Chapter 499: Crying for You
Perhaps because Oathran was her first, it was easy to see the bias that wasn’t there.
He had been the one who found her torn heart first, the one who had stood beside her in the real world exactly when everything was falling apart, the one whose devotion had shielded her through the worst storms of her life.
Cecilia might once have decided to devote herself only to him. Might have been content, even happy, to love a single man for the rest of her days.
But that had changed the moment he asked her to accept Arkai. He had seen what he thought she needed, when it was something he needed. He had opened the door and stepped aside, not because he loved her less, but because he was afraid he wasn’t enough.
Because of Arkai, the four of them could become one. He was the bridge. But while Arkai was the first other man who entered their relationship, the first addition, the first expansion of a love she had thought could only hold one, Eastiel was different.
Eastiel was the first man she chose personally to enter the relationship. Her choice. She had looked at him and she had decided, ’Yes. Him too. I want him too. All three or nothing.’
All three of them were her first. All three were precious in a completely different, yet equal way to her.
Cecilia shook her head, the tears still clinging to her lashes. "I think, even if I tried, I’ll never be able to prove to you or anyone that I truly love the three of you the same amount. I’m starting to think I need to accept that—"
"Cecilia." Eastiel called quietly, the whining gone. "I think it’s fine to love one of us more than the other. My jealousy had nothing to do with... I’m saying it’s my own fault..."
"See?" She looked away, her jaw tight. "You won’t even believe me."
"Cecilia..." He sighed, and when he spoke again, his voice was raw with honesty. "It’s not that I don’t believe you. It’s just that I can’t imagine myself doing the same if I were... in your position..."
She side-eyed him, her gaze still wet. The expression on his face, so earnest, so hopeless, made her look at him in contempt and in turn made him cry-laugh.
"It’s that simple for me, alright?" He explained. "If I were asked to take three women as my wives, and one of them was you... how am I to begin to love the other two? I just can’t, alright?"
"Is that even the correct mindset?" Cecilia asked sharply. Then her lips curved into a sneer. "Imagine your two brothers as the two other women. Now think it over."
Eastiel froze.
Cecilia watched him, her sneer deepening, and the man before her bluescreened in real time.
His lion ears went rigid. His tail stopped mid-swish. His mouth, which had been open to deliver another heartfelt confession, remained open, but no words came out.
Slowly, very slowly, his jaw lowered toward the ground. His face, already flushed from emotion, boiled redder and redder and redder until it reached a shade that might have been medically concerning.
"CECILIA!" He grasped his head with both hands and thrashed wildly, his manbun whipping back and forth. "HOW COULD YOU PLANT THOSE IDEAS IN MY MIND?! STOOOOOOOOPP!"
He collapsed sideways onto the rug, curling into a fetal position, his tail wrapping around his own head as though to shield himself from his own imagination. "NOOOOOOOO! IT CAN’T LEAVE MY INNOCENT MIND NOW! NOOOOOO!"
Cecilia burst into tears and laughter at the same time, the sounds tangling together in her throat until she couldn’t tell which was which.
"Dumbass..."
"HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME? HOW COULD YOU CORRUPT YOUR BOYFRIEND LIKE THIS?"
"Ahs—" Cecilia’s laughter cut off abruptly as she hissed through her teeth, one hand flying to the side of her stomach. The curve of her belly tightened beneath her palm, forming a hard knot of muscle and membrane.
Eastiel snapped upright. His hands found her shoulders, then her waist, his lion ears flattening with alarm. "Are you alright? It’s been more frequent now?"
Cecilia breathed through the pain. A slow inhale and a slower exhale. Again and again until the sting faded to a dull ache. She had started feeling these little shocks of pain three days ago.
The first time it happened, she had been alone in the bathroom, and she had gripped the edge of the sink so hard her knuckles went white, certain that something was wrong, that the baby was coming too soon and that everything was falling apart.
But Arkai had taken her to Dr. Lazuardi, and the dragon had examined her calmly.
It was common, he explained, in the late pregnancy of their kind. The egg was beginning to tear away from the womb where it had been cushioned all these months.
At the same time, it was absorbing more amniotic fluid, more aggressively than before, preparing itself for the journey to come. The stings were normal. Expected even. A sign that everything was progressing as it should.
"I want to call Ark..." Cecilia whispered shyly. "Can we... have dinner together tonight...?"
Eastiel smiled. "Alright. He should’ve been on his way back by now."
She glared at him and pulled him closer, making him half silently panicked and half rigidly scared.
"You haven’t kissed me in weeks..." she pouted.
Eastiel frowned, his lion ears starting to glow red from under the fur. The apartment was empty except for the two of them, and he had been too ashamed to face her for too long.
At times like this, he would have been more confident if his brothers were around. Without them, he was just Eastiel, the most impulsive of all.
Perhaps it was for his own sake that she also belonged to two other men.
"J-just kisses...?" He asked nervously, his tail curling around his own ankle.
"You’re usually so greedy... now suddenly so timid?"
"Cecilia... d-don’t tease me... what if it harms the baby...?"
"Making excuses now after neglecting me for so long?"
"Ce—"
His phone buzzed. Like a drowning man grasping a lifeline, he snatched it from his pocket, his face still flushed crimson. "I-I’ll answer this for a bit!"
Cecilia humphed but released him, settling back against the sofa cushions with a grumble.
"Oh, it’s Arkai!" Eastiel’s eyes sparkled with relief.
"You two actually made up quicker than you made up with me. Is that how you knew I visited Dr. Lazuardi?" Cecilia grumbled.
"S-sorry..." Eastiel whispered, already lifting the phone to his ear. "Hey, what’s up—"
He fell silent.
Cecilia watched the change happen in real time. The playful embarrassment drained from his face. His lion ears, which had been glowing red with bashful heat, went pale and flat against his skull.
His golden eyes widened and his jaw tightened. The hand holding the phone began to tremble.
She sat up straighter. "Eastiel?"
He didn’t answer. Wordlessly, he stood and reached for her arm, gentle but insistent, pulling her up from the sofa. He positioned her behind him and began to move slowly toward the floor-to-ceiling window that dominated the apartment’s far wall.
The second thin curtain was still drawn. The city lights beyond were muted, diffused into a soft, pale glow. Eastiel reached out with his free hand and drew the curtain aside.
Cecilia’s breath caught in her throat.
Above the city, swallowing the evening sky, a massive vortex of black clouds swirled.
It was immense. Miles wide. A spiral of darkness that rotated slowly like a whirlpool in an ocean of ink. Lightning flickered in its depths, sickly, pulsing blacker than the darkness, swallowing the cloud formations from within like a bruise catching light.
The vortex did not move. It did not drift or behave the way clouds or wind currents were supposed to behave. It hung there, attached to the sky with its center a void of absolute black that seemed to pull at the edges of reality itself.
And from that void, faint and distant, came the sound of roaring.