Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 90: Step by Step

When it all went down, Cecilia hadn’t been reckless. She’d woven a tight cocoon of her own mana the moment Arkai’s control began to fray.

She’d managed an invisible shield to contain the explosive pheromones of his rut and the unique signature of her own scent.

After the frantic, breathless sex behind the bush, she’d doubled down, pushing her mana out again for a post-coital cleanse, forcing the lingering traces of sweat, skin, and sex to cling to the ground, to the snow, to anything but the open air.

Arkai too had summoned a thread of wind magic. He’d gathered what scent he could from the immediate area and launched it straight up beyond the clouds where no nose could ever find it.

Between them, they’d done the work of thieves covering their tracks, scattering evidence to the heavens and burying it in the frozen earth.

Before she’d even tried to fix her torn dress, Arkai had gruffly assured her it was enough. As long as we get back inside and scrub every inch clean before the scent can resettle.

Who could have predicted Elara? Who could have factored in a poisonous snake slithering past guards and wards into a private garden at the worst possible moment?

Cecilia, of course, had thrown her mana up again the second she sensed the intrusion. But it was a hasty defense, not a perfect seal. Risks remained.

Perhaps a single molecule of scent clinging to a stray thread of Elara’s gown, or... whatever.

After all, a rut did happen. She had also... sprayed on Arkai. Marked him just as he’d marked her. Even with her near-flawless mana control, biology could be a leaky vessel. And Arkai, with his wolf’s senses, had noticed a trailing ribbon of their combined scent had followed Elara as she fled.

"Don’t worry," Cecilia smiled. "I’ve changed my diet since I lost my heart. My hormonal balance is completely different now. The very composition of my sweat and oils has shifted."

Arkai frowned, unsettled by her calm. "Those are minor changes to a baseline, Cecilia. To a beast who knew your scent for seven years? It’s like changing the frame around a familiar painting. The core image is still there. He’ll recognize it."

Cecilia shook her head. "Even if he smells me, he will be the first to deny it. He believes he killed me. He held the proof in his hands. The mind protects its own narratives. Sometimes," she mused, her voice soft.

"The people who claim to only believe in cold, hard proof are the most blind when it’s right in front of them. They assume everyone else operates on the same logic," she shrugged.

"Just tell me the truth," Arkai insisted, stopping to face her. "Even if that’s true, you shouldn’t act like this was part of the plan. Elara’s appearance... we didn’t predict that. That was a breach. A mistake."

Cecilia giggled. She leaned into him, nuzzling her head against his side. "Aren’t you the one who declared that you’d impregnate me right in front of him? Why so worried about a little misplaced scent now, Your Majesty?"

Arkai groaned, a flush of heat rising up his neck to his ears.

"It’s good for psychological torture," Cecilia said, her voice dropping back into that serene tone. "Like I said from the beginning, this is mental warfare. The more unexpected variables we introduce, the more their reality cracks."

"The more anxious they become in the silence, waiting for the axe to fall when we haven’t even picked it up yet."

Arkai froze. A chill, sharp as a shard of ice, ran down his spine.

In the first place, they never needed any proof.

Yes. Of course there was proof. Anton’s memory was perfectly intact. Gregor and Thalia were alive, hidden and healing. And Cecilia herself, still heartless, still walking, was the ultimate, living evidence of Arzhen’s crime.

But why would they need to present it when they could just kill them? Why play by the rules of evidence and tribunals when they held all the power?

Killing them would be easy. But it would also be... unsatisfying.

Humiliation. Mental attrition. Letting them cling to a dwindling, desperate hope, only to peel their fingers away one by one. This was how she would toy with them. This was the revenge she was curating.

So what if a whiff of her scent, changed yet familiar, had leaked to him?

Wouldn’t that just make her haunt him more?

She would live in the back of his mind. She would turn his dreams into nightmares. She would make him question his own senses, his own sanity, himself.

Step.

By.

Step.

***

To placate Anton, Arzhen made a public show of it. He stood in the great hall of Winter’s Keep, announcing that he would go. He would find his ex-mate, Cecilia, and prove, once and for all, that her fate had nothing to do with the Vasiliev name. That she had simply... vanished. Perhaps to a secluded temple somewhere.

As he spoke the lie, a colder part of his mind worked. He wondered why Arkai hadn’t seized the obvious weapon. Why the Black Wolf King hadn’t stood before the world and thundered the accusation that Anton was poisoned by his own kin.

The reason had to be one of two things.

First, Arkai had no proof. The Dragon’s physician’s word was just that, a word. A strange and powerful woman’s testimony with no vial of toxin, no witness to its administration, no trail leading back to a Vasiliev hand. To accuse without evidence would be a fatal political blunder.

Second, and more intriguing, Arkai didn’t want to announce her existence. A physician with the power to cheat death was a resource beyond price. Revealing her would be like lighting a beacon for every king, emperor, and desperate soul on the continent. Better to keep her hidden, a secret weapon tucked close to the chest.

Both speculations were strong. Both were rational.

Meanwhile, Elara perfected her performance.

Her face was pale and streaked with artistically shed tears as she begged to see her husband. To see Anton. She had ’only just learned’ he was poisoned, after all.

The shock upon hearing the news, the righteous anger at the physician’s ’condescending’ tone, the frantic need to tell her son, causing her to flee the garden without proper manners. It was all so understandable. So human.

Instead of fleeing south as fear dictated, she insisted on staying. The loyal wife, wronged by circumstance and abrasive outsiders, begging just to see if her beloved was ’okay’.

She and Arzhen had thought this through.

Arkai told them that the Dragon’s physician was gone when they first arrived. A wandering soul, not one to linger. She had cured Anton and left.

But something gnawed at Arzhen. For that physician to return just to... to fuck with Arkai in a frozen garden? And to casually deliver a world-shattering diagnosis about poison in the same breath?

What kind of relationship did they have?

Was she a mercenary healer paid in gold and pleasure? A captive asset bound by more than magic? A lover with unimaginable power?

Or just...

His uncle’s old ’friends with benefits’...?

...Well.

Arkai Dawnoro did have some of those along the course of his century old life...