The Spoilt Beauty And Her Beasts

The words snapped out of her so quickly that Isabella had to give her a look at once.

Not a hard look.

Just enough.

Shelia caught it and immediately bit the rest back.

That was because she understood. If she said too much in the wrong way now, then all the men in this room would stop listening and start killing. And since Isabella clearly had some longer plan in mind, ruining it here would only make things messier.

Still, Shelia’s anger did not lessen.

Her hands were already clenched, and the memory of that day had come back too easily. She still remembered the deadly poison, the fear, the weakness, the humiliation of not even knowing what had been done to her until it was too late. So hearing that Zara had been in their midst this whole time made her blood boil.

Luca reacted next.

"Then I should go kill her and end all of this."

He was already half rising.

Isabella immediately said, "Get your ass back here."

That made him stop.

Only because it was Isabella.

He sat down again with an expression full of suffering.

To be honest, half the room wanted to do exactly what he had just said.

Osiris looked the most lost of all.

That was because while everyone else at least had history to connect to this name, Osiris only had pieces. He remembered anger, fragments, names he had heard in passing, and the fact that whenever Zara was mentioned before, the mood around Isabella had always gone sharp. So now he looked from one person to another with deep confusion written all over his face.

"Who is Zara?" he asked. "And why did nobody realize it at first?"

Ophelia answered first because she still looked too shaken to stay quiet. "She has a completely different face now. And her attitude too. She was never like that before."

Osiris nodded slowly. "Oh."

Then he thought about it for one second and added very seriously, "From today, I’m going to be extra mean to her."

That line would have been funny at any other time.

Here, it was funny too, just in a darker way.

Isabella looked at him and said, "Just do not kill her in the process, alright?"

Osiris answered with complete honesty, "I can’t promise that."

She glared.

He looked back at her for one moment, then gave in with the face of a man being forced into terrible compromise. "Fine. I will try."

Glimora, meanwhile, was still deeply offended.

Now that she knew the truth, her little face had become even more expressive. She stood up on all fours and began pacing in tiny furious circles beside Isabella like a very short, very angry general. The whole beast looked personally betrayed that Zara had dared exist near them in a false face, and every time someone said her name, Glimora’s tail lashed once as if she wanted to bite through the memory itself.

Valen finally spoke too, because unlike the others, he was still trying to catch up with old history.

"This is the same one?" he asked quietly. "The one who disappeared after Shelia was suddenly poisoned?"

Shelia’s mouth twisted. "Yes."

That short answer carried enough hatred to explain the rest.

Kian leaned back slightly and looked at Isabella again.

He had only one real question in his mind now, though several smaller ones were circling under it.

"How did I not know?" he asked.

His voice was calm.

Still, Isabella heard the real meaning under it.

He was not only asking how. He was asking why he had not seen what Cyrus and Zyran had seen. He was asking how that woman had walked so close to them, spoken so much, acted so falsely, and still escaped his notice.

Before Isabella could answer, Zyran said lazily, "Maybe because you were too busy staring at someone else."

Kian gave him a look cold enough to kill weaker men.

Zyran only smiled with open shamelessness and leaned back further.

Isabella saw where that was going and decided to make it worse.

"Maybe she still has an effect on you," she said lightly.

The moment those words left her mouth, Kian’s eyes darkened completely.

The room changed with that one small shift.

That was because even as a joke, the idea was ugly. The thought that Zara could still affect him in any way after all this, after everything Isabella had done, after all the time that had passed, was enough to make something in him go cold and dangerous.

Isabella saw it immediately and said, "Relax. I’m joking."

That was only partly a joke, and everyone knew it.

Still, Kian’s eyes eased a little after that.

Cyrus, however, was not interested in those particular jokes at all. He was still too angry, and unlike the others, his anger was personal in a more direct way. Zara had not only come into their space. She had tried to poison Isabella. She had tried to harm his mate and the young in her belly. So while everyone else spoke, Cyrus remained mostly silent, and his tail stayed much too close to Isabella, curling near her legs and chair like a living wall.

That extra clinginess did not escape anyone.

At one point, when Isabella shifted slightly to reach something, the end of his tail immediately moved too and settled even closer around her seat.

Zyran noticed and clicked his tongue. "If you coil around her any tighter, we will need a knife to separate the two of you."

Cyrus did not even look at him. "Good."

That answer made Luca snort despite himself.

Even in the middle of all this, Cyrus was still Cyrus.

Ophelia, however, had gone quiet.

Too quiet.

Isabella noticed after only a few breaths.

The poor girl was staring down at her hands now, and the more she thought about what had happened, the worse she looked. Guilt sat all over her soft little face, and because she was so easy to read, even Glimora eventually paused in her pacing to stare at her.

Isabella sighed in her heart.