The Villainess Winning Back Her Beast Husbands-Chapter 45: Big Sister Is a Vixen, Too

Rhys Finch scoffed, his voice hardening. "Get out!"

"How rude." Evangeline rolled her eyes and continued slurping away at her food. She finished the bowl in no time, cleaned up, and then took out a brand-new container of Jade Skin Shaping Cream.

A pain as sharp as a needle piercing her heart shot through her, so intense it was numbing, yet Evangeline’s expression didn’t flicker.

A refreshing fragrance once again filled the hut, and Rhys Finch paused.

"The Ravening Wolves just said it’s almost time for the High Priest to give out his medicine. They asked me to have a word with you. So, who is this High Priest? What’s this medicine all about? And how exactly does one ’hand over a sufficient number of Beast Crystals’?"

Evangeline’s face was pale as she walked toward Rhys Finch with the cream in hand, rattling off her questions without pause.

’Everyone at the foot of Thorncliff is a Fallen Beastman. It can’t be easy to scrape together enough Beast Crystals.’

Rhys Finch was lounging against the Bone Bed, listening to Evangeline’s questions with a lazy air. "You’re not a Fallen Beastman," he said quietly. "Why do you care?"

Evangeline sat down on the edge of the bed and said matter-of-factly, "I’m worried about you."

The words had barely left her lips when a sudden silence fell. The atmosphere grew cold.

An instant later, Rhys Finch moved like a bolt of lightning, his fingers seizing Evangeline’s chin with unerring precision.

His long, slender fingers gently stroked her skin, a bone-chilling cold seeping from his touch. Rhys Finch leaned in slightly, his voice a low, intimate murmur. "The little maiden... don’t get any ideas about me. In my eyes, females are no different from Wild Beasts."

Evangeline pried his hand away and asked curiously, "Why? Why do you detest females so much?"

’The best way to get close to someone is to understand them.’

’I already know about his past, but if he won’t talk about it, how am I supposed to pretend to sympathize with him?’

Rhys Finch fell silent, refusing to say another word.

’This is giving me a headache,’ Evangeline thought. ’He’s a total clam, keeping everything bottled up inside.’

"Forget it. I’ll just change your dressing," she sighed, reaching up to undo the bandages wrapped around his head. Because he had shifted into his beast form, the gauze had already torn and was hanging loosely.

Rhys Finch didn’t stop her, only "staring" at her coldly.

"It’s already a little better today." Evangeline inspected his wounds. ’This stuff really is potent,’ she thought with a sigh. ’It works fast.’

Rhys Finch’s skin, which had been as shriveled and wrinkled as a parched landscape, was already showing signs of improvement after a full night with the cream. The ghastly creases had visibly smoothed out, and a subtle, healthy sheen was returning to the surface.

Hearing this, Rhys Finch’s entire body went rigid.

After a long moment, he slowly raised a hand. The movement was hesitant, tentative, as he gently touched his own face. The contact lasted but a second before he snatched his hand back as if he’d been burned, his fingertips trembling.

He couldn’t seem to believe it. Was his face truly beginning to heal?

Evangeline finished applying the new dressing. She rested her hand on the clean white gauze and said softly, "Day two."

Before Rhys Finch could swat at her, Evangeline had already pulled her hand back. "Seeing as I’m useful to you," she said, "can you tell me about the High Priest and his medicine now? We’re in the same boat, you and I."

Rhys Finch was perplexed. "Grasshoppers on the same rope? I’m a fox. Are you a grasshopper?"

He had a strange expression as he spoke. "So it’s true what they say... the females of The Swarm are hideous."

Evangeline: "..."

She let out a dry laugh in her mind and added silently, ’Sorry to disappoint, but this girl is a vixen, too.’

Rhys Finch, however, didn’t dwell on it. In fact, he was in a rather good mood thanks to the improvement in his face.

He lounged back again, his posture relaxed, looking for all the world like some devil-may-care young master. He said nonchalantly, "The Fallen Beastmen at the foot of Thorncliff aren’t merely imprisoned here. Every month, we suffer a backlash from the Beast Crystals we’ve absorbed—a backlash strong enough to be fatal. The more Beast Crystals you devour, the more powerful you become, but the backlash is that much more severe."

He spoke with unnerving calm, as if this were some trivial matter that had nothing to do with him.

"Backlash?" Evangeline frowned, her gaze shifting to the spot between his eyebrows.

’I’ve changed his dressing twice now, but his face is so disfigured I can’t get a clear look at the Fallen Star Pattern between his brows. Still, for him to have been a tribe’s leader... his power can’t be insignificant.’

"Yes, backlash," Rhys Finch drawled, his posture still languid.

"The High Priest has been entrenched at the foot of Thorncliff for years. No one knows where he came from. But he possesses a miraculous herb that can suppress the terrifying backlash caused by absorbing Beast Crystals. To survive, the Fallen Beastmen are desperate for it, which led to this business of handing over Beast Crystals once a month."

"As for where the Beast Crystals come from..."

Rhys Finch drew out the last word. Then, without warning, he let out a soft chuckle. It was a strange, cold sound. "Fallen Beastmen..." he said, his voice low and eerie. "Don’t they have Beast Crystals inside them, too?"

Evangeline fell silent.

’He’s making the Fallen Beastmen kill each other?’

She looked at Rhys Finch and asked calmly, "And what about you? Why aren’t you out there collecting Beast Crystals?"

Rhys Finch tilted his head back, stretching his long legs out languidly. "I don’t feel like getting my hands bloody lately. It’s too messy."

Evangeline pursed her lips, studying Rhys Finch for a long moment. His words held a double meaning. He wasn’t just saying that internecine slaughter was dirty; he was also talking about himself. He was the once-immaculate White Fox, now reduced to a Fallen Beastman that everyone reviled.

’For Rhys Finch, this was a lifelong nightmare that would follow him like a shadow.’

Evangeline knew one thing for sure: anyone who could leverage a life-saving herb to control the Fallen Beastmen for personal gain was no soft-hearted saint. This High Priest was dangerous.

With that in mind, she stopped pressing him about the High Priest and deftly changed the subject. "Have you formed a Contract?"

The gloomy aura around Rhys Finch intensified. He moved slowly, raising a hand to touch his neck. A fist-sized patch of scar tissue covered a spot there, a messy overlap of new wounds over old. It was clearly a frequently injured area.

Evangeline’s gaze followed his hand, landing on the gruesome scar.

She felt an indescribable sense of misery.

On the Beastman Continent, when a male and female form a Contract, the bond is clearly more restrictive for the male.

Once a Contract is complete, the female’s body will manifest a Contract Mark unique to her Beast Husband. The mark looks completely natural and carries the aura and imprint of her mate.

Likewise, a Contract Mark in the shape of the female’s beast form will appear on the male. And because their society practices polyandry, the Contract Marks on a male are particularly prominent, a clear declaration that he is already bound to someone.

Thanks to the Disguise Pill she had taken, her own Contract Mark was temporarily hidden. They couldn’t sense its aura, which was why neither Thorne nor Rhys Finch had ever suspected her.

Of course, there was a downside: she could no longer sense their "GPS" location either.

Rhys Finch’s voice was chilling as he murmured, "It looks like it’s growing back again..."

Watching this tortured display from Rhys Finch, the corner of Evangeline’s mouth gave a violent, uncontrollable twitch.

’What a coincidence,’ she thought. ’Thorne has a fist-sized scar on his neck, too. But Beastmen are always hunting and facing danger, so injuries are common. At the time, I didn’t connect the scar to a Contract Mark.’

But now, here was Rhys Finch with an identical scar in the exact same spot.

It hit her like a bolt of lightning. ’My god,’ she realized. ’These two ruthless bastards... they literally carved off the marks that represent our Contract. But because the Beast God Contract is binding, the marks just keep growing back, so they just keep carving them off!’

’How much determination must that take? Just how much must they hate me?’