Beast Gacha System: All Mine

"You must have gone through a major life and death scenario to be with him, did you not?"

The words fell from Damon’s lips like ground glass laced with honey. Sweet to the ear, grating to the throat.

Arkai recognized the threat immediately. His black eyes, already bleeding to crimson, tracked the faint tremor in Cecilia’s hand where Damon still held it. The kiss. The lingering grip. The smile that was too gentle.

This man.

Arkai knew Damon Iondora. The Crown Prince’s relationship with his own sister Angela was like a festering wound that had never properly healed. That alone would have been enough to mark him as questionable.

But now there was the matter of the Emperor’s assassination. Suspicion clung to him, and Arkai knew that where there was smoke, someone had usually been careless with fire.

But this...

The sentence meant more than one thing.

First, Damon knew.

He knew who Lady Sees truly was. The secret identity and everything. Damon had seen through it all, and he was hinting at his knowledge. He was playing with her secret, testing its weight, seeing how it felt to hold something so valuable over someone so powerful.

Arkai did not know whether this was something Cecilia would have wanted. But her flinch suggested that this revelation was as unwelcome to her as it was to him.

Which meant Damon had discovered it on his own.

Which meant Damon was more dangerous than Arkai had previously calculated.

Second, Damon was diminishing what they had.

The implication that their relationship was a result of a major life and death scenario... the trauma, the survival. The desperate clinging of two people who had faced death together and mistaken the intensity of that experience for something deeper.

Damon was explaining it away. Reducing it to a symptom. A side effect. A scar that had healed into the wrong shape.

It was a sore spot.

For all of them. Arkai. Oathran. Even Eastiel.

Did Cecilia love them because she chose them, or because circumstance had thrown them together and she had simply... accepted what was offered?

Was their bond real, or was it the product of proximity and peril, a fire that would burn out once the danger had passed?

Damon had poured the poison into his ear, and knowing it was poison did not stop it from burning.

Again—did Cecilia have some kind of relationship with this man?

Before her supposed death. Before any of them. Had Damon Iondora known her? Had they been close... or had they been something... more?

The crimson in Arkai’s eyes deepened.

His jaw tightened until he could feel the ache in his molars.

[Cecilia: This little dummy...]

Arkai’s eyes faltered.

It was subtle. A flicker of interruption in the steady crimson burn of his gaze. Cecilia’s telepathic voice sounded... intimate. Familiar.

Little dummy.

She even sounded... fond. Exasperated.

[Cecilia: Arkai, this guy is trying to provoke you. Don’t fall for it.]

[Cecilia: He’s stupid. Like zero EQ.]

Arkai’s response came rough, scraped raw against the inside of his mind.

[Arkai: But still.]

Still. Still, Damon had kissed her hand. Still, he had implied that her bond with Arkai was nothing but trauma and proximity. Still, he had looked at Cecilia with those eyes, as though he had a claim that predated all of theirs.

And Cecilia knew him. Was fond of him. Had just called him a little dummy like he was a beloved nuisance rather than a threat.

Arkai realized that this jealous personality of his was a disease.

[Cecilia: Can you trust me?]

[Cecilia: He’s like... like a brother to me. A good big brother. He actually secretly took care of me and Angela well.]

Arkai’s eyes widened a fraction.

This guy?

The Crown Prince who had just publicly humiliated his stepmother, shattered a flower altar for his dead father before the entire court, and was now playing mind games with a wolf king in the middle of a garden, this guy had secretly taken care of Cecilia and Angela?

This guy was a good big brother?

[Arkai: But why is he provoking me, then?]

[Cecilia: He’s... a little protective, I guess?]

A pause. He could almost hear her sigh.

[Cecilia: But he’s dumb.]

[Arkai: ...]

Protective. Dumb. A brother. A good brother, apparently, despite all evidence to the contrary, is currently smiling at his wife like a cat who had found an unattended bowl of cream.

But again... if Sienna was normal, and if she went and married someone... perhaps Arkai would also act protective like thi—

"Please don’t stare at me like that, my fair Lady."

Damon’s voice cut through the telepathic conversation. His smile was captivating.

"Isn’t it already an open secret?" Damon continued, his head tilting slightly, his eyes never leaving the black veil that hid Cecilia’s face. "That only thanks to you, Arkai Dawnoro and his people could survive that mountain eruption?"

Ruby, standing rigid beside Lady Sees, felt her eyes widen despite herself.

Yes. She knew about that too. She had already pieced together that Lady Sees had most likely been present during the eruption. The speed of Arkai’s people’s recovery afterward had been too remarkable, and Arkai himself had announced about the Dragon’s Physician’s assistance.

That much she had already accepted. A healer of extraordinary skill, present at a catastrophe, saving lives that should have been lost. It made sense. It was logical.

But now the pieces were shifting.

Damon’s words did not fit the picture she had constructed. Only thanks to you, Arkai Dawnoro and his people could survive.

Was it Lady Sees who had saved Arkai Dawnoro? Truly saved him, not merely stitched his wounds or brewed her elixirs, but altered the outcome of a catastrophe that should have claimed his life?

Ruby had heard the reports from Nikolas’ investigations. She had memorized them, in fact, because they had contradicted everything she remembered from her previous life.

Arkai had successfully redirected the pyroclastic flow away from his people. A feat of impossible strength. In her first life, he had failed. He had died trying, buried beneath ash and fire alongside everyone he had hoped to save.

But in this life, he had succeeded.

And now Damon was crediting Lady Sees. A mere physician.

Ruby’s mind raced, connections sparking and catching like dry kindling. A physician could not help redirect pyroclastic flows. A physician could not predict volcanic eruptions or orchestrate safety measures or stand beside a wolf king and change the shape of fate itself.

Medical miracles had their limits, and this soared far beyond them.

So what was Lady Sees?

Meanwhile, across the garden path, Arkai seethed.

This was too perfect.

Damon’s provocation felt like a masterwork of restraint. It was not too much. Not an open insult or a direct challenge. He even justified his earlier sentence with the next.

It was not too much... and simultaneously, it was the most painful jab any man could ever deliver.

She is only with you because of trauma.

I knew her before you did, and I know things about her you will never learn.

Arkai’s molars ached.

Every instinct screamed at him to insert himself between Cecilia and this smiling prince, to remind Damon Iondora with every fiber of his being exactly whose wife he was so casually touching.

But before the wolf could act, Cecilia moved first.

Her hand slipped free of Damon’s grasp. She waved it through the air dismissively, and accompanied it with a giggle that seemed to transform the very atmosphere around her.

"Oh, shut up~!"

The words were light, airy, the verbal equivalent of a playful swat. Before Damon could react or anyone could react, Cecilia’s hand rose and her fingers found his cheek. She pinched. Not gently. Not cruelly either.

Damon’s cheek stretched between her fingers like dough.

"Are you implying I only married my husband because he’s a crying poor pup I found on the street?" Lady Sees’s voice sounded sweet. "Honey, you’re wrong~!"

"Ah—"

Damon froze. His smile faltered at the edges.

Lady Sees leaned in. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Listen."

"I married him because he’s good in bed."

Arkai’s brain stopped working.

"And his Johnny is very, very thick."

Arkai’s face detonated.

The crimson that had been lurking in his eyes spread like wildfire, consuming his cheeks, the very tips of his ears, racing down his neck and disappearing beneath the collar of his black northern tunic.

"Madam!"

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