinched.
"That gives you no right to harm my mate!"
The whole room seemed to shake with it.
Cyrus rarely raised his voice like that. He was usually the gentlest one among them. He was patient, soft, sweet, attentive, and so easy to speak to that people sometimes forgot what he truly was.
They forgot he was a giant snake beastman serpent with special blood and instincts old enough to terrify villages. So when that side of him finally came out, it was worse somehow, because it felt less like anger and more like the natural law of a creature protecting its nest.
Zara’s face went white again.
Because if Cyrus attacked this time, Isabella might not stop him quickly enough.
Isabella, meanwhile, looked at Cyrus and thought with real frustration, "If they kill her now, then where is the fun?"
That thought came so naturally that if anyone else had heard it, they might have been afraid of her too.
Because that was the truth.
Death now would be too easy. Too kind. Too fast.
She wanted Zara alive long enough to rot.
So Isabella thought quickly.
Then she decided maybe this was the time to tell the others about Zara, but not in this exact moment.
She turned her back to the healer, and stared at everyone behind her with a soft face and said in a voice full of fake sympathy, "That is true. Greater things exist in this world. Can you all not hear that her mother is in trouble?"
And then Isabella blinked.
Not once.
Not twice.
She blinked again. And again.
Slow. Obvious. Almost dramatic.
It was so exaggerated that for a second, it looked like something was genuinely wrong with her eyes.
The sentence sounded normal on the surface.
Still, the way Isabella said it, and the way she stressed certain words while blinking like she was trying to send signals across mountains, made the meaning underneath it very clear to everyone who actually knew her.
Greater things.
Hear that.
Mother.
Trouble.
Blink.
Blink blink.
The message was not about a sick mother at all.
It was Isabella saying, "Use your brains. There is something bigger here. And if you miss it, then honestly, I will start questioning my life choices."
Kian got it first.
Of course he did.
His sharp blue eyes narrowed slightly as he watched her blink like a possessed owl, and for a brief second, something almost like disbelief passed through him, as if he was thinking, is she really doing this right now?
Then it was gone.
His expression returned to that cold, controlled stillness, but the meaning had already settled in his mind.
Cyrus got it next.
His rage did not disappear, his tail was still coiled tight, his muscles still tense, his eyes still burning with that terrifying protective instinct, but the moment he saw her blinking like her life depended on it, something in him paused.
His eyes shifted from Zara to Isabella.
And because he trusted her more than his own instincts, more than his own anger, more than anything in this world, he forced himself to breathe.
Zyran got it too.
And unlike the others, he almost ruined it by laughing.
His lips twitched, his eyes gleamed, and if the situation was not so serious, he would have clapped for her performance. The poison part made him murderous, yes, but this, this ridiculous blinking coded message, this hidden layer beneath sweet words, this was his kind of entertainment.
Shelia got it.
Luca got it.
Asael got it.
Even Glimora got it.
The small white beast, who had been staring at Zara with full offense written all over her furry face, suddenly turned her head to Isabella, watching her blink again and again.
Glimora froze.
Then her ears twitched.
Then she slowly nodded to herself like a tiny scholar who had just solved a very important problem.
Her expression clearly said, "Ah. Mama is doing something evil. I understand."
She puffed up proudly after that, like she had just passed an intelligence test.
Only Ophelia took a moment longer.
Her brows furrowed, her soft face filled with confusion, but as she watched Isabella continue blinking like she was fighting for her life, realization slowly dawned on her.
Her lips parted slightly.
Oh.
Oh...
Only one person almost destroyed everything.
Osiris.
He frowned deeply as he stared at Isabella.
He watched her blink.
He watched her blink again.
And because his brain always chose the most direct path, he opened his mouth and said very seriously, "Is something wrong with your ey—?"
The room went silent.
Zyran moved so fast it almost looked like a shadow.
Smack!
The sound of his hand hitting the back of Osiris’s head echoed loudly.
"OW!" Osiris snapped immediately, turning around with pure offense written all over his face. "Why did you hit me?"
Zyran looked at him with deep, exhausted disappointment. "Because sometimes, it is better when you shut up."
Osiris looked genuinely wronged. "I was asking a question."
"And I was saving your life," Zyran replied flatly.
Osiris opened his mouth again, clearly ready to argue.
Zyran raised his hand slightly.
Osiris closed it.
That short, stupid exchange cracked the suffocating tension in the room just enough for air to return.
Even Cyrus’s tail loosened slightly.
Even Kian’s fingers relaxed just a fraction.
Even Shelia exhaled.
Glimora looked between them like, "These grown men are embarrassing."
Zara, however, felt something much worse.
The anger in the room had changed.
It was still there.
But now it was quieter.
And quieter anger was always more dangerous.
Isabella stopped blinking at last.
She turned back to Zara with a soft smile, like nothing strange had just happened, like she had not just blinked her way through a full secret message in front of everyone.
"Go rest," she said gently. "You clearly look unwell."
Zara stared at her.
Something was wrong.
She could feel it.
But she could not prove it.
And the way every single gaze in that room now felt sharper, colder, heavier, made her chest tighten.
She wanted to refuse.
She wanted to push further.
She wanted to tear this strange calm apart and find out what Isabella was hiding.
But she couldn’t.
Because every male in that room looked like they were one wrong word away from tearing her apart.
So she lowered her head.
"...Thank you," she said softly.
Isabella’s smile did not change.
Then she turned to Luca.
"Escort her."
Luca looked like his soul left his body.
"Must I be the one?"
Isabella slowly turned her head and looked at him.
That was all.
Just a look.
And suddenly, every instinct in Luca’s body screamed at him to shut up and move.
The hair along the back of his neck literally stood on end, his spine straightened, and whatever complaint he had died before it could even form properly.
"...Fine," he muttered.
He walked toward Zara like a man being sent to escort a very polite disaster.
As he passed her, he kept just enough distance, as if he was walking beside something that might explode at any moment.
Zara followed him out.
The moment she stepped outside, the cold air hit her face, but it did nothing to cool the storm rising inside her.
Behind her, the door closed.
And inside, every single one of them knew.
The game had changed.
Naturally, guards were placed around her room the moment she was gone.