The Spoilt Beauty And Her Beasts-Chapter 673: Do not be like Zyran, and do not be shameless. You better not take it off
Kian looked at Isabella as if she had just said something deeply unreasonable.
His eyes narrowed slightly, and the annoyance already burning in him sharpened into confusion too. He knew Isabella well enough to understand that she was not foolish. If she had seen what he had seen, then she should know this woman’s fall was deliberate.
So why was she saying this?
Was she mocking him?
Testing him?
Mocking the woman?
Zara, however, heard something very different.
Inside her heart, she almost laughed in cold satisfaction.
This foolish woman.
For all her cleverness, all her power, all her pretty confidence, she was still a woman in the end, and perhaps even she could be played if one knew where to touch the scene.
So Zara lowered her gaze and added softly, "Yes, my king. I only heard that you had been working for many hours without rest, and I thought you must be tired and lonely. I brewed medicine to ease the strain, and when I came closer, I slipped by mistake. I never meant any offense."
Her voice trembled at exactly the right places.
Her face looked embarrassed at exactly the right angle.
Her hands trembled just enough to suggest hurt pride and innocence, but not enough to seem theatrical.
If Isabella had not known who she was, she might have admired the performance.
Might have.
Instead, she felt her teeth itch.
Tired and lonely?
How shameless could a person be before the heavens struck her down from sheer disgust?
Kian looked like he wanted her out before she finished the sentence.
In truth, he had already wanted her gone before Isabella entered, because from the moment this healer stepped into his room, he had felt an irrational irritation crawling over his skin.
He could not explain why. He did not know her face. He had no memory attached to her. Yet something about her voice, her presence, and the way she looked at him made him feel as though a cold worm had somehow found its way into the room.
And now she was speaking even more.
Worse, she was speaking in front of Isabella.
His patience snapped.
"Get out," he said.
The words were so cold that they seemed to cut the room in half.
Zara’s heart shuddered with rage.
She turned very slightly, and for one second, before she caught herself, her eyes almost slid toward Isabella with a glare sharp enough to wound.
Then she saw Isabella looking directly at her.
The glare vanished at once.
In its place came wounded innocence.
It was actually almost impressive.
Kian’s gaze had not left Isabella yet, because he was still trying to read her expression, and the more he looked, the more he felt something was off.
She did not look upset in the way he had expected. She looked far too calm. Too interested. Too composed.
That made him even more suspicious of everything in the room.
He wanted the healer gone.
Immediately.
"I said," he repeated, slower now, "get out."
This time, even Zara knew there was no room to stretch the act further without exposing herself.
She rose carefully from the floor, lowered her head, and said in a voice full of false obedience, "Yes, my king."
But inside her heart, bitterness had already bloomed into something dark and ugly.
As she moved toward the door, all the poison she had been carrying gathered in one place.
It was because of Isabella.
Everything wrong in her life always twisted back toward Isabella somehow.
That woman stood there wrapped in warmth, loved by everyone, carrying children in her belly, smiling sweetly while the world bent around her as if that were natural.
Why?
Why did she get everything?
Why did she get Kian’s eyes, Kian’s attention, Kian’s instinctive focus, when Zara had sacrificed so much and still received nothing but cold disgust in return?
By the time Zara stepped past Isabella, her face remained meek, but her heart was already whispering with terrifying clarity.
If she could not kill Isabella, then perhaps Isabella should lose what she loved.
Perhaps those children should never be born.
Perhaps then that smile should break.
The thought came so viciously and so naturally that it frightened even her for a moment.
Then she welcomed it.
She left.
The room finally became quiet.
Isabella stood there for a breath, then another, then looked at Kian.
The expression on his face was so annoyed, so deeply and purely annoyed, that she almost laughed on the spot.
He looked like a man who had just been forced to sit through the worst conversation of his life while being splashed with medicine he did not ask for.
There was still some of it on his chest and along the top of his hide skirt.
The sight was ridiculous enough that Isabella’s amusement began bubbling up despite everything else.
So she asked, in a very calm voice, "What happened?"
Kian’s jaw tightened.
He looked at the place where Zara had stood, then at the wet mess on himself, then back at Isabella.
His irritation was coming from several directions at once. He hated the woman’s presence. He hated the performance she had attempted.
He hated that Isabella had walked in at that exact moment. Most of all, he hated that the medicine now clung to his skin and clothing, making him feel dirtier than the actual liquid should have justified.
His face darkened.
"I need to take off my skirt," he said.
Isabella’s eyes widened instantly.
"No," she said at once. "Don’t you dare."
Kian blinked once, clearly not expecting that reaction.
But Isabella already knew exactly what he meant, and she absolutely refused to let him act shameless this early in the morning.
He was a beastman.
He wore a hide skirt.
And underneath that hide skirt, as every troublesome creature in this world seemed to believe was perfectly normal, there was nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
So Isabella pointed at him at once and said, with full warning in her voice, "Do not be like Zyran, and do not be shameless. You better not take it off."
