Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 87: Frantic
At first, Arzhen thought it was simple.
One, it was possible that his father, Anton Vasiliev, was feigning amnesia. A play to lull him into complacency before wresting back the title, the army, the legacy that Arzhen had soaked in blood to claim. Then, he’d have to argue, to claim his father’s insanity, doing everything he could to present proofs otherwise.
Two, the sweeter, simpler possibility. That the poison and the trauma had truly scourged Anton’s mind clean. That the mighty Tiger King was now a hollowed-out shell, a ghost in his own skin.
In that reality, Arzhen could play the devoted son. He could bring the broken man home, tuck him away in some sunlit chamber, and then ensure his "recovery" was tragically brief. A quiet death in a soft bed, mourned by a son who would then rightfully inherit everything, his path cleared of the final obstacle.
Two paths. He had prepared for both.
But when he arrived at Winter’s Keep, nothing was as he had expected.
His father had lost his memory. Yet, he displayed no hunger for his former power. Instead, he had voluntarily surrendered it. Publicly. He had stood before them all and declared he would not reclaim his throne until a formal, independent investigation, led by Arkai Dawnoro, concluded who had tried to murder him.
It placed Anton above suspicion as a victim and it legitimized Arkai’s interference in Vasiliev affairs. By making everything public, Anton had removed the crime from shadowed halls and thrust it into the light, where every move Arzhen made would be scrutinized.
"Why can’t I see their bodies, then?" Arzhen growled, trying to breach the bureaucratic stonewall Borak presented. "I don’t understand why I can’t see Gregor’s and Thalia’s bodies. They were my father’s closest aides. My household. I have a right."
Borak, Arkai’s Beta, sighed. He was a mountain of a wolf, his fur grizzled at the temples, his posture relaxed but immovable. "Listen, Prince," he said. "I know you’re frustrated. But rather than trying to find fault in Lord Vasiliev’s wishes or our Lord Arkai’s orders, you’d be wiser to simply comply for now."
His dark eyes held Arzhen’s. "Can’t you understand you’re standing on very thin ice?"
"What do you mean?" Arzhen snarled, his hand shot out, fingers clamping like steel bands around the thick wool of Borak’s collar. He hauled the Beta closer, ignoring the way the relaxed wolves stationed around the perimeter, Dawnoro guards in their dark leathers and grey furs, didn’t tense, didn’t reach for weapons.
Their relaxed stillness was more unnerving than any threat. They simply watched, eyes gleaming in the torchlight from their posts along the walls, near the arched doorways. They were not on high alert. They were at home. At their domain.
His agitation didn’t even register as a threat to them.
"Instead of trying to intervene with an investigation led by our king," Borak continued, his voice strained but steady even as his feet barely brushed the floor, "you should be using your energy to look for your own lady. Your wife." He cocked his head, frowning at him. "Or has that ceased to be a priority?"
A roar built in Arzhen’s throat. He wrenched his gaze from Borak’s face, sweeping it across the hall. The Dawnoro wolves met his look without flinching. Some leaned against stone pillars, arms crossed. Others stood at ease, but their postures were coiled, efficient.
They were a pack confident in its territory, observing an intruder whose tantrums were inconvenient, but ultimately inconsequential.
"Are you implying," Arzhen hissed, his grip tightening until the fabric of Borak’s tunic threatened to tear, "that just by wanting to see the bodies of loyal men, I’m interfering?"
He shook the Beta, a violent, jerking motion. "Are you implying that I was the one who did this?! That I butchered my father’s companions and left him for dead in the snow?!"
His body began to swell, the elegant lines of his court clothing straining. The fine fabric tore at the seams as muscle expanded, as russet and black fur began to push through his skin.
"Cousin."
A young voice cut through the brewing storm of Arzhen’s transformation.
Arzhen froze, the painful expansion of his body stuttering. He turned, his brown eyes, already bleeding into the predatory amber of his beast, narrowing.
Rinne Dawnoro stood at the entrance of a side corridor, the torchlight glinting off the silver threads in his dark tunic. He was not at all an adult, but the boyish softness was being carved away by the stark lines of the north. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶
Beside him, padding a step behind, was a massive, lean half-beast tiger. Piotr, his striped fur the color of winter dusk, fixed his eyes unblinkingly on Arzhen.
Rinne walked forward. He looked... weary. Disappointed.
"Uncle Borak is right," he said, his gaze flicking to the still-suspended Beta before returning to Arzhen. The term ’Uncle’ for a Beta was a subtle reinforcement of pack hierarchy, of a stability Arzhen was actively disrupting.
"You need to stand down. Just follow Father’s and Uncle Anton’s orders for now. For your own sake."
He didn’t say or else. He didn’t need to. The watching wolves, the poised weretiger, and the certainty in a young heir’s voice, it all said it for him. He couldn’t do anything about it now.
"If you don’t wish to depart immediately to carry out the order," Rinne continued, his voice still calm, "then you are welcome to return to your chambers and... compose yourself."
"Cousin," he added. "You understand why we have to do this, don’t you? It’s for clarity. For justice."
The patronizing tone, the sheer presumption of this pup lecturing him... Arzhen’s lip curled back, a snarl building in his chest, ready to shatter the careful, oppressive quiet of the hall.
"You—"
"Arzhen...?"
The voice that interrupted was fragile, strained to its breaking point. It came from the archway leading to the guest wings.
Elara stood there, one hand braced against the cold stone of the doorway as if for support. She had clearly hurried here, yet her steps into the hall were measured. Her face was pale, whiter than the frost on the high windows, all color leached away save for two spots of hectic, frightened pink high on her cheeks.
Her eyes, however, were dark pools of sheer panic, barely contained behind a film of forced composure. She had thrown a heavy shawl over her shoulders, but it did nothing to hide the minute tremors that ran through her.
A beautiful vase that had been cracked by a sonic tremor, holding its shape only through sheer will.
Arzhen had never seen his mother like this. Ever.
"Let’s just..." She extended a trembling hand toward her son, both placating and commanding. "...return to our chambers for now. Please."
What was this warning screaming from every tense line of her body? As if she had just seen the gallows being built outside the window—
The furious beast inside him roared against the leash, yearning to tear everyone, to make these condescending wolves and their insufferable princeling bleed for their insolence. His glare swept over Borak, now calmly adjusting his crumpled collar, and Rinne, who merely watched.
But the raw fear on his mother’s face was a more effective douse of water than any threat. With a sound that sounded like a suppressed angry growl, he receded his fur. A retreat.
He turned on his heel without another word and stalked toward the archway, not waiting to see if Elara followed. She did, her steps frantic as she hurried after him.
The heavy oak door of their assigned suite had barely clicked shut behind them when Elara’s meticulously maintained composure shattered.
"THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!"
She closed the distance between them in two frantic steps. Her face, now twisted into venomous fury, was inches from his. When she spoke again, it was a whispered hiss meant for his ears alone.
"If only you had killed your father properly," she seethed, every word a drop of acid, "would we be in this situation?! A half-measure in the snow? Leaving witnesses? Letting him be found? You fool!"
But now that Arzhen had calmed down, something other than his mother’s histerical anger caught his attention.
Faint. Familiar.
A scent—
Cecilia...?
