Reborn as the Psycho Villainess Who Ate Her Slave Beasts' Contracts

Chapter 409: Chapter-409

The heavy oak door to Elara’s office didn’t just open; it flew back against the wall with a sharp, echoing *crack*.

Mahir stood in the doorway, his chest heaving, his dark beast-kin ears pinned flat against his messy hair in a display of pure, unadulterated fury. His tail was lashing violently behind him, sweeping left and right like a whip. Directly behind him stepped Ken. While Ken wasn’t snarling like Mahir, his usual lazy, arrogant smirk was entirely gone, replaced by a cold, dangerous stillness that made the temperature in the room feel like it had dropped ten degrees.

They had clearly bypassed the guards, Demerti, and every protocol in the palace the moment the rumors from the administrative wing reached their ears.

Elara didn’t even look up from the portfolio she was analyzing. She merely dipped her quill into the inkwell, her hand steady. "You are disrupting the filing system."

"What is this nonsense, Master?!" Mahir barked, his voice dropping into a low, animalistic roar that vibrated through the floorboards. He marched straight to her desk, his large, calloused hands slamming down onto the dark wood, leaning over until he was directly in her line of sight. "The entire palace is talking about it! The servants, the guards, the nobles—everyone is saying you’re picking a husband from the foreign delegations!"

Ken closed the heavy door behind them with a slow, deliberate click, locking it. He didn’t approach the desk with Mahir’s frantic energy. Instead, he stayed back, leaning his broad shoulders against the wood, crossing his arms over his chest. His dark eyes were fixed entirely on the five portraits laid out in a neat row. He was silent, letting Mahir act as the vanguard, but the sheer tension in his posture spoke volumes.

"The rumors are factually accurate," Elara replied, her voice remaining perfectly flat, an anchor of cold logic against Mahir’s heat. "The domestic nobility, in coordination with five neighboring kingdoms, have submitted formal marriage proposals. I am currently evaluating the economic and territorial assets attached to each candidate."

"Evaluating?!" Mahir’s ears twitched violently, his fangs baring slightly as his voice cracked with disbelief. He looked genuinely shocked—the kind of deep, visceral shock that came from a predator realizing its territory was being bargained away. "You’re actually looking at them?! Master, they are trying to force you! They are trying to push you out of your own empire because they’re terrified of you!"

"I am aware of their motives, Mahir," Elara said, finally setting her quill down and looking up at him with her deep, expressionless eyes. "But their fear has inadvertently caused them to offer unprecedented concessions. If I accept the second prince of the Western Kingdom, we secure exclusive maritime trade routes. If I choose the Northern prince, we gain shared access to the iron mines. From a logistical standpoint, the return on investment is substantial."

"I don’t give a damn about iron mines!" Mahir shouted, his tail thumping hard against the side of her desk. His golden eyes were wide, burning with a frantic, protective territorialism. "You don’t need a husband! You don’t need some pretty-faced foreign prince sitting in your space, touching what belongs to us! If the nobles are giving you trouble, let me and Ken handle it. We can clear the ministry by midnight. No signatures, no documents. Just blood."

"Execution without legal justification creates political instability," Elara countered objectively. "A marriage contract creates a fifty-year non-aggression pact. The latter is a more permanent solution."

"And what about us?" Mahir’s voice suddenly dropped, the raw anger twisting into something sharp, desperate, and deeply wounded. He leaned closer, his beast-kin instincts screaming at the thought of another male entering her life. "You told us last night... you told us we were your anchor. You said you didn’t have to calculate around us. Now you’re going to let some noble bastard move into the palace? Share your title? Share your name?"

While Mahir practically vibrated with rage, Ken finally spoke from the door. His voice was terrifyingly calm, a low, smooth purr that carried a lethal edge.

"Mahir is right, Master," Ken said, his dark eyes tracking the way Elara’s face remained completely unbothered. He stayed behind Mahir, playing the anchor, but his shadow loomed large over the room. "You’re treating this like a supply manifest. A political husband isn’t a desk ornament. He will have expectations. He will want access to your court, your authority, and your bed. He will try to claim you to secure his own kingdom’s leverage."

Ken took two slow, silent steps forward, stopping just behind Mahir’s shoulder, creating a unified wall of opposition. "We’ve spent years keeping the vultures away from you while you rebuilt this place. We didn’t do it just to watch you hand yourself over to a second-rate prince for a fourteen percent increase in agricultural profit."

Elara looked at both of them. She took in Mahir’s bared fangs and lashing tail, and Ken’s cold, unyielding stare. To a normal woman, the sheer intensity of two powerful men fiercely objecting to her marriage would evoke a rush of emotion—validation, fear, or secret satisfaction.

To Elara, it was just more data to process.

"Your assessment of a foreign prince’s expectations is accurate, Ken," Elara stated calmly, tapping her finger against the Northern prince’s portfolio. "However, you are assuming I would allow him the liberties you describe. Any marriage contract I draft will explicitly include clauses for separate quarters, total political disenfranchisement within our borders, and zero physical obligations. He will be a husband in name only. A legal ghost used to extract resources."

Mahir let out a sharp, frustrated huff, his ears twitching as he tried to digest her clinical breakdown. "A ghost? You think some royal prince is just going to sit in a separate room and let you ignore him?"

"If he violates the contract, it constitutes a breach of treaty, allowing us to retain the assets while voiding the alliance," Elara explained, as if explaining a basic training maneuver. "It is a trap, Mahir. One that the foreign kingdoms are willingly walking into because they underestimate my lack of emotional investment."

Mahir stared at her, his jaw tightening. His chest still heaved, his beast-kin instincts still entirely hostile to the idea, but the raw, chaotic shock was slowly being replaced by the familiar, exhausting realization that their Master was simply operating on a completely different psychological plane.

Behind him, Ken’s eyes narrowed slightly, a slow, dangerous appreciation flickering in his dark gaze as he realized exactly how ruthless her strategy actually was. He didn’t relax his posture, but he didn’t push forward either. He stayed right where he was, watching her, waiting to see just how far she was willing to play this game.

The silence that followed Elara’s clinical explanation did nothing to cool the air in the room. If anything, the tension thickened, turning suffocating.

Mahir’s fingers curled into claws, his nails digging directly into the heavy oak of her desk, leaving light, pale scores in the dark varnish. His tail lashed with a violent, erratic rhythm, snapping against the side of the woodwork.

He didn’t care about legal loopholes. He didn’t care about a breach of treaty or strategic traps. His half-beast nature, combined with the years of absolute devotion he had poured into her, made the entire concept of a political husband an intolerable insult to his existence.