Villainess is being pampered by her beast husbands

Chapter 468: Chapter-468

"No. Better than healers. We have ’science’." She saw their confusion and tried again. "We have... rules. Rules about how the body works, how diseases spread, how to keep people healthy. And we have tools—medicines, equipment—based on those rules. We don’t guess. We know."

Veer’s eyes narrowed. "Your world sounds... controlled."

"It is," Kaya agreed. "And I hated parts of it. The restrictions, the politics, the way everything was monitored and measured. But I never had to worry about dying from drinking bad water. I never had to wonder if the person I touched was carrying some plague. I never had to cover myself in mud to survive the summer."

That last part came out more bitterly than she’d intended.

Cutie looked stricken. "Is it... is it really that bad? Being here?"

Kaya softened slightly. "It’s not about bad or good. It’s about compatible. This world works for you. Your bodies are adapted to it. Mine isn’t. Every day here is a risk I’m taking, and the longer I stay, the worse those odds get."

Veer was quiet for a long time. Then he asked, "Do you even know how to get back?"

"No," Kaya admitted. "But I have to try."

"And if you can’t? If there’s no way back?"

Kaya’s expression hardened. "Then I’ll keep trying until I die. Because at least I’ll die trying to go home instead of just... accepting this."

The cave fell silent again.

Cutie looked down at his hands, his ears drooping. Veer stared at Kaya with an expression she couldn’t quite read.

Finally, Veer spoke. "If you’re determined to leave... then we help you."

Kaya blinked. "What?"

"We help you," Veer repeated. His voice was firm, decided. "We get you somewhere safe first. Away from whoever’s hunting you. Then we help you figure out how to go home."

"Veer—"

"You saved my life," Veer interrupted. "Multiple times. You could have left me behind. You didn’t." He gestured to his shoulder. "I’m injured because I chose to fight beside you. The least I can do is help you get what you actually want."

Cutie looked up, his eyes shimmering slightly. "I... I want to help too."

"Cutie, you don’t have to—"

"I ’want’ to," he insisted. His voice was stronger now, more certain. "Even if it means... even if you leave. I want to help you be happy. And if going home makes you happy, then..." He swallowed hard. "Then that’s what we should do."

Kaya felt something crack inside her chest. Something warm and painful and entirely unwelcome.

She’d had comrades before. People she’d fought beside, bled beside, nearly died beside. But this was different. This was... selfless in a way that she wasn’t used to.

"You’re both idiots," she said, her voice rougher than intended.

Veer smiled faintly. "Probably."

Cutie managed a weak laugh. "Definitely."

Kaya looked at them both—these two strange, beautiful, completely incompatible-with-her-worldview beastmen who had somehow become important to her despite her best efforts not to care.

"Fine," she said. "But first, we need to get out of this cave. We need to find somewhere actually safe. And then we need to figure out who the hell is trying to kill me and why."

"In that order?" Veer asked.

"In that order."

Veer nodded. He pushed himself to his feet with visible effort, his shoulder clearly still paining him. But he stood steady, his amber eyes clear and focused.

Cutie stood as well, wiping his eyes quickly when he thought Kaya wasn’t looking.

Kaya took a deep breath and rose to her feet. Her body ached. Her mind was exhausted. But she was alive, and she had a plan—however vague it was—and she had two completely insane beastmen willing to help her.

It wasn’t much.

But it was something.

"Alright," she said. "Let’s find that back exit and get out of here."

And together, the three of them turned deeper into the cave, leaving the entrance and its lingering threats behind.

.

.

Kaya’s head was throbbing. Actually, physically throbbing, like someone was driving nails into her skull with each passing second.

She was on the brink of killing someone.

These bastards—these absolute ’bastards’—kept speaking about how they would find her a way to get back, how they would help her, blah blah blah, all this nonsense about supporting her goals.

But they couldn’t even find the end of the cave.

They had literally ’forgotten’ which way they’d entered.

Okay, yes—fine—’she’ had also forgotten. But listen, this was a ’cave’. She wasn’t born to navigate caves. She was raised to be a soldier, trained for combat, urban warfare, tactical operations. It wasn’t like she would lose her way in an alleyway or get confused in her modern world. At least there, she had landmarks. Street signs. A sense of direction that actually ’meant’ something.

But this cave? This cave made ’no sense’.

She clearly remembered entering from the right. She was ’certain’ of it. The memory was vivid—stumbling through the narrow opening, the wolves snapping at her heels, diving into darkness with Veer and Cutie.

Right side. Definitely the right side.

So why, when they tried to backtrack and go right, did they find themselves in a completely unfamiliar passage that ended in a wall of solid stone?

They’d been traveling non-stop for what felt like hours now, turning down passages, retracing steps, trying different routes. And Kaya could not ’understand’ how these two idiots—these so-called ’beastmen’ with their superior senses and instincts—kept getting them more lost.

Veer had supposedly tracked prey across entire mountain ranges. Cutie claimed he could navigate by scent and air currents.

And yet here they were, going in circles in a ’cave’.

And on top of everything—on top of being lost, exhausted, hungry, and increasingly convinced they were going to die down here—this weird compulsion toward deathbed confessions was apparently not going to die anywhere.

Veer suddenly stopped walking. He turned to look at Kaya, his amber eyes catching what little light filtered through from some distant crack above.

"Sweetheart," he said, his voice carrying that infuriating casual tone he used when he was about to say something terrible, "if today we die here, I want you to know... it wasn’t me who mixed bacon into your food."

Kaya froze mid-step.

Her brain stuttered. Rewound. Processed.

’Bacon.’

’In her food.’

Oh God. Oh ’God’. This man—this ’bastard’—

Now she understood. Now she ’finally’ understood why she’d felt like vomiting black bile whenever she ate the food this man prepared. Why her stomach had churned and twisted in ways that felt fundamentally ’wrong’. Why she’d sometimes woken up in the middle of the night with cramps that made her want to die.

"’You—!’"

But before she could finish that sentence, before she could wrap her hands around Veer’s throat and squeeze until his eyes popped out, Cutie’s voice piped up from behind them.

"Um, Kaya?"

His tone was small. Hesitant. The tone of someone who knew they were about to say something that would get them killed but felt compelled to confess anyway.

Kaya turned slowly to look at him, her expression already promising murder.

Cutie swallowed hard. His red eyes were wide, guilty, absolutely terrified.

He bit his lips.