Chapter 3

The air in the cellar went still.

The saintly, long-suffering expression on Ethan's face froze solid.

A second later, the comments went into a frenzy.

[Oh my God, is this lowlife trying to start something? He doesn't actually think that because the beast queen might be carrying his child, he gets to be the tribe's treasured consort — does he?]

[Every scheming side character who tries to climb the social ladder through a pregnancy ends up the same way. This won't end well.]

[Is he trying to make the male lead grovel? This feels like a threat.]

[Unbelievable. Does every tool character have zero self-awareness? If he won't do it, there are plenty of slaves who will.]

The comments were running hot.

It was only now that I fully understood what I was.

I was a side character in a beast-world romance novel — a tool. The ugly foil to the irresistible male lead.

My true form was a toad shifter. Despised by everyone. While Ethan's true form was a lop-eared rabbit — beloved wherever he went.

Ethan had lost the one person he ever loved, and he couldn't bring himself to feel anything for any of the beast queens.

But he still needed to survive in this world.

So he made me his stand-in.

Every night, when the beast queens were sedated by desire-inducing incense, he pushed me into their chambers.

He stood outside the door collecting praise and affection. I was inside, enduring whatever the beast queens chose to do to me.

When morning came, he'd spray himself with a specially crafted imitation scent, then slip into bed beside them to receive their tenderness as they woke.

And I would be discarded like a used-up piece of trash, dragged back to the dark cellar below.

I would even rot in that dark cellar when I died.

I knew I was ugly.

But did being ugly mean I deserved to be deceived and used like this — and then discarded as a stepping stone for his comfort and status?

After I spoke my refusal out loud —

A flicker of disbelief crossed Ethan's eyes. Then they went cold.

He didn't raise his voice. He didn't curse me.

He simply crouched down slowly, pinched my chin with two fingers like I was something distasteful, and forced me to look at him.

"What are you babbling about?"

"The Lion Queen is in her frenzy tonight. If you rest, who's going to calm her down? Are you going to sit there and watch her tear me apart?"

He tilted his head and gave me a look that was almost a smile — his voice gentle, his words like blades.

"Besides, I'm not forcing you. If you don't want to drink this medicine — if you don't want to serve the beast queens — that's fine."

"I'll just go tell them it was you who poisoned the cubs out of jealousy. Let's see who they believe — the father of their children, or the monster who lives in the cellar."

He stood up and straightened his clothes.

"Drink the medicine before it gets cold. It won't work once it cools. Don't do something stupid, Ugly. I'm doing this so we both survive."

Then the cellar door slammed shut.

His footsteps faded away.

I did not drink the medicine.

I tilted my wrist and poured every drop onto the ground.

A soft hiss rose from the dirt where it landed.

I watched it eat into the ground, and the cold feeling in my chest sank deeper.

This was what Ethan called a tonic he made for my own good.

The comments rolled across my vision again, faster than ever.

[Oh my God — he poured out the Bone-Corrosion compound?! The male lead specifically exchanged for that to suppress his golden toad bloodline!]

[Doesn't matter. Eighteen years of that stuff — the toad skin has been fused to him for ages. Pouring it out changes nothing.]

[Am I the only one worried about the Lion Queen tonight? Without that rotting smell from the medicine to mask it — what if she catches a whiff of his actual scent… that strange fragrance… and figures out the switch?]

[No chance. She's completely out of her mind during a frenzy.]

I stared hard at the two words: golden toad.

So that was it.

All these years — the festering sores, the stench — it wasn't a curse from heaven.

It was man-made.