Chapter 120: Who Are you?
"Serpents are patient creatures. They watch, they wait, they strike. But even serpents occasionally slither into the wrong nest."
~ Rebel Beast
____________
"Urgh..."
Venus groaned as consciousness slowly returned, bringing with it the unpleasant sensation that someone had replaced his brain with mush. His head felt unbearably heavy, his thoughts sluggish and disconnected as he struggled to remember what the hell had happened.
He tried to move and immediately discovered another problem. His muscles were weak. He wasn’t talking about mere tiredness here, but a strange lethargy, as if his body had forgotten how to obey him. That was definitely not normal.
Venus forced his eyes open and everything was blurry at first. Shapes bled into one another beneath the light, and through the haze, he made out the blurry outline of a woman.
Venus frowned. What the hell was going on?
For one ridiculous moment, his drugged mind supplied the only explanation it could manage.
Had he died?
Perhaps this was the palace of the Serpent God and she was some divine maiden sent to welcome him into the afterlife. Venus considered that possibility with surprising seriousness.
It made sense. He had lived an exceptionally honorable life, after all. Well... perhaps honorable was stretching it. But surely years of loyal service to his prince counted for something.
The robberies had been Caelis’s idea most of the time, and the occasional blackmail, spying, trespassing, and other questionable activities had always been committed for perfectly reasonable purposes.
Mostly.
Venus shook his head, hoping to clear some of the fog clouding his vision, before forcing his eyes open again. This time, the room came into better focus, and so did the dark brown-haired woman standing beside the wardrobe. She was changing.
He swallowed.
She had already pulled on a tank top, but from the waist down, she wore nothing except a red thong. Her back was turned to him, which meant she obviously hadn’t realized he was awake yet. Otherwise, she probably wouldn’t have chosen that exact moment to bend over and reach for the trousers pooled near her feet.
Venus swore to the Serpent God he wasn’t a pervert. But heavens above, he was still a man. Technically, half-man.
His gaze dropped before good sense could intervene, and he caught the generous curve of her ass as she stepped into her trousers. The girl lifted one leg, then the other, the movement making her hips sway as she tugged the material upward.
Venus stared.
All the blood in his body seemed to rush in two very unfortunate directions. The first was straight to his brain, which had apparently recovered from the tranquilizer quickly enough to appreciate the view. The second traveled considerably lower, and judging by the sudden tightening in his trousers, that part of him had recovered even faster.
A strained groan escaped him. Venus clenched his hands, intending to adjust himself somehow, only for his arms to refuse to move.
What the fuck?
His gaze snapped downward, and he finally saw his present condition. Ropes were wound around his chest, waist, and arms, securing him firmly to a chair. Even his wrists had been bound behind the backrest, leaving him with almost no room to maneuver.
The groan must have alerted her because Brittney spun around so violently she nearly lost her balance. Her eyes widened.
"Shit!"
She abandoned her trousers halfway up her hips and rushed toward the bed. Within seconds, she had grabbed the tranquilizer pistol and aimed it directly at him.
Venus’s eyes narrowed on the weapon. So that was what had taken him down.
Brittney’s chest rose and fell quickly beneath her tank top, partly from the sudden dash across the room and partly from the realization that the beast she’d captured was finally awake. Her grip tightened around the pistol.
"So not only do you break into women’s rooms," she accused, "you spy on them while they’re changing too?"
Venus lifted his gaze to her face. "Not my fault you were giving me a good show." The words left his mouth before his common sense returned.
Venus almost cursed himself. A good show? Really?
He was tied to a fucking chair with a pistol pointed at him, and apparently his first instinct was to antagonize the woman responsible.
It all made sense to him now. The room he had broken into hadn’t been Aria Aspen’s. This must be one of her roommates. Not that he’d taken the time to learn their names. His entire attention had been focused on Aria Aspen.
A tick formed in his jaw. Well, fuck. How was he going to handle this? Or rather, how was she going to handle him?
Venus pulled against the ropes, testing just how securely she had tied him. There was barely any give. Whoever this girl was, she knew her knots. He twisted his wrists next, searching for some weakness he could exploit, but Brittney was already watching him too closely to give him the chance.
"Don’t even think about it," she warned, immediately raising the pistol higher. For all she knew, he could be preparing to shift, and Brittney had absolutely no intention of discovering what a pissed-off serpent looked like in its beast form while trapped inside her bedroom.
Brittney narrowed her eyes at him. "This tranquilizer might not look like much, but what’s in it is potent enough to put down a fully grown lion within seconds and keep it unconscious for hours." Her gaze deliberately traveled over him before returning to his face. "You’re just a serpent. Something tells me you don’t want to find out what a second dose would do to you."
Venus stopped moving. His brows slowly furrowed.
There was something deeply unsettling about this girl. The traps had been the first warning. Now she casually spoke about sedating large predators as if this wasn’t her first time handling one.
Venus studied her more carefully. Just like that, Caelis’s conspiracy theory didn’t seem quite as ridiculous as it had before.
Was it really a coincidence that Aria Aspen, the human Caelis had already found suspicious, had been assigned to live with a girl who kept elaborate traps inside her bedroom?
Perhaps His Highness had been right to be cautious after all. Something about this year’s Concordia Program felt different, and Venus was beginning to suspect the humans sent to Bestiaris Academy weren’t as innocent as he thought they were.
"Who are you?" Venus finally asked.
Brittney’s eyebrows rose. Of all the questions she had expected from the intruder tied to her chair, that certainly wasn’t one of them.
Slowly, she lifted her chin, refusing to let the uncertainty show on her face.
"I think the better question is..." Her finger remained close to the trigger as her eyes narrowed dangerously. "Who are you, serpent?"