Villainess is being pampered by her beast husbands-Chapter 396 --

The vulture twisted his head as far as he could, one furious eye staring at her.

’What the hell are you doing?!’ was very clear now, no language lesson needed.

Kaya met that burning glare with a flat, deadly deadpan.

"Because of you, my thoughts got scrambled," she said. "Deal with it."

He sputtered in animal noise that her brain very helpfully translated as something between ’You’re insane’ and ’Don’t put your disgusting human tongue on my feathers’. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

She ignored it.

The important part had slid back into place in her mind.

Whenever she wasn’t with Cutie—when she’d been away at the wolf tribe—she hadn’t dreamed. Not once. No balcony. No god. No burning marks. Quiet. The moment she was back around him?

The nightmares started.

Slowly, she took a breath in, let it out, and turned her head just enough to see him over her shoulder.

Cutie must have felt the shift; he looked up at the same time, head tilting slightly to the side. His grip on her waist eased, like he thought she might be uncomfortable with how tightly he’d been holding her after Veer’s screech. His eyes met hers, all wide and confused, soft around the edges.

He looked exactly like his name again. Harmless. Curious. Just a little lost.

"Kaya?" he asked quietly. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

Because whenever you’re not here, I sleep like the dead. And whenever you are, something in my blood wakes up and starts knocking on my bones.

She didn’t say it out loud.

She just kept staring at him for one slow heartbeat longer, mind racing in directions she didn’t like, before she turned her face back to the wind, fingers tightening in Veer’s feathers and over the tiny weight of the sparrow in her pocket.

Sometimes Kaya honestly thought God was sitting somewhere with a bucket of petrol, fully ready to set her life on fire for fun.

Ten minutes ago, the sky had been clear. Blue, open, harmless. Even Veer, with his high‑air senses, and Cutie, with his beastman nose, hadn’t twitched. No warning. No "maybe we should land." Nothing.

Now?

It was like the clouds had decided to commit suicide right above their heads.

Rain didn’t just "start." It ’dropped’. A wall of water came down so hard it felt like someone had dumped a lake from the sky. In three breaths they were all soaked through. Veer had barely managed to stagger them under the nearest tree before the ground turned to sludge.

Kaya stood there under the crooked branches, clothes sticking to her, hair dripping in her eyes, teeth clenched.

"You are beastmen, right?" she said.

There was a grind in her voice that matched the tight line of her jaw and the way her shoulders were hunched forward—classic signs of simmering anger when someone is trying not to explode.

Veer, in human form again, turned his face away, rain still tracking down his cheekbones. Cutie lowered his head at once, ears slightly red, hands clasped in front of him like a schoolboy who’d lost the class pet.

No one answered.

Kaya stared at them in disbelief.

"So none of you smelled this?" she demanded. "Saw it? Felt it? Bird, rabbit, nothing?"

Veer made a vague gesture at the sky. "It was clear," he muttered. "Nothing in the air, no pressure drop, no cloud wall. It just—happened."

Cutie nodded slowly, looking genuinely apologetic. "The wind was normal," he said softly. "I didn’t... sense a storm. I’m sorry."

Kaya pinched the bridge of her nose.

A dog would have done better—made noise, cursed the storm, warned her it was coming. But a dog couldn’t fly, and these two, stiff in the rain, could.

There was no dry cave, no hollowed rock to hide in. Only open, slick stone and this stubborn tree that barely kept the water off.

So Kaya stayed pressed against the rough bark, jaw tight, soaked through. The storm laughed around them, swallowing sound and warmth alike.

For all that she felt trapped, it was nothing compared to how little the beastmen here seemed prepared for what hit them.

Kaya had grown up with that warning drilled into her skull—classrooms, textbooks, teachers acting like prophets of doom: Never stand under a tree when it’s raining.

And here she was, soaking, shivering, and very much under a tree because she literally had no other option. The universe, apparently, didn’t care about her education.

She tried to reason with herself, tried to apply whatever scraps of logic she remembered.

It’s fine. Trees don’t just get struck every time it rains. Lightning won’t just— it won’t—

Her thought didn’t even get the courtesy of finishing.

Because the sky didn’t just flash.

It roared.

CRACK

A blinding spear of white tore downward like someone had ripped the clouds open. It slammed into the tall green tree just a few meters in front of her—so close she felt her heart stop before her brain even processed the sound.

The impact was vicious.

Instant.

Final.

The tree didn’t crack slowly, didn’t smolder politely—it ignited. A living, breathing tree wrapped in heavy rain should never burn like that, but the lightning tore through it as if the world had been coated in oil.

Kaya’s breath hitched—no, it jumped out of her throat. A rough, strangled leap she hadn’t planned. Her feet stumbled back instinctively, her spine slamming against the trunk behind her as sparks hissed across wet ground.

Veer froze mid-flap, feathers puffed in pure shock.

Cutie practically glued himself to Kaya’s side, shaking hard enough to rattle leaves.

Kaya stared, wide-eyed, her pulse thrashing against her ribs. Her mind wasn’t even forming words—just static, disbelief, and a scream she refused to let out.

This is not happening.

But the burning trunk in front of her said otherwise, spitting embers like some furious beast.

God wasn’t playing with her.

God was targeting her.

Her throat tightened, breath shallow. The sharp smell of ozone and burning bark filled the air, crawling into her lungs.

Just when she thought today couldn’t possibly get worse...

The sky decided to prove her wrong.