The Spoilt Beauty And Her Beasts-Chapter 627: That scent again…

Osiris’s mouth fell open slowly. For a moment, his pride screamed. He was a phoenix, not a donkey. But then he looked at her pouting lips and the way her cheeks were slightly puffed, and his pride lost.

"Fine," he said almost through his teeth. "I will do it."

"Also," Isabella added with a sweet smile that was not sweet at all, "every time you see me, you have to say, ’Our Isabella is the most beautiful, not fat at all.’ If you forget, I will add another task."

Osiris covered his face with one hand. His ears turned red. "You are bullying me," he complained softly. "I am sure this is bullying."

Isabella’s mood shot up several levels. "So? What can you do about it?" she asked in her heart. On the surface, she only raised an eyebrow, extremely calm.

"Do you agree or not?"

Osiris lowered his hand. He stared at her for a long moment. Then, with a sudden crooked smile, he leaned forward and rested his forehead gently against her thigh.

"I agree," he said. "Our Isabella is the most beautiful, not fat at all."

Her heart skipped. She quickly slapped the top of his head lightly. "Too late. I am still angry. Go and bring me something sweet to eat. And think about how you will continue to coax me when you come back."

Osiris straightened. His eyes were shining again, no longer gloomy. "I will bring you something that will make you forgive me," he said confidently. "Just you wait."

He jumped to his feet and strode out, cloak flying behind him. The moment he left, Isabella’s hard expression cracked completely. Her lips curved, and she could not help but laugh softly.

Honestly speaking, being treated like a treasure by several powerful males was really not bad at all.

By the time Osiris’s footsteps faded down the corridor, evening had slipped into proper night. The sky outside had turned a deep dark blue, and the snow reflected a faint, cold light.

Isabella shifted carefully and stood up from the rug. Her back ached a little, and her belly felt heavy and full as if her children were rolling around inside, picking fights with her ribs. She stepped to the nearby window slit, intending to look out while she waited.

The moment the cold night air brushed her skin, a strange feeling pricked at the back of her neck.

It was not a physical touch, it was more like a thin pressure gently pressing down on her head from very far away.

Her heart jolted. She instinctively lifted a hand to her chest, fingers curled over the place where the snake mating mark lay hidden beneath her robe.

The mark did not burn, but her instincts whispered that someone outside the village boundary was looking this way.

The gaze did not feel like the greedy stares of wandering bandits. It was heavier, more deliberate, like a beast crouching in the dark, watching a lit house and calculating the doors.

Her brows drew together. "Who?" she thought. For a moment, she considered calling Bubu, but the pressure slipped away as quickly as it came, leaving only the usual stillness of winter night.

[Host frowning again,] Bubu’s lazy voice finally rang out in her mind, sounding like it had been napping. [Do not wrinkle your face too much. You will regret it when you see your reflection tomorrow.]

"Is someone watching us from outside?" Isabella asked quietly in her heart. "I felt something."

[The world is full of eyes,] Bubu replied. [It is normal to be watched, especially when you shine this brightly. I will increase my monitoring range, but for now, there is nothing directly threatening the wall. If there is, I will scream in your head loudly enough to wake your children.]

"...Very reassuring," Isabella muttered. She exhaled, a small white puff leaving her lips, and closed the shutter again. The feeling had faded, but the tiny stab of unease stayed in her chest like a seed.

On the other side of the palace, in a warm stone kitchen that already smelled like roasted meat and herbs, Cyrus was quietly cutting strips of meat into even pieces.

His long snake tail was half coiled around the leg of the stone table, and the upper half of his body moved with slow, precise gestures.

He looked peaceful on the surface, the pink of his eyes slightly dim in the firelight, but the moment that same strange pressure brushed across the village, his hand paused in mid air.

The knife stopped just above the meat. His pupils tightened sharply, thin vertical slits constricting as if they had seen something that was not really there.

Something in the far distance tugged at him, a spiritual smell that scraped lightly against old scars in his mind.

Familiar.

That was the first word that rose in his chest. Not friendly, not safe, just familiar, the way an old iron chain would be familiar if it touched his skin again after many years.

His tail tightened unconsciously around the table leg. A small crack formed in the stone under the pressure. For an instant, the image of a red figure standing in a field of dead grass flashed behind his eyes, and the faint echo of a woman’s cry seemed to float by his ear. His hand trembled.

Then, as quickly as it had come, the pressure faded.

Cyrus lowered his eyes. He released the table slowly and forced himself to continue cutting the meat. The kitchen grew quiet again, but the soft line between his brows did not disappear.

He looked toward the direction of the outer forest for a brief moment, though he could not see it from here. His voice was so low he did not even realize he had spoken.

"That scent again..."

Then he pushed the feeling down into his chest, burying it under layers of small daily tasks, and focused on preparing breakfast for the one person he could not afford to frighten.