Beast World: They Hated Me, Then I Cooked Them Dinner

Terra’s eyes snapped open, but she could not drag a single breath of air into her lungs. A crushing, icy pressure locked around her throat. Her hands instantly flew up, her fingers desperately clawing at the thing strangling her. It was not a human hand. Under her frantic nails, she felt thick, overlapping scales. They were smooth, freezing cold, and hard as titanium armor.

"Give me one reason," a voice hissed. The sound vibrated right next to Terra’s ear. It was a deep, gravelly male voice, heavy with a lethal, suffocating hatred.

Terra’s vision blurred. Black spots danced at the edges of her sight. Through the dim, flickering neon light of the cramped room, she saw him. A man. No, not entirely a man. He had broad, muscular human shoulders, pale skin that looked like it had not seen the sun in years, and sharp, violently handsome facial features. But his lower half was a massive, coiled serpent tail, covered in pitch-black scales that shimmered with a sickly green iridescence.

Zev Kagan. The name exploded in Terra’s mind, followed instantly by a massive, agonizing flood of memories that did not belong to her. Her head pounded as if someone had slammed a hammer into her skull. The pain made her stomach churn.

Terra realized she was not in her cheap, cramped studio apartment on Earth anymore. She was Terra Mason. But not the Terra Mason she knew. She had transmigrated into the body of the most notorious, despised socialite in this dystopian corporate enclave.

In this world, females were incredibly rare. They were the absolute top of the social hierarchy. The air and water here were saturated with volatile energy. Males, who possessed heavy combat bio-forms—like the massive serpent currently choking the life out of Terra—absorbed that chaotic energy to fight and survive. Their bodies, however, could not process it alone. They needed the unique, stable biological frequency of a female to act as a catalyst. Without a female's touch, without her energy, male bio-forms would eventually suffer a mental breakdown, which they called the frenzy. They would turn into mindless, rabid beasts.

Because of this biological absolute, females held all the power. And the original owner of this body had abused that power to an extreme, sickening degree. She had used her wealth and status as the CEO's daughter to forcefully kidnap high-level, high-potential males from the lower sectors. She had locked them in coercive bio-contracts. A bio-contract was not a piece of paper. It was a one-way life bind, stamped directly into the male's energy core, anchored to the female's life force.

Terra gagged. Her lungs burned like they were filled with acid. Zev’s pupils were not human. They were vertical, golden slits, narrowed into slivers of pure, unadulterated murder. He was one of her victims. The original Terra had drugged him, dragged him to this filthy safehouse outside the inner enclave, and forced the contract on him. Zev was going to kill Terra. Right now.

"You ruined