Villainess is being pampered by her beast husbands-Chapter 389 --.

Would it wake him? Kill him? Do nothing at all? She’d watched too many beasts drop tonight from the smallest graze of her nails, her blood seeping into theirs and shutting them down like poison in the veins. But this one was already hurt. Already barely breathing.

Maybe it would help.

Maybe it would finish him.

Her hand moved without permission, nails lifting toward the tiny, broken wing.

Then she stopped. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

Her jaw clenched so hard her teeth ached.

’Her body was poison.’

That wasn’t a guess anymore. She’d seen it too many times tonight—Veer bleeding from a single scratch, beasts in that corridor dropping faster than bullets alone could explain, the way her blood on their skin turned them sluggish, wrong. Whatever was inside her didn’t discriminate. It just ’worked’. And this Sparrow, this fragile, half-dead thing in her hand, wouldn’t survive even a taste of that.

Kaya’s fingers curled into a fist, nails biting into her own palm instead.

"Not like this," she muttered, voice flat and cold.

She wrapped the Sparrow back up with sharp, efficient movements, tucking the cloth tight around his small body until he was a sealed bundle again. Then she shoved him deep into her pocket, away from her bleeding hand, away from the stupid impulse that had nearly killed the one thing she’d risked blood to save.

Her hand stayed clenched at her side, blood still dripping slowly from the cut she refused to look at.

Behind her, wind scraped across the ridge. The sky stayed grey. The Sparrow stayed silent in her pocket.

And Kaya stayed exactly where she was, staring at nothing, counting her own heartbeat until the urge to do something reckless finally passed.

Veer didn’t move.

Forty minutes ago he’d hit the rock and stayed there, and that was still true now. Big vulture body folded in on itself, wings half‑spread like he’d tried to tuck them in and given up halfway, beak turned toward the stone. Every breath he took sounded heavy even from where she sat.

Kaya watched him once, long enough to see his side rise and fall, then looked away. If he hadn’t even twitched by now, pushing him was useless. He’d already dragged all three of them this far on wings that had no business still working. He could have his forty minutes. Or four hours. Whatever his stupid proud bird body needed.

Her eyes slid to Cutie instead.

He’d slumped sideways while she’d been thinking, shoulder resting against the rock, head tipped toward her. In the dim light, his face had lost that washed‑out color from earlier. His lips weren’t bloodless anymore. His breathing was quiet and steady, almost annoyingly peaceful.

The wound along his scalp? Gone. Just a thin, pale scar cutting through his hair like an afterthought.

Kaya reached up and brushed his hair aside with two fingers. She quit before she touched the scar itself, fingertips just skimming the soft strands around it. No heat. No swelling. No sticky blood.

"Beastmen and their cheat bodies," she muttered.

He took a hit that would’ve put her in a hospital bed for weeks back home, and his skull had the nerve to fix itself in under a night. She turned her hand and looked at her own palm. The cut there hadn’t even sealed. The edges were puckered and raw, new clots cracked where she’d grabbed feathers too hard. Her shoulder throbbed in a rhythm that didn’t match her heartbeat. Her ribs flared when she breathed too deep. Even her bruises were ringing like fresh ones, not old.

God’s little "miracle" in her veins might be keeping her on her feet, but it sure wasn’t wasting energy making it hurt less.

She leaned her head back against the rock and stared up.

The stars up here looked like someone had spilled glass across black velvet. Too many. Too bright. She didn’t bother finding shapes. Her mind started doing what it always did when she was too tired to stop it: counting.

Not stars.

Bullets.

She closed her eyes and replayed the corridor. First burst—one, two, three. The jackal going down. Four, five. The boar. Reload. Six, seven, eight, nine. The fox. The weasel. The wall. Somewhere in there she’d stopped counting and just shot anything that moved wrong.

She opened her eyes again and flexed her hand at her hip, feeling the weight of the gun, the lightness of the mag.

"Too close to half," she said under her breath.

That was bad. This world didn’t come with gun shops and factory lines. There was no walking into a store and buying ten more boxes. Every round left was one less chance to live through the next room full of claws.

Her Sparrow—the real one, the one who wasn’t currently rolled up in her pocket—could have helped if he’d been here. He could copy an object three times, make perfect mirrors of nearly anything she gave him. Metal. Paper. Bullets. One became four. But that trick had rules. Three copies. No more. Then it was just him and whatever he’d made, and tonight had already eaten through too much.

Her thumb brushed the edge of her other pocket, where the small, warm weight of ’this’ Sparrow rested.

Not hers.

Same species. Same stupid small body. Different creature.

"You’re not him," she murmured, more to the night than to the bird. "You just share the name."

Maybe he had the same power. Maybe not. Veer could make fire; most vultures couldn’t. His tribe flew. They cleaned up bodies. They didn’t all wake up with flames in their hands. Blood didn’t hand out gifts evenly.

If this Sparrow couldn’t copy bullets, then he was just a magnet. A reason for more beastmen to crash through windows and die on wolf stone. A soft little bomb in her pocket.

She thought of the hotel. Of how they’d come straight for the jackal Sparrow, barely seeing her until she started shooting. Of the way they’d thrown this one at her like bait.