Villainess is being pampered by her beast husbands

Chapter 461 --461

The backpack with Cutie inside was a solid weight against her spine, strapped so tightly it felt like part of her body.For a moment, all she could do was survive.

Then—slowly, carefully—Kaya forced herself to crack her eyes open.

Just slightly.

Just enough to see.

And what she saw made her heart pound even harder.

Behind them, the serpent tribe—still in pursuit, still furious, still too blinded by rage to think clearly—was diving straight toward the same area they’d just left.

And below, the mongoose tribe was gathering.

More and more of them emerged from the rocky terrain, drawn by the commotion, their bodies coiled and ready. Their eyes tracked the incoming serpents with deadly focus.

The two tribes were on a collision course.

The snakes coming from above.

The mongooses waiting below.

Their trajectories were identical.

And if Kaya wasn’t wrong—if she was reading this situation correctly—in just a few seconds, they would collide.

Everyone knew what happened when mongooses met snakes.

It was in their blood. In their instincts. In the very core of what made them beastmen.

Natural enemies.

Predator and prey locked in an eternal war that transcended reason.

Kaya watched, her breath caught in her throat, as the first serpent beastman—too focused on chasing Veer, too consumed by anger—finally noticed the mongooses below.

His eyes widened.

He tried to pull up, wings flaring, body twisting—

Too late.

The mongooses *struck*.

Three of them leaped simultaneously, their movements coordinated with terrifying precision. Their jaws clamped down on the serpent’s tail, his wings, his body, dragging him down out of the sky with brutal efficiency.

The serpent’s scream cut through the air—a horrible, hissing shriek of pain and fury.

And then the others arrived.

More serpents. More mongooses.

The sky and ground erupted into chaos.

Serpents diving, trying to attack from above. Mongooses leaping, dragging them down. Fangs and claws and blood. Hissing and snarling and the sickening crunch of bodies colliding.

It was a *massacre*.

Not one-sided—both tribes were vicious, both were deadly—but it was absolute carnage.

Kaya stared, momentarily frozen by the sheer violence of it.

"Don’t look!" Veer shouted, banking hard to the left, putting more distance between them and the battle below. "Just hold on!"

But Kaya couldn’t look away.

Not yet.

Because she needed to see.

Needed to confirm that the plan—het plan, the one veer executed with her one word —had actually worked.

And it had.

The serpent tribe wasn’t chasing them anymore.

They were too busy fighting for their lives.

Every single one of them had either been dragged into the melee or was actively engaged with mongoose opponents. The sky behind them was empty—no more pursuers, no more threats.

They were free.

Kaya finally let out the breath she’d been holding, her body sagging slightly against Veer’s back.

Kaya bit down on her teeth, grinding them together as Veer didn’t pause for even a second. He just kept flying, his wings beating relentlessly, putting more and more distance between them and the chaos they’d left behind.

Faster. Higher. Without rest.

After about two hours—yeah, *two full hours* of clinging to his back, muscles screaming, fingers cramping, the wind battering her face—did he finally stop.

He landed on a mountain.

Not gently. Not gradually. Just dropped onto a wide rocky ledge and immediately shifted back into his human form.

Kaya didn’t sit down.

She *flopped*.

Her legs gave out the moment her feet touched solid ground, and she collapsed onto her back on the cold stone, chest heaving, arms sprawled out to either sides. Every muscle in her body was on fire. Her hands were shaking so badly she couldn’t make them stop. The world spun above her—sky and clouds blurring together as her body finally registered just how much punishment it had endured.

Beside her, the backpack shifted. Cutie tumbled out, transforming back into his human form mid-roll. His white hair was completely disheveled, his face drained of color, his red eyes unfocused and glassy. He lay there on the ground next to her, chest rising and falling in shallow, rapid breaths.

Veer stood a few feet away, hands on his hips, breathing hard but still upright. His dark hair was windswept, his jaw tight, his eyes scanning the horizon with the wariness of someone who knew danger could come from anywhere.

For several long minutes, no one spoke.

The only sounds were their labored breathing and the whistle of wind across the mountain peak.

Kaya stared up at the sky, her mind refusing to settle despite her body’s exhaustion. She could still feel the phantom sensation of wind slamming into her face, the terror of nearly falling, the brutal acceleration as Veer had launched them away from the mongoose attack.

But underneath all of that—underneath the physical trauma and adrenaline crash—something else gnawed at her.

Something that didn’t make sense.

She forced herself to sit up. Slowly. Painfully. Her muscles screamed in protest, but she pushed through it, planting her hands on the cold stone and dragging herself into a sitting position.

Her eyes fixed on Veer’s back.

"Why?"

The word came out hoarse. Raw.

Veer turned slightly, his expression unreadable.

Kaya’s jaw tightened. "Why did they chase us?"

Veer didn’t answer immediately. His gaze shifted back to the horizon, to the endless expanse of forest and mountains below.

"They’re a beast tribe," he said finally. "Instinct—"

"No."

The word cut through the air like a blade.

Kaya pushed herself to her feet, ignoring the way her legs trembled. She took a step toward Veer, her eyes hard.

Something that didn’t make sense.

The snake tribe’s behavior.

Their relentless pursuit.

Yeah, snakes hated vultures. Natural enemies, born from instinct older than memory. But that kind of hatred manifested as territorial aggression, quick strikes, dominance displays. It didn’t manifest as a coordinated hunting party that chased prey for hours across multiple territories without stopping.

That wasn’t instinct.

That was purpose.

Kaya looked at Veer and then at Cutie, her eyes narrowing slightly as a new thought struck her.

"Did you guys kill a snake or something?"

Veer shrugged his shoulders, the gesture almost dismissive. "I’ve been with you all this time, so how could I go hunting?"

Cutie shook his head hurriedly, his white hair swaying with the motion. "I don’t do hunting."

Kaya nodded slowly, but the answer only deepened her confusion.

Because what Veer said was correct—he *had* been with her constantly since they’d met. There’d been no time for him to slip away and kill a serpent beastman, no opportunity for the kind of territorial dispute that would justify the snake tribe’s fury.

And Cutie? The rabbit beastman couldn’t hunt if his life depended on it. He was prey, not predator. The idea of him killing anything, let alone a snake, was laughable.

So why had the snake tribe reacted with such focused, relentless aggression?

Kaya turned back to face the horizon, her mind working through the problem like picking at a knot.

Beast tribes had territorial instincts. They had natural hatreds—snakes and vultures, mongooses and snakes, predators and prey. But those conflicts followed patterns. Rules. A vulture entering snake territory might get attacked, chased off, maybe killed if they were unlucky.

But not *hunted*.

Not tracked for hours with the single-minded determination of a tribe that had lost something precious.

The pieces didn’t fit.

Unless...

Kaya’s eyes widened slightly as another possibility crept into her thoughts.

Unless they hadn’t been responding to something Veer or Cutie had *done*.

They’d been responding to something else entirely.

Kaya’s gaze dropped to her bags—the backpack that had held Cutie during the flight, the small pouch at her waist with nothing but basic supplies. She mentally catalogued everything she carried: water container, some dried meat from the ground tribe, a knife, the clothes on her back.

Nothing precious. Nothing valuable enough to arouse the fury of an entire beast tribe.

And then there was the distance.

The turtle tribe settlement was *so far away* from snake territory. Miles and miles of forest, rivers, different tribal lands between them. For the snake tribe to leave their own area and come all the way out here—to hunt them with such precision and determination—

Why?

And more importantly: *how?*

Kaya’s brow furrowed as she worked through the logistics.

Even Veer’s own family didn’t know where they’d gone. He’d flown them away from the ground tribe in secret, changed direction multiple times, landed in isolated areas. There’d been no trail to follow, no scent markers that would last across that kind of distance.

So how had the snakes known?

How had they found them at the exact location, at the exact time, as if they’d been tracking their movements from the very beginning?

It didn’t make sense.

The mountain wind picked up, colder now, cutting through her clothes and raising goosebumps on her skin.

Kaya stared out at the endless landscape below, her mind working furiously.

The snake tribe had come from impossibly far away, tracking her with impossible accuracy, driven by instincts they probably didn’t even understand.

And if they could do it...

So could others.

The thought settled into her chest like a stone.