Villainess is being pampered by her beast husbands

Chapter 462: Chapter-462

But what Kaya could not understand was *why*.

Why her? Why now? Why with such intensity that an entire tribe would abandon their territory and hunt her across impossible distances?

The questions circled in her mind like vultures, offering no answers, only more confusion.

But Kaya knew one thing—a saying that had somehow survived whatever memory loss she’d suffered: *If you want to catch a thief, think like one.*

So to understand why the snake tribe had come after her with such focused determination, she needed to think like them. She needed to get inside their heads, understand their instincts, their motivations, their primal drives.

But there was a problem.

She wasn’t a snake. She wasn’t even a beastman. Whatever human consciousness occupied her body had no access to those ancient instincts, those blood-deep compulsions that drove beast tribes to act in ways that seemed incomprehensible to her rational mind.

She couldn’t *truly* think like them.

Not on her own.

Which meant she needed to do something arguably insane.

She needed to meet a snake beastman—willingly, deliberately—and figure out what he thought. What he felt when he looked at her. What made her worth hunting.

The idea settled in her mind with cold certainty. Dangerous? Absolutely. Potentially fatal? Very likely. But it was the only way to get real answers instead of speculation and half-understood prophecies from old men who’d given up trying to change fate.

For tonight, though, they would stay here.

They were too exhausted to move further. Veer’s wings had carried them for hours without rest; Cutie had been stuffed in a backpack through aerial combat and breakneck speeds; and Kaya herself felt like she’d been beaten with rocks and then forced to run a marathon.

They needed sleep.

They cleaned a spot near the middle of the rocky ledge—not near the edge where a wrong roll could mean death, and not near the wall where insects and small creatures might nest in the cracks. Just a relatively flat area of stone that would have to serve as their bed for the night.

Kaya had spent enough nights sleeping in the open now that her body no longer protested the uneven surface. Whether it was adaptation or just sheer exhaustion overriding discomfort, she couldn’t say. But as she lay down on the cold stone, using her backpack as a makeshift pillow, her body began to relax almost immediately.

Veer lay down beside her without asking permission.

Then he moved closer.

And then he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against his chest in a tight embrace.

Kaya’s first instinct was to push him away—to establish boundaries, to maintain the distance she’d been trying to keep. But then she felt the warmth of his body against the chill of the mountain night. The security of being held by someone who’d proven—however reluctantly—that he’d protect her.

It was practical, she told herself. Body heat. Safety.

So she let him be.

Her eyes drifted closed, exhaustion finally pulling her toward sleep.

Behind her, she heard the soft shuffle of movement. Cutie settling down to sleep as well.

But not far away.

Kaya’s drowsy awareness registered his presence—close enough that if she reached back just five steps, she could touch him. Not pressed against her the way Veer was, not overtly clinging. But near. Within reach.

As if he needed to know she was there.

As if distance, even a few feet of it, was too much.

Kaya didn’t have the energy to question it. Didn’t have the clarity to analyze why both of them seemed drawn to stay close to her, to touch her, to orbit her like planets around a sun they couldn’t escape.

Sleep pulled at her consciousness with heavy hands.

The last thing she registered was the sound of wind across stone, the warmth of Veer’s arms around her, and the quiet breathing of Cutie behind her.

Three people on a mountain.

Hunted.

Exhausted.

But for this moment—this brief, fragile moment—alive and together.

And then darkness claimed her, deep and dreamless and absolute.

The next morning came with loud bird noises and strong sunlight directly on their faces. Yet Kaya was not up.

Well, to be precise, she *could not* move.

Her neck... her neck felt like it was stuck in one position.

Kaya’s consciousness surfaced slowly, dragged up from the depths of exhausted sleep by the insistent cacophony of birds and the relentless brightness stabbing through her closed eyelids. Her mind registered discomfort first—a sharp, unyielding ache radiating from her neck down into her shoulders.

She tried to turn her head.

Nothing happened.

Or rather, something happened—a spike of pain so intense it made her eyes snap open and her breath hiss through her teeth.

Okay. Not moving. Definitely not moving.

Kaya lay there, frozen in the exact position she’d apparently slept in all night, staring at the brightening sky above. The sunlight was merciless, painting everything in harsh morning gold, and the birds—somewhere nearby, probably nesting in the mountain crags—were screaming their territorial disputes at volumes that seemed personally offensive.

Her neck throbbed with each heartbeat.

This was what she got for sleeping on stone. For running for her life, flying for hours, and then collapsing without any regard for proper sleeping posture or support.

Her body had finally decided to lodge a formal complaint.

Kaya tried again—very carefully this time—to shift her head even slightly to the left.

The pain that lanced through her neck made her abandon that idea immediately.

Stuck. She was completely stuck.

And to make matters worse, she became acutely aware of the weight still pressed against her. Veer’s arms were still wrapped around her torso, his chest against her back, his breathing slow and even. Still asleep, apparently, unbothered by the sun or the birds or the fact that they were sleeping on literal rock.

Behind her—or rather, somewhere in the vicinity she couldn’t actually see because turning her head was impossible—she could hear Cutie’s soft breathing as well.

Also still asleep.

Of course.

Of *course* she would be the only one awake and suffering.

Kaya closed her eyes again, trying to will away the pain through sheer stubbornness. It didn’t work. Her neck remained locked in position, the muscles cramped and screaming, probably twisted at some horrible angle all night while she’d been too exhausted to notice or care.

The birds continued their morning concert.

The sun continued its assault on her face.

And Kaya lay there, trapped between a sleeping vulture beastman and the consequences of sleeping like a corpse on a mountain.

This, she thought grimly, was not how she’d planned to start the day.

Kaya finally managed to extract herself from Veer’s grip—slowly, painfully, each movement sending fresh spikes of agony through her locked neck. She sat up with her head tilted at an awkward angle, looking like someone who’d been cursed to stare perpetually at the sky.

Veer stirred, his eyes blinking open. He took one look at her and his brow furrowed.

Kaya glared at him—or tried to, given that her neck wouldn’t cooperate enough to properly direct the expression.

"Don’t," she said flatly.

Veer wisely said nothing, though something that might have been amusement flickered across his face before he suppressed it.

Cutie woke next, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. When he saw Kaya’s rigid posture, concern immediately flooded his features. He opened his mouth—

"Don’t," Kaya repeated, more firmly this time.

Cutie closed his mouth.

After several minutes of Kaya attempting various careful stretches—all of which resulted in more pain and zero improvement—Veer finally spoke.

"We should move. Staying in one place too long isn’t safe."

Kaya wanted to argue, but he was right. Beast tribes could track her somehow, which meant lingering on this exposed mountain peak was asking for trouble.

She pushed herself to her feet, her neck still locked at that uncomfortable angle, and gathered her things with stiff, awkward movements.

"Where are we going?" Cutie asked quietly.

Kaya’s jaw tightened as she secured her backpack—a task made infinitely more difficult when you couldn’t turn her head.

"Nikala tribe. Home."

The words fell like stones into still water.

Cutie froze completely, The silence stretched for ten full seconds—long enough for Kaya to finish adjusting her pack, long enough for the mountain birds to resume their screaming, long enough for the weight of what she’d said to fully settle.

Then Cutie nodded.

Just once. Slowly. His expression was complicated—relief mixed with something darker, something that looked almost like resignation. But he didn’t argue. Didn’t question.

He just accepted it.

On the other hand, Veer’s expression was far more turbulent.

His jaw worked silently, his hands curling and uncurling at his sides. His dark eyes fixed on Kaya’s back with an intensity that would have made her uncomfortable if she could actually turn to look at him properly. But her neck was still locked, so she could only sense the weight of his gaze rather than meet it.

The Nikala tribe.

The tribe Kaya had created—or rather, claimed. The ground tribe settlement she’d renamed, restructured, made into something that answered to her. A place that was hers in a way nothing else in this world was.

A home.

For Veer, that single word carried implications that cut deeper than any blade.