1 At my own wedding, as my husband Alexis and I exchanged rings, my sister Gwyneth burst into the chapel, stark naked. “Jenny,” she cried, tears streaming down her face. “I know you think I’m trash, I know you cut up all my clothes to stop me from coming, but I promised you I’d be here to see you married, and I always keep my promises!” Alexis, furious that I had supposedly provoked my fragile sister, decided on a punishment. He sent me to Serpent Isle, the one place in the world I feared most. There, I was transformed. I became a serpent-woman, a living curiosity, a plaything for men with… unique tastes. Six months later, Alexis came to take me home. Our entire family praised my new, docile demeanor. Until, that is, I caught a rat and, to their horror, swallowed it alive. “The isle is a paradise!” Alexis raged. “It’s filled with harmless, gentle snakes! I sent you there for a little self-reflection, not for you to pull these disgusting stunts just to spite me!” Just then, the scent of a powerful male pheromone filled the air. An insatiable hunger gripped me. My eyes involuntarily shifted, the pupils narrowing into vertical slits. My body contorted into an impossible arc as I lunged toward the cool, scaled body of a massive python. — When my husband, Alexis, came to collect me from Serpent Isle, he made a grand spectacle of it, bringing all our friends and family along on his private yacht. I was dressed in a pure white dress and led out to meet their astonished gazes. Alexis’s face was grim. “Jenny, have you learned your lesson these past six months? I expect you to leave Gwyneth alone when we get back. Do not disappoint me again.” I flicked my tongue out, tasting the air, sampling the uninteresting scent of the man before me. Alexis’s eyes fixed on my red lips, and for a moment, he seemed taken aback. Then, a flicker of satisfaction crossed his face. “I’ve never seen this playful side of you. It seems the island’s beauty has truly cleansed your wicked heart. I’ve prepared a welcome-home party for you on the yacht.” He took my hand to lead me aboard the lavish vessel. The moment our skin touched, he flinched, nearly letting go. “The sun is so strong here, why is your skin so cold?” He frowned, his brow furrowed in concern. “This temperature… it’s not human. Are you sick?” His words were a meaningless drone. I couldn’t process his commands. As I stared blankly at him, Gwyneth rushed forward, her face a mask of anxiety. “Alexis, she’s been on the island for half a year. She’s acclimated. Of course her body temperature is different from ours.” The sight of Gwyneth sent alarms shrieking through my mind. My blood ran cold. “Hiss… Hiss…” A warning sound escaped my throat as I backed away from her. Under the confused and disturbed stares of the crowd, Gwyneth covered her face and began to sob. “Jenny… after all this time, you still hate me this much? You still wish I were dead…” Alexis immediately pulled Gwyneth behind him, his eyes blazing with fury. “Jenny! And here I thought you’d finally changed. It didn’t take long for your true colors to show.” “Gwyneth may have come from nothing, a charity case our family took in, but in her heart, she is a thousand times kinder and better than you will ever be!” His words were a death sentence. Suddenly, every finger was pointed at me. Even my own parents looked at me with bitter disappointment. “Jenny, this family’s entire fortune will be yours one day. Gwyneth asks for so little, just a place at our table. Why must your heart be so small, so unable to tolerate her?” The party meant to celebrate my return had become a trial to condemn my sins. I felt their malice pressing in from all sides. Overwhelmed by fear, I scrambled under a nearby banquet table to hide. “What, Jenny? A monster like you can feel fear?” Alexis’s voice dripped with contempt. “Who do you think you’re fooling with this pathetic act?” His hand landed on my shoulder, intending to drag me out from my hiding place. 2 Instead, his grip caught on the loose skin on my back. He tore off a whole sheet that hadn’t finished molting. I cried out in pain, rubbing my raw back against the deck, and scrambled deeper into the darkness beneath the table. Alexis’s pupils contracted as if he’d been struck by lightning. Forgetting himself, he dropped to his hands and knees, his face level with mine. When he spoke, his voice was strangled. “Jenny… what’s wrong with you? Why is your skin… peeling off like that? Are you hurt?” Gwyneth’s choked sob cut through the silence. “The sun on the island is relentless. Her skin is so delicate, it must be a terrible sunburn. It’s all my fault. If it weren't for me, Alexis would never have been angry enough to send her here.” “It’s not your fault, dear,” my mother cooed, pulling Gwyneth into a comforting embrace. “Jenny is my daughter, but I can’t ignore the truth. She’s a grown woman. Does she not know how to stay out of the sun?” “I think she did it on purpose,” she added, her voice hardening. “She knew we were coming to get her, so she deliberately burned herself. A pathetic ploy for sympathy.” At my mother’s words, Alexis’s face turned to stone. He ignored my struggles, grabbing my ankle and dragging me out from under the table. The raw, bloody skin of my back scraped against the rough wood of the deck, sending agony shooting through me. Alexis didn’t even seem to notice. He just glared down at me, his voice cold. “Is this your master plan, Jenny? It seems you’re not only cruel to others, but to yourself as well.” “Think of all the horrible things you’ve done to Gwyneth over the years. You forced her to show up naked at our wedding! All I did was send you on a six-month vacation to a natural paradise. That’s barely a punishment at all!” I ignored him. The blood loss had left me weak, and a primal need for sustenance consumed me. Just then, a large rat scurried out from the yacht’s galley. The guests shrieked and leaped onto chairs. My eyes lit up. With a feral gleam, I lunged. As Alexis and my parents watched in stunned horror, I clamped my jaw around the rodent and, with a sickening gulp, swallowed it whole. “Ah!” my mother screamed, a sound of pure anguish. “Is that my daughter? Six months of isolation on that island and she’s lost her very humanity?” Alexis looked as if he might faint. “Jenny, I know you’re afraid of snakes. But Serpent Isle is beautiful, and the snakes there are harmless and gentle! I don’t care how angry you are with me, you can’t keep degrading yourself with these disgusting, self-destructive acts!” As if on cue, Gwyneth dropped to her knees and began slapping her own face, weeping hysterically. “It’s my fault! If it weren’t for me, she would never have become like this! Please, take her home! I’ll stay here on Serpent Isle for the rest of my life to atone for my sins, just so she can be happy!” My mother’s tears stopped. She pointed a trembling finger at me. “You wretched girl! You’d turn yourself into an animal, abandon every shred of human decency, just to drive Gwyneth away?” Alexis’s eyes were black pools of fury as he stared at me. A slow, chilling smile spread across his lips, sending a shiver down my spine. “You like pretending to be a snake, Jenny? Fine. Then let’s get you some snakes to play with.” He snapped his fingers. A moment later, one of his men appeared, holding a large canvas bag. He tossed it onto the deck in front of me. It writhed. “I know you’re terrified of snakes, Jenny. You can’t even look at a rope if it’s coiled the wrong way without freezing up.” He stared at me, his eyes gleaming with cold calculation. “Apologize to Gwyneth right now. Swear, in front of everyone, that you will never trouble her again. Or I will open this bag and let you experience the pleasure of dancing with serpents.” 3 When I didn’t respond, a flicker of pity crossed Alexis’s face, but it was gone as quickly as it came. “Lock her in the karaoke lounge with the snakes,” he commanded his men. “Don’t let her out until she begs for forgiveness.” They threw me into the glass-walled room, followed by the squirming bag. Alexis stood outside, arms crossed, confidently waiting for my screams. It was true, I used to be terrified of snakes. Even after the scientists at the Serpent Isle Institute had slowly, painstakingly remade my body, the sight of a snake still made me tremble. But then, to complete my conditioning, to make me forget I was ever human, they threw me into a pit. A pit with thousands of snakes and no other food. To survive, I had to hunt. To live, I had to become the predator. In that pit, it was kill or be killed, devour or be devoured. After two months in the pit, snakes were no longer a source of fear. They were a source of food. As I sank my teeth into a green viper, the reflection in the glass showed Alexis staggering back. “Jenny, are you insane? What are you doing…?” He didn’t understand. One small rat couldn’t possibly satisfy my hunger. This bag of colorful, writhing snakes was the greatest gift he could have given me. While Alexis and my parents watched, their faces masks of pure horror, I tilted my head back and swallowed the thrashing serpent whole. With a strangled cry, Alexis burst into the room. He tore the half-eaten snake from my hands and threw it aside, then pulled me into a desperate embrace. “That’s enough, Jenny. Stop it. Stop torturing yourself like this. Please, can we just stop?” I didn’t understand why he was taking my food. But the scientists at the Institute, desperate for funding, had pimped me out after my transformation. They made me service men with… special interests. I learned that to get food, to fill my belly, I had to make men happy. I parted my lips, letting my forked tongue taste the air, and obediently knelt before him. I tucked my hair behind my ears and reached for the buckle of his belt. Disbelief warred with something else in his eyes. His voice was a raw, broken rasp. “Jenny… what did they teach you on that island? Have you forgotten who you are? You are an heiress of this family.” He grabbed my hands, his face contorted in pain. “How can you use these hands—hands that have won national piano competitions, hands that are as graceful as a goddess’s—for something so degrading, so base?” His knuckles were white from the force of his grip. I didn’t understand, I only knew that he was hurting me, so I pulled my hands away. He was the one who sent me to this island. He was the one who allowed my body to be twisted into a shape that pleased others, my mind to be broken and remolded into that of a snake. Every part of me—my hands, my mouth, my body—had been forced to perform the most depraved acts just to survive. And now, he was calling me cheap. I stared at him, my gaze unwavering, and he couldn’t even meet my eyes. He pressed his lips into a thin line. “Find out,” he snarled to the empty air. “Find out what the hell happened to my wife on that island!” While we waited, he pulled me onto his lap, cradling my hands in his own, trying to warm them. He didn’t know that my blood had been replaced. That I was a cold-blooded creature now. He could hold me forever and never make me warm. Half an hour later, two of his bodyguards dragged the nanny who was supposed to have cared for me onto the yacht. “I entrusted my wife’s well-being to you,” Alexis said, his voice dangerously low. “Perhaps you can explain to me why, in just six short months, she has become this… thing. Not quite human, not quite snake.” The nanny trembled uncontrollably.
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