Baby System: I'm the Beast World's Only Hope!-Chapter 354: Episode 352: Grief and Pain

"Ren, baby, look," Roxy whispered again, her voice trembling as she nudged her shoulder against his slack, freezing chest.

In her arms, the newborn baby boy let out another sharp, furious wail, his tiny fists waving blindly in the cold air. He was hungry, his instincts immediately demanding sustenance. Roxy hastily, desperately fumbled with the edge of the emerald blanket, bringing the infant closer to her breast so the Fox King could see.

"Look how strong he is, Ren," Roxy pleaded, her brilliant green eyes wide and frantic, entirely ignoring the blinding, tearing pain radiating from her own core. "He’s feeding. He’s perfect. Please, baby, open your eyes and look at him. You wanted this so much."

The pale, translucent face of the trickster did not move. His vibrant green eyes remained closed, his long lashes resting motionlessly against his sunken cheeks.

Roxy’s breath hitched, a sudden, violent tremor racking her exhausted frame. The denial that had been shielding her mind began to violently crack. The silence of the room, the absolute stillness of his chest against her back, it was all crashing down.

"Ren!" Roxy shouted. Her sorrow instantly, violently mutated into a desperate, feral anger. "I thought you wanted to remain with me forever! You promised me! Why are you such a coward?! Wake up!"

She turned as much as her torn, bleeding body would allow, striking her fist weakly against his shoulder. "Why didn’t you tell me?! Why didn’t you say anything!"

"Because you would have stopped him."

The voice came from the foot of the bed. It was broken, thick with a devastating grief.

Syris couldn’t watch this any longer.

Roxy’s head snapped up. Syris stood there, the Snake King’s elegant, usually immaculate face stained with silent, flowing tears. His brilliant green eyes could barely meet hers.

"When we brought him back from the forest," Syris choked out, his hands trembling as he gripped the edge of the mattress. "After he had run away that night... he confessed. He told us that because of his bloodline the moment he got you pregnant, his life would slowly start chipping away. To forge the child’s soul, his magic had to drain his own immortal essence."

Roxy stopped breathing. The chaotic noise of the storm outside completely vanished from her ears.

"He begged us," Syris continued, his voice cracking entirely. "He ordered us, as his brothers, not to tell you. He knew that if you knew it would cost his life, it would burden your soul forever, and you would never agree to have a child with him. He wanted to give you a seed born from you both. He chose to die, Roxy."

He chose to die...

He chose to die...

He chose to die...

That was the only thing that echoed in Roxy’s mind.

A profound, suffocating silence slammed down over the room.

Roxy stared at the Snake King. Slowly, a hollow, entirely disconnected sound escaped her throat. She coughed out a laugh, a broken, breathless, and completely deranged sound.

"So he is sleeping, right?" Roxy asked, her voice dropping into a terrifyingly calm, dead monotone. She stared at Syris, her green eyes completely devoid of light. "Sy, tell me he is sleeping. Tell me he just needs to rest his core."

Syris closed his eyes, the tears tracking freely down his pale cheeks. He remained completely, devastatingly silent.

Roxy coughed out another hollow laugh. The last remaining fragment of her sanity violently snapped. Her expression morphed into a mask of pure, absolute, and terrifyingly cold deadness.

"Get out."

They froze.

"My Queen," Dena sobbed from the corner of the room, her hands shaking as she held a sterile needle and a basin of warm water. "Please, I have to quickly clean you. You are bleeding, I need to stitch you up—"

Roxy’s head whipped toward the young wolf-shifter. With a sudden, terrifying burst of adrenaline, Roxy reached out, her hand wrapping around a heavy, ceramic water vase resting on the bedside table. She hurled it across the room with force.

The vase shattered against the stone wall, sending shards of ceramic and freezing water exploding in every direction.

"Get out of my fucking face!" Roxy screamed, the sound tearing from the very depths of her soul, an unholy roar of absolute agony. "All of you, get out!"

The Alpha Kings flinched. None of them could stand against the grief of their Queen. With heavy, utterly broken hearts, Zarek, Kaelen, Torian, Caspian, and Syris slowly backed out of the room.

They couldn’t do anything.

As Dena turned to flee, sobbing into her hands, Roxy’s voice cracked like a whip. "Wait."

Roxy looked down at the tiny, screaming infant in her arms. She carefully, trembling, lifted the bundled child and held him out. "Take him."

Dena rushed forward, gently taking the newborn Kitsune from his mother’s arms, holding him securely against her chest before fleeing through the doors, pulling them firmly shut behind her.

Roxy was entirely alone with the corpse of her husband.

She turned back to Ren. She looked at his beautiful, tranquil face, the agonizing contrast between his peace and her absolute destruction tearing her apart.

Utilizing every single ounce of her remaining, fading strength, Roxy grabbed his shoulders and hauled his heavy, lifeless body until he was lying fully flat on his back on the mattress.

She ignored the searing, blinding pain of her torn entrance. She forced herself up onto her knees, positioning herself directly beside his chest.

"You don’t get to do this," Roxy sobbed, pinching his cold nose shut.

She leaned down, sealing her lips tightly over his freezing mouth, and blew a massive, desperate breath of air into his lungs. She pulled back, placing her intertwined hands directly over the center of his chest, and pushed down with all her weight.

One. Two. Three. Four. "Wake up!" Roxy screamed, leaning down to breathe into his mouth again.

Outside the window, the storm roared in fury, lightning violently fracturing the black sky as thunder shook the stone foundations of the Manor.

She pounded his chest, her fists striking his cold skin with desperate, bruising force. "How could you do this! We have enough children, Ren! You should have told me! We could have figured everything out together! How could you leave without me!"

Her screams were blood-curdling, completely unrestricted by dignity or restraint. She wailed, the devastating sound traveling through the thick wooden doors, echoing down the grand staircase, and bleeding into every single ounce of the Iron-Wood house.

Out in the grand hallway, the children had been waiting. Axel, Onyx, Tanith, Drax, and little Iris had gathered near the landing, their small faces pale with terror as they listened to the storm and the horrifying screams echoing from their mother’s room.

Tyara and Zale were in a crib that Drax had brought with him, a music playing so they wouldn’t wake up.

As the males emerged from the doors, looking like hollowed-out ghosts of their former selves, Iris ran forward. The little wolf pup’s beautiful violet eyes were wide, brimming with tears as she looked up at the towering Dragon Alpha.

"Papa Z?" Iris whimpered, her small hands grabbing his trousers. "Is mother okay? Why is she screaming?"

Zarek looked down at the little girl and his heart broke. He couldn’t say a single word. His throat was entirely locked by grief. He simply dropped to his knees, scooping Iris into his massive arms, burying his face into her shoulder as he offered a hollow, impossible promise.

"Your mother is fine, she is just singing a song for Papa Ren..."

Back inside the bedroom, Roxy’s physical limits were rapidly expiring.

A glowing blue holographic screen materialized directly over Ren’s chest.

[WARNING: Critical Overexertion Detected.]

[Host is actively hemorrhaging during the critical postpartum healing phase. Cease physical activity immediately or risk terminal failure.]

Roxy stopped her chest compressions. Her chest heaved, sweat dripping from her chin as she stared at the glowing blue text.

The grief inside her instantly flash-boiled into raw fury.

"Fuck you!" Roxy screamed at the System, her voice raw and bleeding. "Why are you doing this to me?! You orchestrated all of this! You should have given me a mission! You should have given me a way to help him, to buy him a cure! Why did you take a piece of my heart?!"

The System did not respond, the blue text simply blinking with cold, calculated indifference.

Roxy let out a final, agonizing roar of despair. She raised her fist high into the air, fully intending to strike Ren’s chest one last time, desperate to shock his dead heart into beating.

She brought her fist down with devastating force.

But her hand never made contact.

A hand, freezing cold, but possessing an absolute, terrifying grip of iron, shot up from the mattress and violently caught her wrist mid-air.

Roxy gasped, her entire body freezing in paralyzed shock.

She looked down.

Ren’s chest was moving. A ragged, desperate, and incredibly wet breath rattled past his lips. Slowly, agonizingly, his eyelids fluttered. He looked up at her. His eyes were no longer the dull, cloudy green of a dying man; they were blazing with a terrifying, ethereal, and completely unnatural emerald fire.

But it wasn’t just his eyes.

The fiery, vibrant red hair that had been his absolute pride and joy had completely, entirely drained of color. It was stark, blinding, and impossibly white.

Ren looked up at her tear-streaked, devastated face, his thumb weakly brushing against her wrist. His cracked lips parted, his voice a gravelly, ethereal whisper that seemed to echo from the very depths of the abyss.

"So beautiful..."