Villainess is being pampered by her beast husbands

Chapter 504: Chapter-504

"What do you think?" she asked Veer.

He circled the site slowly, examining it from different angles. "It’s convincing. If I were searching for someone and I found this, I’d assume they’d moved on from here recently. I’d probably search the surrounding valleys, looking for their current location."

"Which is exactly what we want," Kaya said with satisfaction. "This should keep them busy for days, searching this area while we’re safely hidden twenty miles to the northwest."

She paused, then added, "We should leave one more thing. Something that makes it absolutely clear this campsite is connected to us."

"Like what?"

Kaya thought for a moment, then smiled grimly. She pulled out a piece of fabric from her pack—a strip torn from the tunic she’d worn when she first arrived in this world. It was distinctive, made from materials that didn’t exist in the beast world, with a weave pattern that was clearly foreign.

She tied it around a branch near the campsite, letting it flutter in the breeze like a marker or a signal.

"That," she said, "will make it unmistakable. Anyone who’s been briefed on what to look for will recognize that fabric as mine."

Veer looked at it and nodded approvingly. "That’s perfect. Subtle enough that it looks accidental, obvious enough that they won’t miss it."

They took one final look around, making sure everything was in place, then Veer transformed back to his vulture form.

*Time to go,* his mental voice said. *We’ve been here almost two hours. We don’t want to push our luck.*

Kaya climbed onto his back, securing her grip. "Let’s get home."

---

## The Return Flight

The return journey was tenser than the flight out.

Now they were in daylight, fully visible to anyone who might be watching the skies. And they were both tired—Veer from the extended flight, Kaya from the nervous energy of creating the false trail.

They flew a different route back, circling north before turning west toward their valley. It added time to the journey, but it meant anyone tracking them wouldn’t be able to draw a straight line from the false campsite to their real location.

About halfway back, Veer suddenly dove sharply, dropping altitude so fast that Kaya’s stomach lurched.

*Eagles,* his mental voice was tight with tension. *Three of them, flying a search pattern about two miles south. They haven’t seen us yet, but we need to stay low.*

They hugged the mountainside, Veer using every bit of terrain to stay hidden from the searching eagles. Kaya pressed herself flat against his back, making herself as small as possible, barely breathing as they navigated through narrow passages between peaks.

The eagles’ screeches echoed off the mountains—communication calls, coordinating their search pattern.

Kaya’s hand drifted to her gun, though she knew using it would be a last resort. Seven bullets wouldn’t be enough against three trained eagle warriors, and the sound would draw every eagle in the region to their location.

But having it there, ready, was comforting.

They flew like that for another thirty minutes, Veer’s flight path erratic and unpredictable, constantly adjusting to avoid being spotted by the distant search parties.

Finally, they reached their valley.

Veer descended rapidly, landing hard near the cave entrance—or at least, where the cave entrance had been.

For a moment, Kaya couldn’t see it at all.

Serra and Cutie had done exceptional work.

The entrance was now concealed behind a carefully arranged curtain of vines and strategic rock placements. From even twenty feet away, it looked like nothing more than a shadowed depression in the cliff face, the kind of feature that appeared on dozens of other rock faces in the area.

*Impressive,* Veer’s mental voice carried approval as he transformed back to human form.

"Kaya? Veer?" Cutie’s voice came from somewhere within the concealed entrance. "Is that you?"

"It’s us," Kaya called back quietly. "We’re coming in."

They pushed through the vine curtain, which had been arranged to swing aside easily from this direction while looking solid from the outside.

Inside, Serra and Cutie had been busy with more than just external concealment.

The cave interior had been reorganized. Supplies were now stored in natural alcoves, making them less visible. The sleeping area had been moved deeper into the cave, away from the entrance. And most impressively, they’d constructed an additional screen of woven branches inside the entrance, creating a kind of airlock that would prevent firelight from being visible from outside even if someone made it past the vine curtain.

"This is incredible," Kaya said, genuinely impressed. "How did you do all this in one day?"

"We had good motivation," Serra said dryly. "Knowing eagle search parties were getting closer made us very efficient." She studied them both. "How did the false trail go?"

"Perfectly, as far as we can tell," Kaya said. She described what they’d done, the campsite they’d created, the fabric marker they’d left.

Serra listened intently, occasionally nodding. When Kaya finished, she said, "That should work. If they find it—and they will, you made sure of that—they’ll assume you’ve established a base somewhere in that region. They’ll search every valley within ten miles of that site."

"How long will that buy us?" Veer asked.

"A week, minimum. Possibly two if they’re thorough." Serra’s expression was cautiously optimistic. "And by the time they realize the trail is false and expand their search, winter will be starting. Eagle search operations become much more difficult in snow and ice."

"So we’ve bought ourselves time," Kaya said. "Good. Now we use that time wisely."

She moved to the fire pit—now cleverly designed with a chimney system using natural rock formations that dispersed smoke so it wouldn’t be visible as a column—and sat down, gesturing for the others to join her.

"Alright," she said. "We’ve handled the immediate crisis. Now we plan for the medium term. Serra, you said winter comes early here. What exactly does that mean? What should we expect?"

Serra settled in, her expression becoming serious. "Heavy snow, starting in about five to six weeks. Temperatures that drop well below freezing at night. Strong winds that can make travel impossible for days at a time. And most concerning—avalanche risk. These mountains are unstable in winter. One loud sound in the wrong place can trigger a slide that buries everything in its path."

"Wonderful," Veer muttered.

"Can we survive it?" Kaya asked directly. "Here, in this cave, with the supplies we have and can gather in the next few weeks?"

Serra considered carefully before answering. "Possibly. If we prepare well, if we’re lucky with the weather, if we don’t have any major setbacks." She paused. "But it won’t be comfortable. And there’s always a risk of something going wrong—injury, illness, the cave entrance being blocked by snow."

"What would improve our odds?" Kaya asked.

"More food stores. Much more. We need enough preserved meat and dried plants to last three months minimum." Serra ticked items off on her fingers. "Better insulation—more furs, more material to block drafts. A backup shelter, in case this one becomes inaccessible. And ideally, more people to share the workload and watch rotation."

"More people," Kaya repeated, latching onto that last point. "Back to recruitment. We need to start actively seeking out potential members."