Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 55: The Messenger

Arkai had led a straight life.

Respect was given freely to those who earned it, and received without demand from those he led. He governed Winter’s Keep with wisdom, patient endurance, and a tough love that brooked no rebellion. He had a long and eventful life, but disgrace had never touched him.

It would be fair, he supposed, to call him a principled man, after everything he had gone through. He wouldn’t dwell on the details. The point was, he knew who he was.

Yet, sometimes, it didn’t matter what a man had survived, what oaths he’d kept, or what integrity he’d carved from the hard rock of his existence. The result could still be a failure. In this case, was that he, Arkai Dawnoro, had fallen for a married woman. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

The Saintess, whose mate was a Dragon Lord with scent so subtle, so controlled, that to the undiscerning nose, she might simply smell... unclaimed.

He felt no shame. Strange, yes. Perhaps because to him, shame was for betrayals of honor, for cowardice. What burned in his chest was guilt. For Cecilia. That his desire, his bond, might become a burden or a stain on her.

His own reputation? It could march itself straight into the gutter for all he cared. Let them paint him as a desperate, lesser beast clinging to a dragon’s coattails if it meant shielding her. But if the whispers harmed her, or complicated her vengeance, or made her life harder...

If... his choices... this truth of his heart, cast a shadow on her...

Even trying to ignore them, the words he’d caught on his walk to his office this morning curdled in his gut. Toy. Favorite. Plaything. Not pretty words for anyone’s ears. He’d need to give his men an official line soon.

"Anton?" he asked the unfamiliar weretiger in a lean half-beast form, built for speed over brute strength. Hired for courier it seemed. Arkai didn’t recognize him.

"Yes, sir," the man replied. He then fumbled an explanation after seeing the alpha’s look. "Uhh... we are sorry, sir. The usual messenger was fired by the Lord."

"The Lord has been... displeased with many of the staff lately."

Of course he has. Arkai’s jaw tightened. After Arzhen’s atrocity, Anton’s house would be in chaos.

"How’s the lady faring?" Arkai asked, his voice neutral.

The question visibly struck a nerve. The messenger stiffened awkwardly. But his answer, when it came, was solemn. "The lady is well, sir. Too well."

Hmmm.

He’d disliked Anton’s wife for years. Her political coterie, her vicious friends, her views that had surely seeped into her son... especially now.

He broke the seal on the envelope. The handwriting inside was not Anton’s proud, slashing script. It was the precise hand of his trusted aide. Arkai frowned. So Anton was now too ill even to pen a personal plea.

The message was concise. Lord Anton knows nothing anymore. Not of his son, his territory, or his own house.

It was worse than Arkai had feared.

"What’s your name?" Arkai asked, looking up.

"It’s Piotr, sir."

"Wait outside, Piotr. Help me tell the rest of the messengers to come in. I’ll come back to you in a minute." Arkai slid the damning letter into a locked drawer.

"Yes."

Piotr obeyed, ushering in the next pair. Two lion-kin, who exchanged polite nods with him before entering the inner sanctum. The door closed.

Piotr waited in the antechamber, the silence stretching long enough to feel weighty. When the door finally reopened, the lions emerged, bowing deeply to Arkai before taking their leave. Arkai saw them out, then turned his black eyes back to Piotr.

"Rest and eat. I will follow you east when you’re ready," Arkai declared. "Come."

"Ah, you’re going to follow me... Yes! Yes, sir!" Piotr scrambled to follow as Arkai strode toward the dining hall, already calling orders to his approaching warriors.

"Borak, you stay." Arkai’s voice halted his grizzled beta. "Tell the mutts around not to blab their mouths about my Luna and His Majesty. Just. Shut. I don’t care what they want to say about it."

Borak’s eyes widened. "Yes, Lord. I’ll beat it into their skulls myself."

"Hey." Arkai stopped, turning to pin Borak with an intense look. "No beating. This time, talk to them. Seriously."

Talk. Borak blinked, couldn’t believe his own ears. No beating? Just... talk? Then, he understood. This time, Arkai didn’t want blind obedience. He wanted respect. Real respect. Not the kind born of fear of his fist, but the kind that had to be consciously chosen.

Well, the respect for the beings involved was already there, Borak reasoned. The goddess-who-wasn’t and the dragon had saved them all at Mount Saede. Beasts respected strength, period. But the lord’s... entanglement with them was a tangled skein of rumor.

Now, the lord himself was cutting through it, asking for discretion as a favor, not demanding it as a right.

"Okay, Lord. I’ll make them understand," Borak vowed solemnly.

Arkai gave a single, firm nod.

"The usual crew follows me to Vasiliev’s. We’re moving soon. Get ready."

"Yes, Lord."

As the wolves dispersed to their tasks, Piotr trailed behind Arkai, his mind reeling. First, the Wolf King took Anton’s cryptic distress call with too much seriousness, even planning to go himself. And now... a Luna? Since when?!

Arkai Dawnoro was legendary. But he was also legendary for his refusal to marry.

The north buzzed with theories. Perhaps he had no interest in women, or that he was wedded to his territory... or that he refused to jeopardize the position of his fiercely beloved adoptive son, Prince Rinne.

After all, the boy was a point of pride. A good son. Strong and worthy, even young. Not like... well.

But a Luna changed everything. The news would shake the entire continent. Who was she? Where had he found her? Was it during his recent months in the south, or... could it possibly be connected to the cataclysm at Mount Saede just days ago?

Piotr kept his questions locked behind his teeth, but his eyes darted around the hall. He could be lucky enough to see the mysterious woman who had finally captured the heart of the untamable Black Wolf King, right?

"There you are, Brother."

Piotr froze.

The mirthful voice had the effect of a lightning strike down his spine. Every hair on his half-beast body stood up. Not the words, at least not yet, but the void that preceded them. No scent, no presence.

No rustle of fabric, no shift in the air, no subtle pressure of this particular life form in the room.

For a beast, whose world was built on sensory layers, smell, sound, heat, the vibration of a footfall, this was an impossibility. Like... a piece of the universe had suddenly spoken.

The man who stood there was tall and majestic. Long, mist-white hair framed a face graced with a gentle smile. And the horns atop his head were proud, sharp, ebon-black like primordial crowns.

Not Bovidae. No weregoat or bison carried this kind of ancient menace.

Not Cervidae. This was no stag-king.

Then... Reptilia?

Ah. A chill down his spine.

Dragons?

His head whipped toward Arkai, shocked, confused.

Arkai, meanwhile, was smiling easy and familiar. He inclined his head in acknowledgement. "Elder Brother."

Elder Brother?!

How? From what angle? By what bond?

He knew the lineages. He was from the Vasiliev house, he had to know them. Anton Vasiliev was this Black Wolf’s maternal cousin. But this... this was a Dragon. A being from another stratum of existence entirely.

Since when did the ruler of the northern wolves have familial ties to a creature most considered a walking natural disaster? A fucking werelizard god?

It would be like claiming kinship with the Baihu, the celestial weretiger deities of the eastern peaks. It was... paradigm-shattering.

"Arkai, you’re back."

"Lord Father, you’re back."

Two new voices emerged from behind the living impossibility. Two heads peeked out, one after the other from behind a human-shaped mountain.

First, the young Prince Rinne, his wolf-ears perked cheerfully.

And the second...

A breathtaking young woman.

Her beauty was secondary to the aura she carried. She was calm and warm, softening the very air around her. She smiled.

Arkai’s gaze found them. The dense void of his irises melted, warming into something tender. He nodded, and the single word he offered her was dipped in a reverence that went beyond title. "Ma’am."

"We’ve been waiting for you," the woman said. Then, her perceptive gaze shifted, taking in Piotr’s paralyzed form, the dust of a hard journey still on his clothes. Her smile softened. "But it seems you are busy."