Beast Gacha System: All Mine

Was it... a secret he wasn’t supposed to know?

Arkai had brushed it off as something his brothers weren’t ready to tell him yet. Or perhaps they were looking out for him, for some reason he couldn’t yet see.

Cecilia too, when he had asked her, she had only smiled and said, "You’ll understand everything soon. After we give birth, I’ll tell you, alright?"

Cecilia had given birth now. Would she tell him if he asked?

Of course she would. She had even told him she would find the best way to explain, and that they would take a trip together, just the two of them, to make sure he could slowly digest whatever was happening. She had promised.

Arkai wasn’t worried. Or maybe he was. What was this feeling? He was very curious. And also... he felt very left out now that his brothers had seemingly grown closer to each other without him.

The three of them had always been a unit. A pack. But now Oathran and Eastiel shared something that excluded him, and the exclusion stung more than he wanted to admit.

But for now, Cecilia had just given birth. She needed time to recover. Once they returned to a somewhat normal rhythm again, he would bring her out on a date, and she would tell him everything. Again, she had promised.

"Eastiel, where’s your new camera?" Arkai asked, pushing his tangled thoughts aside.

The man was still a sobbing mess, tears and snot streaming down his face in equal measure, so he was in no condition to do anything useful.

It was the perfect time for Arkai to offer himself as the documentarian of today’s big event.

They didn’t need a lot of videos or photos, just short clips and a few pictures.

Cecilia was also a woman. She might get upset if her picture was taken when she wasn’t ready. So just a little something for themselves. A memory to hold onto.

"In Cecilia’s room, on top of the cabinet...? I forgot. But it’s definitely there... hic... huu..." Eastiel managed between sobs.

Arkai gave him a short thumbs up and walked out of Oathran’s room, where they had all gathered.

The apartment had a total of four rooms, and the past few days had transformed it into a chaotic but functional maze of repurposed spaces.

Arkai had volunteered his room to be the birthing suite, which meant everything he owned, bed, chair, storage, table, had been moved elsewhere.

Eastiel had volunteered his room to be their temporary storage space, and it was now crammed with both of their electronics and furniture and anything else that needed to be cleared out of Arkai’s room in preparation for the birth.

Oathran’s room had become where the four of them slept at night these last few nights.

Although technically Arkai and Eastiel could have slept in Eastiel’s room even if it was very cramped, they preferred to stay near Cecilia. To be close in case she needed anything and feel the warmth of her presence was better than... well, sleep with just another man in the same room.

Cecilia’s room had been mostly emptied as well, its contents moved to Eastiel’s overcrowded storage.

Only the original bed remained, along with a growing collection of baby supplies already organized against the walls. A crib they had assembled together, stacks of tiny clothes, a mobile of felt stars that Eastiel had ordered from an artisan overseas...

Meanwhile, their living room was another battlefield of displaced belongings.

Decorations, plants, and collections that were too fragile or too unwieldy to fit inside Eastiel’s room had taken over the common space, creating a landscape of potted ferns beside stacks of books, of framed photographs balanced on top of gaming consoles. It was chaos, but it was functional chaos.

They could have rented a villa or something for the purpose. But suddenly, the three men felt broke.

Arkai had just dug deep into his savings to invest in better city evacuation measures and shelters, driven by Cecilia’s concerns about the increasing rift activity and his own growing fears about the safety of their family.

His fortune was now tied up in infrastructure and emergency planning, and while he didn’t regret a single coin of it, the timing was tight.

Eastiel himself had just poured a significant portion of his family’s money into keeping himself from being charged as a criminal after killing Arzhen Vasiliev.

Even with Damon’s influence smoothing the official narrative, the legal machinery still needed greasing, and Eastiel was too embarrassed to take more money from his family beyond what he had to take.

He had used his own savings to help fix the problem too, and now his accounts were looking considerably leaner than they had a month ago.

That left Oathran... who hadn’t gone to work for a month. Heh.

He had been too busy fighting corrupted orcas and screaming at the sky while searching for a god in the depths of a dying ocean.

But thankfully, the dragon had more savings than anyone would have guessed. Ancient beings who had lived for centuries tended to accumulate wealth almost by accident, and perhaps Oathran, as generous as he was, was no exception.

He had covered all their daily expenses without complaint, and even slipped his two younger brothers their daily pocket money.

Sometimes billionaires also had to pinch their pennies a little.

Especially now that they knew they wanted more kids in the future. They needed to save.

And this kid, Sol, their little sun, would also need resources to grow up strong and healthy and loved.

They had even discussed moving somewhere cheaper, though they suspected their respective families and associates might literally weep if they tried.

Arkai entered Cecilia’s room, carefully stepping around the neat stacks of baby supplies and the organized arrangements of tiny blankets and impossibly small socks.

Maybe Eastiel had left his new camera here after taking pictures of the cute decorations they had set up for the egg’s future bedroom. The room smelled faintly of the lavender sachets Cecilia had tucked into the drawers.

He found the camera exactly where Eastiel had said it was, on top of the cabinet, still in its protective case.

He reached up and grasped it, and was about to return to where his family waited, when something made him pause.

He turned back to the cabinet where the camera had been.

This was Cecilia’s room. Some of her things were still left inside this cabinet, personal items that hadn’t been moved to the storage chaos of Eastiel’s room.

Things she had kept close even as the rest of her belongings were shuffled around to make space for the birth.

Including that file Arzhen had given her.

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Bonus Chapter 2! Enjoy reading!!!