Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 44: Grovelling

"Dying is not as dreadful as this," Oathran declared to the canvas ceiling of the tent, erected by the werewolves for a night’s rest on the long trek back to the fortress-city.

In his hand was a bottle of surprisingly fine whiskey, smuggled into the rescue supplies by Arkai’s men. It seemed a werewolf’s priorities remained admirably clear...

He took a long pull from the bottle, looking like a being who usually sipped celestial nectar but had currently decided that mortal oblivion had its... occasions.

Arkai sat beside him, helpless, awkward. More tangled than anything. "What Arzhen did to Saintess Araceli... Is it true that he... marked her belongings in his... scent... in such a despicable way...?"

"You heard it yourself," Oathran answered. "Perhaps she didn’t tell you at first because she couldn’t bring herself to articulate how vile your nephew was. But after witnessing the vileness the two of us just produced... she found it a fitting comparative example."

"Yes," Arkai nodded, agreeing. "A fitting example."

They lapsed back into silence.

Then, suddenly, Arkai flicked the cap off a new bottle. He brought it to his lips and chugged with the same committed abandon as the dragon beside him. He slammed the bottle down, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and bowed his head deeply.

"Your Majesty, I was wrong. Please forgive me."

"I was wrong too," Oathran intoned, mirroring the bow solemnly, just slightly undermined by the bottle in his hand. "Forgive me, child."

"..."

"..."

Arkai slowly straightened, his brow furrowed. "...Calling me ’child’ after asking me to covet your wife after you die is a bit..."

"How old are you?" Oathran cut in, peering at him.

"A hundred... two years ago..."

"A child."

"Sir, the Saintess is twenty fi—"

"Shut up!"

Arkai flinched, clutching his whiskey bottle to his chest. He froze, watching as Oathran drained the last of his own bottle.

The Dragon Lord let out a long sigh. "How," he began, "could I accidentally bond with a twenty-five-year-old human who promised to kill me when she was eight, almost fucked her twice, asked someone else to have her after I die, and confess my love for her, all within less than a week?"

Arkai’s jaw fell open.

I-if... if he said it like that... Stripped of context, destiny, and soul-deep connection, and laid out in a single sentence... he did sound rather a lot like a millennia-old asshole.

"I’m a monster..." Oathran palmed his eyes. Arkai could have sworn he saw the dragon’s lips tremble, and something that looked suspiciously like a tear traced a path through the dust on his regal cheek.

"Kugh... vile... old beast..."

Yep. He was definitely crying.

"This is the lowest an Aliceian Dragon Lord has ever fallen..." Oathran lamented into his hands. "And I thought I was the strongest..."

Depression crashed over Arkai. He took another swig.

Come to think of it, this was also arguably the lowest a Dawnoro Wolf King had ever fallen. Discussing the vile acts of his own bloodline while nursing a whiskey with said bloodline’s victim’s husband, whom he’d just been caught coveting.

"We should... at least, prostrate ourselves, right?" Arkai mused aloud. "She’s benevolent. She’s a Saintess after al—I’m stupid, please don’t listen to me, Sir."

Oathran, meanwhile, had flicked the cap off a new bottle gloomily, majestically doomed. "I don’t have a face to enter her line of sight right now."

"That makes the two of us," Arkai agreed. "But as they say, joy will multiply while suffering will be divided if shared. I will be right beside you, my Lord."

"We’re not talking about joy or suffering. We’re talking about shame," he reminded him. "Shame is a contagion. It infects everyone in the vicinity, and that will most certainly include her. Do you want her to look at us with disgust?"

"I was wrong, Sir."

"I was wrong too," Oathran sighed, taking a long pull. "It was all my fault."

"No, Sir..."

"Actually, disgust on that pretty little face is kinda ho—" He cut himself off. "—fuck, I’m a vile monste—"

"No, Sir, I can picture it in my mind to—we’re vile monst—"

They drank two more bottles, but it ended up like trying to flood a canyon with a teacup. The alcohol failed spectacularly to cloud minds that were already a fog of shame, or to numb hearts that were busy constructing detailed, inappropriate mental images of a righteously furious Saintess.

They were too powerful even to properly escape themselves.

***

The deepest hour of the early morning was cold. Even so, this was Cecilia’s time. A peaceful, new start. A new day where she was still alive.

As she turned on her makeshift bed, seeking a cooler spot on the pillow, she felt something. She flinched, her eyes snapping open.

There, kneeling beside her bed like misplaced gargoyles from a particularly debauched cathedral, were Oathran and Arkai.

The pre-dawn gloom sculpted them in shades of charcoal and silver, highlighting disheveled collars, shirts unlaced to reveal hints of formidable collarbones, and hair that looked artfully tousled by poor decisions rather than wind.

They reeked of alcohol, but on them, it had undergone a strange alchemy. It didn’t smell of stale regret, but of expensive oak, dark honey, and a top note of existential folly. Yes, an alluring, dangerous scent that spoke of a night spent wrestling demons from a whiskey bottle.

They looked, in a word, devastating. Ten times hotter for the wear, like two masterpieces lightly vandalized by a genius, their perfection somehow deepened by the evidence of a struggle.

They had the air of men who had just lost, or won a bar fight, if only their expression wasn’’t so dark.

Their bowed heads and kneeling postures... Perhaps they had simply run out of places to go where her judgment could not find them, and so they had come to the source, waiting for the sentence to be passed.

Cecilia’s gaze travelled slowly from one beautifully broken form to the other. The cold, clear light of the just-awakened mind met the warm, foolish wreckage of the night before.

She narrowed her eyes.

"Cecilia... we’ve decided," Oathran announced. Beside him, Arkai nodded. "If you can bond with me without your heart," Oathran continued, "then perhaps... you can also be able to bond with him. At the same time."

He grasped his knees on the ground and bowed low, a dragon offering a wolf. "Please take him."

"Please take me," Arkai echoed, bowing in unison.

Apologies were insufficient currency. They had defaulted on that account. This was negotiation, a bold opening bid in the hopes of securing future forgiveness.

"Even if the bond can’t happen, still take him," Oathran said, sweetening the deal.

"I will take responsibility. In Dawnoro’s name, I swear to," Arkai added, providing the warranty.

Silence.

Oathran sensed the deal was slipping. "I swear I’m not passing you around or sharing you," he insisted. "This is different. We both just want to protect you. At the same time."

"Yes, to protect you, Saintess," Arkai affirmed, his voice muffled as his forehead met the cold ground. "At the same time."

Pride? Honor? Dignity?

Heh.

They were facing a divine being. Those worldly trinkets had been tossed out the window hours ago.

They braced for the silence to stretch into eternity, ready to petrify there as permanent monuments to male idiocy, when a sound finally cut through the quiet.

It was a voice, strained from disuse, coming from above them.

"On one condition."

Oathran raised his face first, hope and dread warring in his misty grey eyes. Arkai followed, terrified.

Sitting above them, Cecilia looked down. The early morning shadows cloaked her facial features in impenetrable darkness. Only her eyes were visible, catching the faint grey light just to glow coldly.

Ah.

So this was what they called divine judgment.