Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 198: Animosity

"My Lord."

Ruby curtsied, deep, graceful. Her saintly robes, pristine white and gold, caught the light of the chandeliers as she lowered herself before the Wolf King.

"It’s a pleasure to finally meet you," she said, her voice soft, carrying just enough to reach the nearest guests without seeming to perform.

Arkai turned to her.

He narrowed his eyes.

"Who?"

Huh?

Ruby’s composure flickered, just for an instant, barely perceptible, before she smoothed it away.

Arkai turned to his side, where his beta Borak stood, and looked at him. He silently inquired. A polite request for identification.

He... couldn’t guess?

She was wearing her saintly robes. The unmistakable white and gold, the sacred symbols embroidered along the hems, the very fabric of her office. Who else would wear the Saintess’s robes?!

Arkai received Borak’s quiet confirmation in a murmured word and a nod, and turned back to her. His expression cleared.

"Oh, Saintess." A nod. Courteous, but nothing more. "The pleasure is mine."

Ruby smiled, the expression warm and self-deprecating, perfectly calibrated to invite sympathy. "No, it’s truly mine, my Lord. I was so distraught after the last prophecy I received about you. I was terrified for a while, thinking that it would certainly happen."

She let her voice tremble, just slightly. "My prophecies have always happened, after all. And I was overjoyed when I was wrong!"

She curtsied again, bowing lower this time, her forehead nearly level with her heart.

"My apologies, my Lord." The words were soft, laden with regret. "I... I am so sorry for such an ominous omen. It was truly not my intention to curse death upon you. I was hoping instead that it would save you." A pause, perfectly timed. "If only... if only it had come earlier, then I could’ve..."

She raised one hand, delicate, and touched the corner of her eye. When she lowered it, a single dewdrop of moisture clung to her fingertip—gone in an instant, but seen.

"I could’ve warned you all."

The whisper rippled through the crowd. Sympathetic murmurs rose like a tide. The Saintess, aggrieved that her prophecy hadn’t come fast enough. The Saintess, wrestling with the weight of failure, the first eruption that had claimed hundreds, the second that had nearly claimed the Wolf King himself.

Oh, she was suffering for them. She was human.

Arkai regarded her for a long moment. His expression was unreadable. That same stern, cold visage that made him look like a statue carved from northern stone.

Then he shook his head.

"No." The word was curt, decisive. "Of course it wasn’t your fault. What can you do, if the gods decided my death didn’t require prior warning?"

Ruby slowly raised her face. It was of sorrowful hope, eyes glistening, lips pressed together as if holding back further apologies, the whole effect one of a soul seeking absolution and daring to believe it might be granted.

"Please do not beat yourself over it," Arkai continued. "One or two wrong prophecies... it’s not like the former Saintess was never wrong either."

He shrugged. The gesture was casual, almost dismissive.

Then, as if a thought had just occurred to him, as if he had remembered something, he tilted his head.

"Ah, but." A pause. A smile, lopsided, almost friendly. "All of my people who survived the tragedy were people who built bunkers, or were decidedly away from their homes and seeking shelter elsewhere beforehand. Thanks to the former Saintess’s warning."

The words landed like stones in still water.

Arkai’s smile didn’t waver. His tone remained pleasant, almost conversational.

"You are new," he said. "So you should learn more from your senior and predecessor, Saintess Cecilia, about how to take precaution."

He leaned in, just slightly. A gesture of intimacy, of mentorship, of kindness.

"Understand?"

Silence.

Ruby’s face, that perfect mask of sorrowful hope, froze. Her lips parted, but no sound emerged. Her eyes, still glistening with manufactured tears, went wide with something she could not quite hide.

...what?

Wait.

Wait, wait.

Why would the Black Wolf King... speak about the fake Saintess that way? With respect? With praise? As if she were someone to be emulated rather than exposed?

Ruby’s face paled beneath her carefully maintained composure. The blood drained from her cheeks, leaving her skin the color of old parchment.

Ah.

She understood now.

This man...

This man had decided. He had made his choice. Perhaps in the moment that death prophecy had landed. Perhaps in the hours and days since, as he stood proving his miraculous survival. He had looked at the pieces on the board and decided which side to play.

He would not favor her.

He would never favor her.

Why else would he talk about that bitch that way?! Why else would he invoke her name, Cecilia, the false Saintess, the pretender, as a model to be followed? As a teacher for the true prophet to learn from?!

The insult was layered. It was a dismissal. A gentle, almost paternal suggestion that she was young, inexperienced, in need of guidance from her betters.

Her betters.

Ruby’s hands, hidden in the folds of her saintly robes, clenched into fists. Her nails bit into her palms.

He—

The Black Wolf King... had decided to dismiss her. Or worse. To be her opposition. All because of that ’false’ prophecy?!

This was bad.

This was very, very bad.

To have the Wolf King’s animosity, to have a power like Arkai Dawnoro arrayed against her, even passively, was a catastrophe. He was not just any lord. He was a force. An institution. A man whose word carried weight in councils human and beast alike.

If he spoke against her, if he implied that her prophecies were unreliable, if he held up that fake as a standard—

"Your Maj—"

Ruby stepped forward, her voice rising, desperate to reclaim control, to explain, to fix—

Arkai raised his palm.

Cold. Absolute.

"Please." His voice was not loud, but it carried. It commanded. "I still have something to announce."

He did not wait for her response. He simply turned, his hand finding the palm of the veiled woman beside him, that smiling, mysterious creature in black and gold, and pulled her gently forward. Toward the center of the hall. Toward the light. Toward the focus of every eye in the room.

The black veiled woman kept her warm smile fixed in place. Those deep red lips curved upward, serene and knowing. She nodded once, a small acknowledgment, as if to say of course, lead the way.

And then she followed him.

Leaving Ruby standing alone at the edge of the crowd, her mouth still slightly open, her carefully constructed moment shattered into pieces she could not gather.

Ruby stood frozen, her heart pounding, her mind racing.

Around the hall, subtle glances were exchanged. Tiny flickers of eye contact between nobles who had spent decades reading between lines that weren’t even written.

The Wolf King’s words hung in the air, and everyone understood their weight. Surely, they thought, Arkai Dawnoro couldn’t actually regard the false Saintess that highly. Cecilia Araceli was still fake, after all, a woman who had deceived the entire world for years.

This must be simply a calculated jab. A public reminder that Ruby Vaiva, for all her divine visions, had brought a false prophecy into the world and nearly cost a king his life.

They interpreted it as if he was saying, "Even a fake did a better job than you" to Ruby. And that was infinitely worse.

Of course, they didn’t know, or couldn’t know, that Arkai was speaking nothing but the truth, that every word of praise for Cecilia came from a place of genuine love and gratitude. To them, it was politics. To them, it was a king settling scores.

"Ladies and Gentlemen."

Arkai’s voice rang through the hall, clear and warm, carrying the easy authority of a man who had never needed to raise his voice to be heard.

The woman in black and gold stood beside him, her veiled face turned toward the crowd, those deep red lips curved in that same smile.

"Please, forgive me for the delay." Arkai paused. "I’ll let you eat my food right after I make this announcement, okay?"

A ripple of chuckles passed through the assembled guests. The tension that had built during Ruby’s interruption, during the pointed exchange, during the lingering weight of Arkai’s words about the former Saintess, all of it began to ease, replaced by the comfortable anticipation of revelation.

Here we go. The thought moved through the crowd like a shared breath. This was it. The real reason Arkai Dawnoro had summoned the most powerful beings in the world to his hall.

Would it be the explanation for the northern territories’ feud? The truth about the attacks that had shaken the region? Perhaps an update on the volcano, on Mount Saede, on the disaster that had nearly claimed his life?

Or maybe, the thought flickered through more than a few minds, maybe it was about the Vasiliev Prince. Arzhen’s fate, finally decided. The judgment Anton had authorized, delivered publicly, for all to witness.

Arkai smiled, that same lopsided smile that sat so strangely on his stern features. When he spoke again, his voice carried a warmth that no one in this room had ever heard from him before.

"My dearest guests, I welcomed you into my house today to tell you joyous news."

He turned.

His hand rose, finding Cecilia’s where it rested at her side. His fingers closed around hers, gentle, possessive, tender, and he raised her hand to his lips.

He kissed the back of her knuckle.

Affection, raw and unguarded, the kind of touch that spoke of private moments and shared warmth. The kind of touch that could not be faked.

When he straightened, he was smiling at her. At those deep red lips that curved upward to meet his gaze.

"My madam and I," he said, "will have our wedding soon."

"A day before the first dawn of spring."

He turned back to the crowd, his smile widening just slightly.

"Please."

"You are all invited."