Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 14: Perfect

Cecilia had been ready to roll for that goddamn Heavenly Elixir.

The system said it could regenerate missing body parts, even if the missing parts had been long missing. Forget her heart. She wanted her purity back.

No, not that she saw herself as a holy woman or anything, no.

Just...

If she lost something she didn’t know she had lost—in such a disgusting way...

She wanted it back.

Tap... tap... tap... tap...

Walking down the street aimlessly, she was drowning in her thoughts again. Perhaps the all-knowing, utterly tactless system would answer her question. What was one more moment of surreal humiliation?

"System," she called in her heart, just to make sure. "If I lose my hymen, would it return if I drink the Heavenly Elixir?"

[Processing...]

[Yes, Cecilia! If you want it back, it’ll return!]

Oh.

It’ll return.

DING!

[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei’s Love Points have increased by 10!]

[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei’s Love Points have increased by 10!]

[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei’s Love Points have increased by 10!]

[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei’s Love Points have increased by 10!]

[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei’s Love Points have increased by 10!]

[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei’s Love Points have increased by 10!]

[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei’s Love Points have increased by 10!]

Cecilia was startled by the blasting notifications. She forgot she had muted the system for a while now. But the notifications that had already passed shouldn’t stack and come out at once like this. The system wasn’t that buggy.

Which meant...

He was feeling all of this right now.

Cecilia turned to see the man following behind her, walking unhurriedly, watching her from a two-step distance. These notifications... he was being emotionally flayed because of her, all in this heavy silence.

[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei’s Love Points have increased by 10!]

[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei’s Love Points have increased by 10!]

Cecilia looked into his eyes, seeing the buried pain in their depths. That misty grey was a storm of something terrible.

What emotion was it? Grief? Pity? Sadness? Disappointment?

Disgust?

Whatever it was, she had to stop him from hurting.

"Your Majesty, are you okay?" she gently asked.

The man, who had stopped walking the moment she did, looked at her wordlessly, before gently asking back, "You ask me if I am okay?"

[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei’s Love Points have increased by 10!]

[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei’s Love Points have increased by 10!]

Cecilia nodded, the motion stiff. "You look upset."

The system kept recording his emotional reaction. He was upset. She didn’t give a damn that it gave her points. She just... just... wanted to make it stop.

"I am upset, Saintess," Oathran patiently answered. "But not as upset as you are."

[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei’s Love Points have increased by 10!]

[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei’s Love Points have increased by 10!]

A tender smile bloomed on Cecilia’s lips. She nodded. "I see. Thank you for thinking about me."

To feel for her like this.

He needed to stop.

"Do you want some time alone, my fair lady?" The man asked, his tone impossibly soft.

Cecilia shook her head. "No."

[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei’s Love Points have increased by 10!]

[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei’s Love Points have increased by 10!]

Stop.

Even if he left, she would still hear the notification. And she wouldn’t turn it off or mute it. She wanted to know. No. She wanted to make him stop feeling about her.

[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei’s Love Points have increased by 10!]

[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei’s Love Points have increased by 10!]

Stop.

[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei’s Love Points have increased by 10!]

[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei’s Love Points have increased by 10!]

"STOP IT!"

Cecilia flinched, not realizing she had screamed it out loud.

And just like that, he caught it.

"I will stop it for you," Oathran stood there, taking her outburst head on, a fortress weathering her storm.

Silence.

The system...

Everything.

It stopped.

"Would you let me stop it for you?" The man asked.

But it already had stopped.

He grasped his cane with his torn arm’s armpit and used his left hand to reach out to her. "Come with me."

Cecilia blinked at him.

How?

How would he stop it?

With her hand grasped in his, he leaped to the sky, the world falling away beneath them in a dizzying rush.

"Bone broth soup... bone broth soup..." the man muttered as he scanned the streets from the heights. He was mapping the general direction she had led them to before the clinic, gauging where she had specifically wanted to eat.

Cecilia didn’t know what was worse. Was it that it worked... or that she wanted it to work?

She wanted him to console her. It should have been the worst part. But the true worst part might be that it was working, whether she wanted it to or not.

***

The northern wind carried the scent of pine, ice, and home.

Arkai led his pack through the towering gates of his fortress, hewn from dark granite and ancient, iron-hard timber. The journey had been long, the southern forests too warm, too soft.

Here, the air bit with a familiar, clean cold that felt like truth. The stones underfoot, worn smooth by generations of paws and boots, echoed the rightness of their return.

His pack spilled into the main courtyard, a wave of weary muscle and relieved sighs. The betas and warriors who had held the fortress emerged from doorways and looked down from the high walkways.

Greetings were a series of low grunts, sharp nods, and the subtle, assessing sniffs of wolves confirming the well-being of their own. The scent of the south, strange plants, foreign beasts, and human cities, clung to them, a story told in musk.

"Took your time, Lord," grunted Borak, his head beta, falling into step beside him. "The caribou herds are fat this season. The traders from the Arctic Fox clans are getting bold, though. Smell like they’re trying to short-change us on the pelts."

Inside the great hall, the world narrowed to the heat of a massive central firepit and the smell of roasting meat. Arkai shrugged off his travel-stained cloak, the weight of command settling back onto his shoulders as easily as he sank into his high-backed chair of carved stone and wolf pelts.

Around him, the pack settled. The formal reports could wait for tomorrow. Tonight was for the raw, simple language of their kind.

"Smells like southern weakness on you, Kaelen," one warrior jeered at a younger packmate, who was still shaking the road from his limbs.

"At least I didn’t spend the moon howling at my own shadow," Kaelen shot back, a tired grin on his face.

Another wolf, sharpening a dagger by the fire, snorted. "The real question is, did our Alpha find a southern bitch to warm his furs?"

A ripple of laughter, crude and warm, went through the hall.

Arkai didn’t answer, his gaze fixed on the flames. He let the familiar cacophony wash over him. The boasts, the complaints about the early snows, the crude jokes. This was the sound of a pack whole, of a territory secure.

But in the flickering light, his mind was not on trade or weather. It was on a silent, heartless woman by a river, and the terrifying, unseen power that clung to her like frost. His own domain felt suddenly smaller, the northern winds whispering of a storm he couldn’t yet name.

Brush it off, Arkai. She already belongs to someone else.

That scent...

Complicated.

Though he smelled a fading scent of another beast too, crude, vulgar, young... he smelled the ’he’ he mentioned too. The ’he’ he warned his pack about. A scent thousands of times more complex.

Not dangerous at first glance, but existential. It almost smelled like her own scent. No. She wore the scent of that man perfectly. She simply looked the way she smelled. That was it.

He’d noticed how mates matched. Sometimes their natural scents clashed, a volatile mix that could either ignite a bonfire or an explosion. Their relationship, their time together... it all lingered in that air.

But that woman... and the man’s scent clinging on her...

Intoxicating.

How could he be so intrigued by a woman who was another’s?

Werewolves were loyal. One moon for the rest of their lives.

That woman was someone else’s moon. A cherished moon.

But that scent of her... God.

Was it her scent or her mate’s scent that excited him? Both? Both?

Was he gay...?

Or worse...

He was intrigued precisely because she was so perfectly claimed...?

Fuck.

"Lord, this is the prophecy from the temple for next year," Borak’s gruff voice cut through the spiral. "Thought you’d be interested."

"Oh, right." Glad for the distraction, Arkai snatched the mental lifeline. "Send this year’s gift to the Saintess with our gratitude," he said, accepting the file.

"I don’t think it’ll be necessary, Lord. That Saintess was a fraud," Borak shrugged.

"What?" Arkai turned from the file in shock, before his mind finally registered the words on the page, delivering a second, delayed shock.

A year of prosperity, bountiful harvests, golden peace.

That was it? That was the divine prophecy?

"Where’s the prophecy?" Arkai asked, his voice dangerously low.

"This is the prophecy, Lord. Look, it’s from the true Saintess. They’ve fired the fake one, I said," Borak repeated.

"What do you mean the Saintess is fake? This prophecy looks faker than last year’s arctic wool products," Arkai snapped, crumpling the edge of the parchment.

Borak just shrugged. "I don’t know, man. It is what it is."

So... all this time... the woman who had successfully predicted disaster after disaster, whose sharp warnings had fortified their coasts and closed their unstable mines... was a fake?

"Fucking scrotum."