Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 54: Cheeky

"Lord Father... Lord Mother... umm... God Father...? Are you... awake...?"

The voice jolted both men from the deepest, most sated sleep of their lives. Instincts honed by war, rule, and recent, very specific domestic complications snapped online instantly. Even submerged in bliss, they recognized this new, unique category of threat. ’The Beloved Interrupting Child.’

Eyes, one pair misty grey and one black, blinked open. They sat up rigidly. Their first, panicked check was a quick memory replay of the previous night’s conclusion.

Had they dressed her?

They had... tenderly cleaned her up and bundled her into a nightgown, and yes, their own frenzied passion had been replaced by aftercare. Confirmed. It hadn’t been a dream. They both sighed in relief.

Rinne, seeing both men snap to attention from dead sleep because of his voice, flinched back a step. "S-sorry..."

"What time is it..." Arkai groaned as he rubbed his temples. What a brutal transition from heaven to paternal responsibility...

"It’s around eight in the morning, Lord Father," Rinne reported, his initial hesitation dissolving as he skipped a little closer to the bed. His bright and innocent smile landed on Cecilia, who was now blinking sleepily with a warm smile of her own for him.

"Did you sleep well, Rinne?" she asked, her voice morning-rough but gentle.

"Yes, Lord Mother. Did you?"

"Of course," she said, reaching a hand out to him.

She did not expect that Rinne would propel himself headfirst over his father’s prone form on the bed, aiming his skull for her waiting pat. His trajectory, however...

THUMP.

"UGH!" The air left Arkai’s lungs as his son’s knees drove directly into the soft center of his stomach. The Black Wolf King folded, T.K.O.-ed, collapsing back onto the mattress with a muffled groan.

"PFFFFFFFFF—"

From the other side of the bed, a choked, strangled sound erupted. Oathran had slapped a hand over his own mouth, his shoulders shaking violently, willing himself not to erupt into howls of laughter at this ungodly hour.

"Rinne..." Cecilia began, eyes glaring. Her hand, however, was already moving, reaching down to gently rub the abused plane of Arkai’s stomach. "Are you usually this... rough with your dad?"

"It’s fine," Rinne dismissed with a casual shrug. It showed the long-standing, rough-and-tumble wolf-pup dynamics. Then, his young nose wrinkled, and his eyes narrowed with accusation. "He must’ve bullied you hard, right? You barely smell like God Father anymore! Lord Father’s scent is all over you! He must’ve taken too much advantage of you!"

"BWAHWAHAHWAHHWAHHWAHAHWAH—"

The dam broke. Oathran, who had been holding back tidal waves of laughter, lost his battle today too. He doubled over wheezing, tears streaming from his eyes as he gripped the bedding for support since he almost toppled right off the side of the bed.

Meanwhile, on the receiving end of both the physical and accusatory assault, Arkai lay groaning. With a blush warring with his pallor, he caught Cecilia’s still-rubbing hand, stopping its ministrations before they could accidentally awaken his other son... down there...

"You don’t usually wake me up like this," Arkai gruffed. "What’s wrong, brat?"

Rinne looked up at his father and shrugged. "Some messengers just arrived. From Vasiliev’s territory. And... a couple others. They look important, I think."

"Is it Anton...?" he muttered.

Rinne shook his head, uncertain. "Don’t know. They just got here."

"I’ll go and check," Arkai said. He swung his legs off the bed. He pointed a finger at Rinne. "Boy, take your mother and... father... for breakfast. Go."

"M’kay," Rinne agreed. He looked at Cecilia, then at the still-chuckling Oathran, his chest puffing out slightly with the importance of his new escort duty.

The walk from the royal chambers to the great hall was quick. Rinne led the way, receiving a hail of rough, affectionate greetings from the warriors and servants they passed.

"Morning, you little rascal!"

"Ears up, Rinne!"

"Don’t cause trouble for the Lord now."

Their tones shifted instantly when Cecilia followed, a wave of bows and softer, deeply respectful murmurs.

"My Lady."

"Good morning, Luna."

Everything seemed to get gentler around her.

Then came Oathran, and well... Greetings died in throats. Stiff and deep nods of respect all around. No one dared speak, terrified of saying the wrong thing.

"Hehe... God Father’s scary..." Rinne giggled, making Oathran helplessly sighed.

"Why are you happy that I scare people?"

"Hehe..."

In a sunlit courtyard, Rinne’s pack of young friends, pups who ran messages and polished armor for coins, froze mid-whisper, their eyes huge. But of course, Rinne and Oathran, with their superior hearing, caught some words they were discussing.

The gossip they whispered was quite... colorful.

"They said King Arkai is the dragon couple’s toy now..."

A hush, then a snicker.

"...I mean, can he even refuse?" another voice ventured.

A third, sharper voice cut through. "Damn idiots. You’d want to be the gods’ favorite. It’s a good thing! Our territory is protected now."

"Wow..."

"So... dragons are generous, huh? He would even give his wife another man to play with..."

Oathran didn’t even look at them. He leaned toward Cecilia, his voice a gentle murmur that every sharp wolf-ear in the vicinity caught clearly.

"Back in my days... hmm, three or four hundred years ago, mouths that ran with such speculation would be shaved to the gums and fed to the pigs." He smiled. "We used to call them... ah, yes. ’Cheeky.’"

The courtyard’s earlier whispers were replaced by the sound of several youngsters swallowing very, very hard. Rinne just grinned, skipping ahead.

Cecilia sighed. The gossip itself hadn’t reached her ears, but its ugly shape had transmitted through Sense Sharing from Oathran. Heh... painting Arkai as a lesser toy...

How... tedious.

This kind of poison shouldn’t be fought with declarations or dragon-fire. It wouldn’t be effective. It should only be dealt with time... or by a drastic event that shattered every assumption and rewired the collective brainstem of an entire keep.

The two men, it seemed, had chosen the path of silence. Oathran was ready for his impending ’good death.’ Thus he saw it as background noise. After all, he believed one day only Arkai would be left. Meanwhile Arkai...

He would let the slights pile on his own shoulders like snowfall. Yes, heavy and cold, but bearable.

Perhaps as long as the words’ edges aimed away from her, they would endure it.

Well.

How very gallant of them.

She didn’t like it. It was the same infuriating feeling, the one that had kept her alive in a gilded temple of snakes. If they wished to be stoic statues, then perhaps it was time for the ’fake’ Saintess to remind everyone why she’d held a throne for seventeen years without a drop of divine blood.

Wait, come to think of it... 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

The true Saintess, Ruby Vaiva, had a skin thick enough to solve these kinds of trouble. How did she handle such things again?

Ah, yes.

Be innocent.

Be ’kind.’

As they turned the corner, but not quite yet leaving the frozen courtyard behind, she opened her mouth. Her voice, when she spoke, was a gentle maternal curiosity. So warm it could melt frost.

"Rinne, tell mum the names of your little friends back there." She glanced down at him, her eyes soft. "Do they attend the same tutor as you?"

"And which of your father’s brave warriors sired them?"

She clapped her hands delightfully once.

"It must be such fun for you all! We must have another pack dinner together soon."

Rinne’s foot caught on a seam in the flagstone. He stumbled. Fear went straight to his wolf-pup instincts. At the same moment, Oathran, the Dragon Lord who’d just casually invoked historical dental horrors, stiffened beside her. Terror flowing back to her through their bond.

Both of them stared at her. With fear. Also, the others around them and the gossippers.

And Cecilia felt it too.

No. That wasn’t the intended effect. The goal should be to make them feel artificial guilt. Not to create this... this horror.

She sighed. The performative kindness melted away, and her usual weary cynicism returned.

Oh well.

That wasn’t her style anyway.