Even after all that, Isabella still made them sit down to eat.
That part alone almost started another fight.
Cyrus was still in no mood at all. His huge red python tail had not fully relaxed, and every now and then the thick coils pressed against the stone floor with a hard sound that made it very clear how much anger still lived inside him.
His pink eyes had not returned fully to their usual softness either. There was still too much heat in them, too much fear that had turned into fury too quickly, and even though Zara was no longer in the room, the sll of danger had not left his senses yet.
So when Isabella said, "We still have to eat," Cyrus imdiately looked at her as if she had just suggested sothing unreasonable.
"She poisoned it," he said.
His voice was lower now, but that did not make it gentler. It only made the room feel the force inside him more clearly.
Isabella looked at the table, which had suffered a great injustice at the hands of his tail, then looked back at him and said, "She poisoned my bowl. The rest is fine. You spent ti making this for , so we are not wasting all the food because that woman decided to be a snake in the wrong house."
That answer should not have made sense.
And yet sohow it did.
Luca, who had only just returned after escorting Zara away and looked deeply offended by the whole walk, stared at Isabella and then at the table as if trying to decide which thing in this room was the most unreasonable. On one side, there was the fact that soone had tried to poison their precious Isabella. On the other, there was the fact that Isabella was still talking about wasting good food.
To be honest, he understood her.
A little.
This was because the room still slled too good. The warm soup had not stopped being warm, the at had not stopped being tender, and now that the first shock had passed, everyone in the room had to suffer through the sll of good food while also being too angry to enjoy it properly.
Kian exhaled slowly through his nose.
Then he sat again.
That alone made the others follow, though not happily.
The room still carried the primitive beast world feeling of heat and cold pressing against each other.
Outside, the snow kept falling and muting the whole world in white silence. Inside, the fire cracked softly in the hearth, the stone walls held warmth, and the scents of broth, roast, fur, wet snow, blood, and anger all mingled together in a way that only a beast ho could.
Glimora had climbed right back to Isabella’s side with the face of a beast who had just survived a very personal murder attempt, and she kept glaring in the direction of the door Zara had left through.
If a little white beast could curse, she would have been doing it.
Cyrus checked the pot again himself.
He moved with the kind of terrible calm that only made people more nervous, lowered his face near the broth, and used his senses properly. His forked tongue flicked once, twice, and then he finally gave one stiff nod.
"The rest is clean."
That settled it.
Isabella reached for him imdiately after that, because she could still feel the fear and rage under his skin. He was too tightly wound, too alert, too ready to kill again, so she touched the side of his arm and said, "See? You can stop looking like you want to burn the whole world now."
Osiris frowned from across the table. "That is my thing."
Nobody answered him.
Then, because Cyrus still looked like he wanted to bite sothing, Isabella added in a quieter voice, "Sit properly. Eat with ."
That did it.
He obeyed.
Naturally.
The others tried to settle too, though "tried" was the important part because the room had beco far too full of questions. Nobody there had the heart to move forward normally after what had just happened. They all wanted answers, and it only got worse the mont Isabella, still looking calm and too pretty for such a dangerous female, decided to speak first.
But Shelia still asked, "Ok but why are you unusually nice to her?"
She looked around the room and said, "That is Zara."
The silence after that was deep.
Then almost everyone reacted at once.
Ophelia’s mouth fell open.
Shelia’s eyes widened so much that for one brief second she looked exactly like her brother when he was truly shocked. Valen, who had never actually t Zara before, looked from Isabella to the door and then back again with real confusion, because now he understood why the room had changed so strangely earlier. Luca stopped halfway through reaching for sothing and turned so sharply that the muscles in his neck tightened. Asael, who usually kept his face under better control, also looked openly stunned.
Even Kian, who had already suspected layers under Isabella’s behavior, went still.
He did not show it dramatically, because Kian was Kian and his pride would rather die than let too much emotion spill freely. Still, the shock was there. It was in the way his eyes sharpened, in the slight stillness in his shoulders, and in the way he looked first at Isabella and then at Cyrus and Zyran, putting things together all at once.
Only Cyrus and Zyran did not look surprised.
That was almost worse.
Because their lack of surprise said too much.
Kian noticed it.
Luca noticed it.
Shelia noticed it.
And once they noticed it, the second shock ca.
"You knew?" Luca blurted out.
Cyrus did not answer imdiately.
Zyran did not even bother pretending. He simply folded his arms and looked like a black panther prince who had been sitting on interesting information and saw no reason to apologize for it.
Ophelia looked even more horrified now. "You all knew? That was Zara? That was really Zara?"
Shelia finally found her voice, and the first thing that ca out was, "That bitch."
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