Beast Gacha System: All Mine

Did... something attacked them...?

Rinne—Arkai! Are they alright—?

Before Roarke could spiral further, he saw Borak running toward the mansion.

Roarke sprinted after him, his dark clothes blending into the shadows, and when he drew close enough, he reached out and grasped the Beta’s arm.

Borak jumped. Actually jumped. The strongest Beta of the Dawnoro pack flinched like a startled cat. He spun around, his eyes going wide, and for a moment he just stared at the man before him as though Roarke were a ghost.

"You—!" Borak’s voice cracked with shock. His mind was already preoccupied, reeling from whatever had happened to his Alpha. And the last person he had expected to see materializing out of the darkness was this man. "Why are you here?!"

"The Luna summoned me." Roarke said steadily, but his dark eyes betrayed his urgency. "What happened?"

Borak looked at him with a complicated expression. Even after all these years, more than a decade since Roarke’s banishment, the sight of him still stirred something tangled and difficult in Borak’s chest.

Roarke had been Arkai’s previous right hand. The former Strongest Beta. The man Borak had been chosen to replace.

And standing here now, Borak was forced to confront an uncomfortable truth he had spent years trying to bury. He hadn’t even felt Roarke’s presence until the man had touched his arm. Even now, even after everything, Roarke moved like a shadow Borak could never quite catch.

He felt like Arkai’s real shadow.

Apparently, he truly was still Arkai’s Strongest Beta in every way that mattered. Borak felt like he couldn’t compare, even after a decade of service.

"If the Luna summoned you, then it’s that bad," Borak said, shaking his head.

"What do you mean that bad?! What happened?!" Roarke’s eyes faltered.

"Alpha fell into a violent rampage. It’s very bad even just by looking at it." Borak’s voice dropped. "Apparently, it’s worse than it looks..."

Seeing that even Roarke, the exiled brother, had been summoned, Borak understood the gravity more than ever. The Alpha must have been truly heartbroken.

But by what? By whom?

Was Alpha angry at Luna?

Borak immediately recoiled from the thought.

That didn’t make sense. Luna was perfect in every measure. Kind, brilliant, fierce, devoted. The pack adored her. Arkai adored her. Why would Alpha ever be angry at her?

But something was very wrong. Borak felt it in his bones.

The Alpha he knew, the controlled, steady, unshakeable leader who had guided the Dawnoro pack through war and peace and everything in between wouldn’t rampage openly like this.

Until tonight.

Borak led Roarke into the estate. The destruction in the corridors told a story he didn’t want to read. Splintered furniture, gouged walls, shattered vases that had once been priceless heirlooms.

With every step, Roarke’s heart fell further and further, sinking through the floor and into some cold, dark place he hadn’t visited since the day he was banished.

Arkai. His brother. His Alpha. What could have possibly broken him this badly?

They arrived at the main chamber, and Roarke stopped dead in the doorway. His eyes swept the room and landed on a figure he recognized immediately, though they had never met in person.

Eastiel Edengold. The Golden Lion King.

Roarke had studied him from afar, memorized his face and his habits and his connections, the way an assassin studied anyone who might one day become a target or an obstacle.

But seeing him here, now, standing vigil beside Arkai’s bed with his lion ears drooping and his golden eyes shadowed with exhaustion... Roarke felt a cold spike of alarm. Why was the Golden Lion King here?

Then, he saw someone who alarmed him even more.

Beside Eastiel, a tall man with long white hair and a pair of black horns that curled from his temples like a crown of bone.

Roarke didn’t recognize him, but he felt him. The aura that radiated from this stranger was absolute, pressing against Roarke’s senses like the weight of a mountain. Whatever it was, it made his instinct scream at him to kneel.

That was when he saw the Luna. Roarke’s breath caught in his throat.

He had seen her in many lights before, but never like this. Never unveiled, with her face bare and her eyes red from crying and her hands clutching Arkai’s limp fingers as though she could shackle him to the world by sheer force of will.

She was gorgeous. More than he had ever imagined. Her hair, her eyes, the fierce, devastated curve of her jaw. She was breathtaking. But she was also familiar.

Too familiar.

Who was she?

A lump formed in Roarke’s chest. He felt as though he were standing on the edge of something vast and terrifying, a cosmic revelation that would rewrite everything he thought he knew.

The answer was there, hovering just beyond his reach, and he was almost afraid to grasp it.

"Roarke Raul, check on your Alpha." Her voice cut through his spiraling thoughts. She was commanding and absolute before, but it felt even sharper now. She had run out of patience for hesitation.

Roarke flinched and obeyed. He crossed the room on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else and looked down at the man on the bed.

Arkai was unconscious now. The Dragon Tongue had finally taken hold, carrying him to a dreamless sleep. But even in sleep, his body was coiled with tension.

His brow was furrowed and his jaw clenched. The complicated aura that surrounded him was unmistakable, the residue of a rampage stopped by force, the mind that had shattered and was still trying to piece itself back together.

It was the worst Roarke had ever seen him. Worse than the day of his banishment. Worse than anything.

"What... happened?" Roarke’s voice came out as a whisper, clearly trembling.

"That bitch Sienna happened, that’s what." The Luna seethed the name like a curse, eyes blazing with a fury so incandescent it seemed to heat the very air around her.

Roarke’s heart stopped. Sienna. It hit him like a blade between the ribs.

"Show me her grave and I’m going to burn her evil soul to ashes," the Luna spat, her hands shaking where they gripped Arkai’s.

Roarke shook. His body began to tremble, the tremors starting in his hands and spreading outward until his whole frame was vibrating with something between terror and confusion.

Sienna had caused this? Even after her death, after years of what was left...

"Just please explain to me. Explain to me, Luna... What... why?!" Roarke begged.

Seeing all this devastation, his brother broken, his home in ruins, he should have been angry. He should have been furious that the Luna had spoken Sienna’s name with such venom, such hatred.

Sienna was still Rinne’s mother!

She was the woman who had given birth to his son, the child Roarke had loved from the shadows because that was all he was allowed.

Whatever Sienna had done, whatever schemes she had woven, she was still Rinne’s mother. He should have defended her memory, should have demanded the Luna show some respect—

But even though he thought he should have been furious, he wasn’t. He was confused. More than that, he was scared.

Sienna was still the woman he had cherished in his heart, despite everything. His feelings for her had been genuine, tender and foolish perhaps, but real.

He had loved her with the whole of his bruised, exiled heart, and that love had survived her manipulation, survived her betrayal and rejection in a game he hadn’t known they were playing.

She had seduced him to provoke his brother, yes. She had weaponized his devotion and Roarke had let her. He had let her because he loved her. Because he believed, on some stubborn, stupid level, that some part of her love might have been real too.

Especially her love for Arkai, which Roarke and Sienna shared in different ways.

So what—

"That woman killed the only person who was able to create a heat suppressant capable of suppressing her unsuppressable heat."

Cecilia said, cold and flat.

Roarke froze. His eyes widened, and horror began to creep through him like frost spreading across glass.

A heat suppressant.

Sienna’s unique heat, the biological curse that had shaped her entire life, the thing that he thought had driven her to her desperate acts toward Arkai.

There had been... someone who could cure it? All this time...?

There was... someone who could have freed her from that, and Sienna had killed them?

But Cecilia wasn’t done yet.

"And that person she ripped to pieces, leaving nothing but unrecognizable splatters of bone, flesh, and blood..." Her voice cracked, just for a moment, before steeling itself again in boiled hot venom, "was my mother."

This time, even Eastiel and Oathran visibly recoiled.

Eastiel’s lion ears flattened against his skull, his golden eyes going wide with horror. Oathran’s grey eyes darkened, his jaw tightening, his hands curling into fists at his sides.

So... that was what happened...?