Transmigrating to the BeastWorld,I Picked Up an Adorable BeastHusband!-Chapter 40: Every inch of her is mine ......
Lang’s comment was meant to be a compliment, but it opened a door that should have stayed shut.
Hezhi, standing nearby with a smirk that didn’t reach his cold eyes, stepped forward.
He had been nursing a grudge since the day Weijie claimed the human female.
To Hezhi, females were a resource, rare, precious and meant to be shared or fought over and seeing a "runt" like Weijie possess something so unique gnawed at his gut.
"Beautiful?" Hezhi laughed, a sharp, grating sound that cut through the pleasant aroma of the fish. "She’s a mountain of meat. Look at the way she sits. I bet she’s soft in all the places a male would want, but can she even run? Or does she just lay there like a fed sow?"
A few of the younger males, caught up in the heat and the hunger, let out a rough chuckle.
Hezhi, emboldened by the reaction, leaned closer to the circle, his voice dropping into a lecherous, oily tone.
"Maybe Weijie doesn’t mind the weight because it means there’s more of her to go around." Hezhi continued, his eyes trailing over Ningning’s form with a hunger that had nothing to do with the food. "With a body like that, I bet she stays warm in the cave. I wouldn’t mind seeing just how deep that softness goes. Perhaps when Weijie is tired of her, he’ll let a real male show her what a beast can do."
The laughter grew louder, a few crude jests being tossed back and forth as if they had forgotten who was standing only a few feet away.
They spoke as if she were a piece of prey brought back from the hunt, a prize to be poked and prodded.
Weijie stood perfectly still.
The air around him seemed to drop twenty degrees.
His blood, which had been warming with pride as he watched Ningning command the cooking fire, suddenly reached a boiling point.
To the others, Ningning might be "plump" or "mysterious" but to him, she was the sun that had finally risen over his cold, solitary life. She was the only one who had ever looked at him without fear or expectation.
She was his mate—his precious, perfect, and most beautiful treasure.
Every word Hezhi uttered was a stain on something sacred.
Hezhi was mid-sentence, his hands gesturing obscenely to describe Ningning’s curves, when the world seemed to blur.
CRACK.
Before the laughter could even die down, Weijie’s fist connected with Hezhi’s jaw.
The sound was like a heavy branch snapping in the dead of winter.
Hezhi didn’t just stumble; he went flying backward, his body crashing into the dirt and skidding several feet until he hit the base of a rock.
The clearing went deathly silent. The laughter was cut off as if by a knife.
Weijie didn’t wait for him to recover.
In a heartbeat, he was over the fallen man.
He reached down and gripped Hezhi by the throat, hoisting him upward until the man’s toes barely brushed the ground.
Weijie’s face was a mask of primal, terrifying rage. His blue eyes were no longer human or even beast-man, they were the golden eyes of a predator who had found a threat to its heart.
"Say it again." Weijie hissed, his voice a low, vibrating growl that made the hair on the back of everyone’s neck stand up. "Tell me again what you want to do to my mate."
Hezhi clawed at Weijie’s wrist, his face turning a dark, strangled purple, his eyes wide with the realization that he had pushed him too far.
"She is not ’meat’ for your tongue." Weijie snarled, his grip tightening until Hezhi’s gasps became wet, desperate rattles. "She is the most beautiful thing this tribe has ever seen. She is mine. And if your eyes ever settle on her again, I will rip your heart out of your chest before you can blink."
Weijie’s heart hammered against his ribs, not out of exertion, but out of a protective agony.
He wished he could reach into the air and snatch the words back, to scrub the memory of their filth from existence.
Hezhi’s eyes bulged, his fingers clawing desperately at Weijie’s wrist, but the grip was like iron. Weijie’s blood was boiling, his muscles trembling with the sheer effort of not snapping the man’s neck right then and there.
"She is perfect." Weijie growled, his face inches from Hezhi’s terrified mask.
"Every inch of her is mine. If you even breathe her name again with that filthy mouth, I will rip your tongue out and feed it to the vultures. Do you understand?"
The other men had scrambled back, the laughter dying instantly. They had seen Weijie angry before, but this... this was totally different.
"Enough, Weijie. Release him before his spirit leaves his body over a few foolish words."
The voice was thin and dry, cutting through the tension like a cool breeze.
From the shadow of a nearby cave entrance stepped a man who looked like he was made of willow branches and moonlight. He was lanky and unnervingly tall, his skin so pale it looked translucent against his blonde hair.
Deep, dark circles hooded his eyes, the mark of a man who spent his nights hunched over bone-carvings and inventions rather than sleeping.
This was Tolief, the tribe’s scholar and inventor.
He was the only one who bothered to ask ’why’ the stars moved or ’how’ to build a better pulley.
He stood with his long, thin fingers tucked into his belt, looking at the scene with a tired, intellectual disdain. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎
"I heard the filth coming from his mouth."
Tolief said, his voice echoing in the gathered space.
He looked at Hezhi with genuine disgust.
"His mind is as shallow as a dried-up creek. To speak of any female that way, especially one who brought a male back from death clutches today...is the mark of a fool."
Tolief turned his piercing gaze to the other men. "You all act like children. You mock her because she is different, yet you forget that it is the females who hold the fire of this tribe. Without them, you would be nothing but cold, hungry animals huddling in the dark."
