In stark contrast to his usual icy composure, Feng Yan’s pupils had narrowed into sharp, vertical slits—a telltale sign that his emotions were in complete turmoil.

“We can fix that. I’ll be gentler from now on… okay?” he asked softly.

I burst into a fit of hysterical sobs. “I’ve been deathly afraid of snakes since I was a kid!”

Almost on cue, a tiny green snake poked its head out from behind his shoulder, its mouth loudly munching on a piece of catnip like a goat grazing on grass. It slithered down onto the hardwood floor, blinking its big, round eyes with absolute innocence.

To me, it was a living nightmare.

I let out a scream loud enough to shatter the ceiling and scrambled across the bed like a panicked monkey fleeing a predator.

Feng Yan tried to explain in a frantic rush: “It just crawled in because we have catnip in the house. If you don’t like it, I’ll get rid of it right now.”

He dropped to one knee beside the bed, gazing up at me with pale golden eyes. But the more obedient and harmless he tried to act, the more I could feel the invisible, ice-cold scales lurking in the air around us.

Just as I was secretly preparing to call my taoist priest uncle for help, Feng Yan stepped back into the bedroom, bringing an oppressive chill with him. He casually shook his phone and switched it to speakerphone. The deep voice of Professor Jiang Guibai—my colleague who was supposed to drive me to the airport—echoed through the room.

“Tri Du, are you really getting a divorce? I… can I pursue you? I’ve been in love with you for a long time…”

My face instantly froze.

Feng Yan raised an eyebrow and spat out a single, impassive word: “Snake.” Even a mythical demon could spot a green tea bitch when he heard one.

The antique vase sitting on the bookshelf suddenly shattered into pieces.

Feng Yan didn’t even blink. “It was just an old vase. Past its expiration date.”

He took the phone and answered in a drippingly sweet tone on my behalf: “Actually, we’re still very happily married.”

Hearing the explosion over the line, Professor Jiang panicked and demanded to come over immediately. Feng Yan’s lips curved into a dark smile, his eyes fixed on me with a terrifying, predatory promise. I knew that look all too well—it was the look of a hunter preparing to punish his prey by marking his territory.

Terrified that he might actually murder the professor, I snatched the phone away. “Professor Jiang, I’m not getting a divorce! It was just a stupid fight. Please don’t come over!”

I slammed the call end button, my heart hammering against my ribs. Feng Yan was advancing toward me, taking slow, deliberate steps that crushed the air out of my lungs. The apex predator understood his prey far too well, and this time, he had zero intention of letting his sweet little morsel slip away.

Early this year, Senior Jiang Guibai and I were transferred to a new department, sharing desks right next to each other. He was polite, gentle, and impeccably considerate. Once, when it was on his way, he offered me a ride home. That night, while Feng Yan held me in his sleep, he caught the faint scent of men’s cologne lingering on my jacket. I confessed everything truthfully.

Immediately after that, Jiang Guibai took a two-week medical leave. When he finally returned, his face was as pale as a corpse, as if he had taken a casual stroll through the gates of Hell. He gave a bitter, forced laugh and said, “Got bitten by a snake. Spent a whole week in the ICU.”

At the time, I hadn’t suspected a thing; around me, Feng Yan had always been as sweet and docile as a golden retriever. But if you actually think about it: Professor Jiang lived on the 51st floor. In the dead of winter, what kind of lunatic snake climbs up 51 stories just to bite a man on the wrist in a precise X-shape?

The culprit could only be my husband.

The moment I told Professor Jiang over the phone that we weren’t getting divorced, the suffocating murderous intent radiating off Feng Yan vanished into thin air.

He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around me, nuzzling his nose against my neck and down into my hair like a K-9 unit inspecting its territory. Finally satisfied, he rested his chin in the crook of my neck.

“You only smell like me.”

I stood there, completely rigid. Cold-blooded creatures really were terrifying when it came to their territorial instincts. I shoved him back, pinning him with a cold glare.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in the UK? How did you get back so fast?”

Feng Yan froze for a fraction of a second before launching into a poorly constructed excuse about an emergency meeting. Watching his guilty expression, I almost laughed out loud. For a demon who had adapted remarkably well to human society, his lying skills were still stuck in kindergarten.

Right on cue, my phone lit up with a text from my best friend, Cheng Quagga: [Go back to the hospital for a recheck. Even if you’re dead set on a divorce, you have to think about the baby.]

I turned to leave, and Feng Yan shadowed my steps like a lingering phantom.

“Don’t come near me,” I snapped, keeping my voice icy.

His face instantly fell into an expression of hurt, panicking slightly. “I only did it because I love you…”

“Stop.” I raised a hand to cut him off. As if a demon’s declaration of love was worth anything.

Realizing he couldn’t stop me from seeing Quagga, Feng Yan rummaged through his study and emerged holding a delicate bracelet that carried a strange, faint aroma. Biting his lower lip nervously, he reached out and clasped it around my wrist. “Can… can I come with you?”

A cold shiver ran down my spine. The second the clasp clicked, I realized it wouldn’t budge.

Great. A demon-grade GPS tracker.

As I made my way toward the front door, Feng Yan stood motionless, watching me with a look of desperate anticipation. For the past two years, we had never left the house without a goodbye kiss. But now that I knew he was a snake demon, I was practically sprinting out the door faster than a door-dash driver on a rush order.

Looking at him standing there like a dog abandoned in the rain, I only offered a chilling final instruction: “Lock the door behind me.”

At the hospital, Quagga held my test results with a deeply conflicted expression.

“Are you feeling sick or anything?” she asked.

“No. Aside from finding out my husband is a snake monster, I’m doing great.”

Quagga bit her lip hard. “Tri Du… if you were a normal human, with these lab values, you would have been dead a long time ago. On top of that, these two tests were taken just an hour apart: one says you’re pregnant, and the other says you’re completely clear.”

I went completely silent. Either the test kits were defective, or a “demon pregnancy” simply refused to follow the laws of human biology.

Suddenly, I remembered how, back when I kept a hamster, Feng Yan could tell it was pregnant just by taking a single whiff of the air. If I really was carrying his child, that monster definitely knew long before I did.

I secretly reached out to my third uncle, Su Jing’an—a practicing taoist priest from our Su family line, who had been in the joss-paper and funeral trade for generations. After hearing my story, he sent back a photo of our ancestral tree alongside a stark, terrifying warning:

According to our family records, the Su bloodline possessed a rare, special essence; if a demon consumed a member of our family, their spiritual cultivation would skyrocket. Because of this, demons often kept members of the Su family as “living medicine.” Uncle Su shared a tale about an ancestor who had been abducted by a demon; when they finally found him, he was nothing more than a withered skeleton, his blood completely drained, his body covered in horrific wounds.

I hung up the phone and stood in the hospital lobby for a long time.

On the massive LED screen across the square, Feng Yan’s face flashed into view—sharp, icy, and ruthless. The financial world’s infamous “Cold-Blooded Executioner.”

Right now, the most critical thing was to ensure he never realized I had seen through his little hunting game. I had to go back home. Back into that sweet, gentle cage overflowing with deadly venom.