Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 117: Bargain **

"Brother, you’re still recovering. Don’t dive into that hole."

The wind whistled. Anton and Rinne turned to Arkai with deadpanned eyes. Apparently, it was serious.

Gregor and Thalia, a few paces away attending to their own lines, locked their lips tight, their shoulders shaking with repressed laughter.

Piotr, young and curious, merely blinked, his eyes darting between the two imposing lords sitting side by side like grumpy statues. This was, indeed, his first time seeing a beast exuding the thick, pheromone-heavy scent of a rut-cycle despite being leagues away from his bonded mate.

Fascinating. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

But of course, they didn’t know. They couldn’t possibly fathom the maddening torture Arkai Dawnoro was currently enduring.

Sex by proxy.

Every. Damn. Night.

He, like the fury and frustration he felt pulsing from Eastiel every cursed morning, had been forced to scrub himself raw in ice-cold baths, trying to scour the clinging scent of rut from his own skin. The shared, bone-deep chill of that frigid water was a sensation that sometimes splashed across their shared senses in the pre-dawn gloom.

Brotherhood was like this, perhaps. Sharing a mutual scream into the void.

It usually happened at night. When the dragon, in his distant mountain, decided to... entertain their Saintess. That was bad enough.

But this time...

Why now? In the broad, pale light of day?

His jaw tightened, a muscle feathering in his cheek. He stared into the icy hole, but all he could see was the phantom sensation of a different kind of heat, a different kind of pressure.

Elder Brother... were you so incapable of restraint that you had to disturb the Saintess’s work today?

BUT SEVERING THE CONNECTION IS UNFAIR!

It felt like severing a limb. To willingly blind himself to her, to the proof of her pleasure and life, even when it was delivered through the maddening medium of another man’s senses... it felt like a coward’s retreat.

Forget that. He gritted his teeth until his jaw ached. It’s family time. Family time.

Arkai had planned this trip for a while. He’d smuggled Anton and his three loyal shadows out of the keep first under the guise of rotating patrols. Then, he’d gathered Rinne with a gruff, "Come, boy. We’re going fishing."

A father-son trip. Wholesome. Normal. Something a sane, stable Alpha Lord would do.

It was good to get away from that snake, Elara, too. Her presence had become something oily in his halls, her attention on Anton felt too probing and persistent. But Anton, to his credit, was standing firm. Arkai was proud of his cousin for that.

At the same time, he’d wanted to give Thalia and Gregor a taste of free, cold air. They’d been hiding in the back palace for too long. They deserved to feel the bite of a true northern wind, to remember a world existed outside of hidden rooms and whispered plans.

But what in the seven frozen hells could he do if the ancient, insatiable lizard in his mountain suddenly decided to fuck their wife in the middle of the damn afternoon?

He was trying to bond. To be a leader. A father. A cousin. And Oathran was...

Sigh...

No. Enough. The unfairness of it was a luxury he could no longer afford. He needed to sever the connection. Now. Before—

"Ah! Father! Your line—!" Rinne’s voice was excited, cutting through his thoughts.

Arkai blinked, his focus snapping back to the present. To the numb cold of his hands, the worn wood of the fishing rod, the dark, patient water in the ice hole. He’d almost forgotten he was holding it.

He creased his eyebrows, instinct taking over, and gave the rod a firm pull. It creaked in protest, straining against the power on the other end of the line. He braced his boots against the ice, leaning back, muscles in his shoulders and back cordening. Further. Further.

One more heave and he pulled the catch from the black water. It was a northern pike, long and sleek as a silver dagger, thrashing against the line.

"Wah!" Rinne clapped, a boyish grin splitting his face.

Anton snorted a puff of steam. "So you can still fish a big one even when your brain is swimming in rut, huh? Not completely useless."

"Wow!" Anton’s three men, Piotr, Gregor, and Thalia, added their own scattered, appreciative claps. The simple, shared success felt good. It was normal. It was real. A solid, icy fish in his hands, not a phantom sensation in his nerves.

It had been a while indeed.

Yes. Arkai thought as he worked to free the hook. Let’s sever the connection.

And enjoy today’s family ti—

THRUST!

A sensation tore through him.

"A—ah—!"

The world tilted. The fishing rod clattered from his suddenly nerveless fingers. Arkai stumbled over his low stool, his body betraying him completely, and crashed down onto the unforgiving hardness of the ice.

The impact jarred up his spine, but it was nothing compared to the other feeling, the one blooming hot in the very core of him.

He lay there for a second, stunned, the cold of the lake seeping through his furs, his cheek pressed against the frost.

He had felt that one in his guts.

And lower.

A phantom fullness, a pressure that had no business on a frozen lake. Now, his body sang with an unwanted echo of pleasure.

"L-Lord Father? A-are you okay?" Rinne panicked, confused, his shadow falling over Arkai’s prone form.

Haaa...

A ragged breath fogged the ice beneath his lips. Then came the growl. It started low in his chest and rumbled out against the frozen pane. He was pissed now.

Next time, he swore to the ice, to the distant, oblivious dragon, and to the woman who was the source of all this exquisite torment. Next time I’m alone with Cecilia... I’m returning this tenfold.

Yes. It was definitely not his fault that he didn’t request to sever it earlier.

Fuck.

***

"Mmm... hmmm..."

Cecilia clenched herself tight around him, her body bowing off the plush chair they’d pushed aside. She was half-naked now, garments of enchanted silk and soft wool pooled artfully on the ornate carpet like fallen petals.

Oathran was in a similar state of elegant undress, his own clothes discarded carelessly, yet somehow still regal.

But the strategic disrobing had been... interrupted. How had one of his twin cocks already managed to pierce her so, so deeply, while they were both still partly clad?

It was a bargain she’d made.

"My lord... I don’t want to strip the next layer yet. Can I... change the forfeit to something else?"

It had started so innocently. A slippery slope of negotiated stakes.

At first, it was ’just a sip’.

Next, it was ’just the tip’.

And now—

"Mmm—mmmhhh..." She trembled, her fingers digging into the carved arms of the chair, undercut by the way her hips gave a tiny, involuntary rock against him. "That’s a dip... Please, pull out... and we can continue the game..."

Oathran didn’t move to withdraw. Instead, he leaned closer, his breath hot against the shell of her ear, his own control visibly about to snap. "You didn’t specify how long a ’dip’ could last, my Saintess."

His voice was a dark velvet rumble. "You lost the hand. The forfeit stands. And there are... mmh... four more layers of your clothes left. Only two of mine." He pulled back just enough to see her face. "Do you hate being naked before me so very much?"

Cecilia blinked up at him, her vision hazy with pleasure. Her expression was part pleading, part challenge, all heat. "Being partly clothed," she breathed, a coy smile that wasn’t quite there touching her swollen lips, "is... hotter."

The sentence in that lilting voice, with that look in her eyes, with that damnable logic, was his undoing.

Oathran clenched his eyes shut, a shudder wracking his powerful frame. Her voice, her look, her words, her maddening, brilliant mind—everything about her in this moment, the strategic retreat that was really an advance, the surrender that was a conquest... it was all his.

All his.