Villainess is being pampered by her beast husbands

Chapter 463 --463

They decided to fly back.Well, thanks to Veer, Kaya really had to say—this was the most brilliant mode of transport she had ever experienced. No fuel needed. No flat tires. No bad roads. No flight tickets. No schedules. No delays.

Just wings, wind, and the willingness to eat occasionally.

The Nikala tribe’s settlement was farther than she’d like right now. They were in the completely opposite direction—which meant to reach it, they needed to turn back, fly through mongoose territory at Veer’s fastest safe speed, and then after roughly two days of continuous flight, they would reach home.

But there were problems.

If even one snake from yesterday’s chaos had survived and was still tracking them, or if the mongooses somehow lost their focus on each other and redirected their attention upward—Veer didn’t know whether the snakes would get them first or the mongooses would. The mongooses couldn’t fly, so aerial capture wasn’t a concern. And the snakes, while large and occasionally problematic, were also largely ground and tree bound. With Veer at full height, they were out of reach.

The real concern was Kaya. If she fell—by any chance, any sudden movement, any unexpected turbulence—that would be the end of it.

The second option was the long way around. A complete detour that avoided mongoose territory entirely.

Seven days.

Seven days of flying, exposed, through unknown territories, with beast tribes apparently capable of sensing her location regardless of distance. Seven days of anything that could go wrong, going wrong.

With Veer’s speed alone, four days. But with Kaya and Cutie, safely—seven.

Kaya listened to the options and made her decision without much deliberation.

They were going through mongoose territory.

She wasn’t scared of them. They would be flying at full height—complete upper altitude. Mongooses couldn’t throw poison at them from the ground. Couldn’t leap that high. Couldn’t fly. And the reason she’d led the snakes into mongoose territory in the first place was precisely because she’d known that once those two tribes collided, neither would have attention for anything else. Both tribes would be too consumed with each other to care about three figures passing overhead.

Seven days of exposure versus one calculated risk.

Easy choice.

Veer looked like he wanted to object. His expression shifted through several stages of resistance. But then he looked at Kaya’s eyes—the flat, dangerous calm in them that left absolutely no room for argument—and whatever protest he’d been forming died quietly somewhere in his throat.

He said nothing.

So it was decided.

But first—food.

Except then they all simultaneously realized something they had somehow overlooked until this exact moment.

They were on a mountain slope.

Not at the base. Not on a plateau with accessible forest around them. On an actual mountain slope, at whatever terrifying altitude Veer had chosen for their overnight shelter.

The realization settled over all three of them with the particular awkwardness of something that should have been obvious much earlier.

Kaya walked to the edge and looked down.

She immediately wished she hadn’t.

There was nothing to see. Literally nothing—just a thick wall of mist swallowing everything below, dense and impenetrable and somehow more unsettling than visible danger. And given that above them it was completely sunny and bright, the mist made no sense atmospherically.

Which meant only one thing.

They were too high up for clouds to be beneath them.

Kaya took a careful step back from the edge, her expression carefully neutral, her heart doing something unpleasant in her chest. She put her hands in her pockets, turned, and walked back toward the flattened area where they’d slept.

"Well," she said, her tone perfectly nonchalant, as if she hadn’t just looked into the abyss, "I think we should eat. How about that?"

She turned to look at Veer.

Veer looked back at her with the expression of a man who was already exhausted and hadn’t even started flying yet. He raised one hand weakly, his voice carrying the particular flatness of someone stating facts rather than complaining.

"Without eating, I cannot fly. I’m already tired."

Kaya nodded slowly. That was fair. That was completely fair. Because if Veer left to find food and something went wrong—if he got delayed, if something attacked him, if he simply took too long—then Kaya and Cutie would be stranded on this mountain slope at soul-shaking altitude, with no way down, no food, and no protection against whatever lived up here.

Perfect targets.

The three of them stood there for a moment, looking at each other.

Three people. A mountain. Mist below. Sun above. No food anywhere in sight.

Kaya pulled her hands out of her pockets and looked around the barren rocky slope with the focused expression of someone refusing to accept that a situation was as bad as it looked.

There had to be something.

There was always something.

And even though Kaya knew how to fly—technically—she was absolutely not taking that risk.

Her flying was out of control on the best of days. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. And up here, with this endless, merciless sky stretching in every direction and mist swallowing everything below—if she dared to launch herself off this slope and something went wrong, God only knew where she would end up. Or rather, God only knew where she would *fall*.

So no. Flying was off the table.

Which meant all three of them were standing here on this rocky slope, looking at each other, hungry and stranded and pretending they weren’t both of those things.

Kaya opened her bag.

She dug through it with the focused determination of someone who refused to panic, pushing past the water container, the knife, various other supplies—

And then her fingers closed around something.

Jerky.

Chicken jerky and beef jerky, to be precise.

She pulled it out and counted the pieces.

Seven.

Seven pieces of jerky. Three people.

Don’t ask how the chicken jerky was made. Veer had made it, which meant Kaya genuinely had no idea what process had been involved, and she’d decided some time ago that certain questions were better left unasked.

She looked at the seven pieces in her hand, then looked at Veer—who was their only means of transport, their engine, their literal escape from this mountain—and made the executive decision immediately.

Three pieces went to Veer.

He was a transport plane. He needed fuel. Non-negotiable.

Two pieces went to Cutie.

And before anyone raised the obvious question—no, Cutie was not vegetarian. Kaya had actually assumed he would be, initially. It seemed logical. Rabbit beastman, gentle disposition, didn’t seem like the hunting type. She’d operated on that assumption for longer than she should have.

Then they’d been at the turtle tribe, and she’d watched Cutie eat meat with the casual ease of someone who’d been doing it his entire life.

The assumption had died quickly and quietly.

In hindsight, it made complete sense. These were beastmen. The rabbit wasn’t just a rabbit—it was also a predator in its own right when pushed far enough. Kill or be killed was the baseline of this world. The instinct to hunt, to survive, to eat whatever was available—that was written into every beastman’s blood regardless of what animal they represented.

If it was kill or eat, then both were equally valid options.

Same for Kaya, honestly.

She kept two pieces for herself, tucked the empty bag back into her pack, and sat down on the cold stone. The jerky was tough and slightly over-dried and tasted like it had been made by someone who prioritized preservation over flavor.

But it was food.

And right now, food was everything.

The three of them sat together on the mountain slope, chewing in silence, the morning sun beating down on their heads, the abyss of mist churning quietly below the edge.

Seven pieces of jerky between three people on top of the world.

It wasn’t much.

But it would have to be enough to get them home.

But no matter what, Veer was a beastman, and same for Cutie. Even though they had eaten something, unlike Kaya—whose hunger could be satisfied with relatively little—beastmen got hungry again quite easily. Their bodies burned through energy faster, needed more fuel, more frequently.

As Veer sat there with the expression of someone quietly contemplating the unfairness of the universe, Cutie glanced over at him and spoke.

"I think you’ve rested enough. Should we start?"

Veer turned to look at him slowly. The kind of slow that wasn’t tiredness but deliberate. He looked Cutie up and down with the particular contempt of someone who had very specific opinions about rabbits giving travel advice.

"Yeah, yeah," Veer said, his voice dripping with mockery. "Why do you have to worry? You can just eat the grass from the side, you damn rabbit."

The words landed with the casual cruelty of someone who knew exactly which buttons to press.

Cutie looked at him.

Not with anger. Not with embarrassment. His red eyes were perfectly calm, his expression soft and almost gentle, carrying the particular serenity of someone who had already won the argument before opening his mouth.