Beast Gacha System: All Mine

Chapter 287: Unnecessary Foreshadowing

Thanks to the gods, Cecilia had restricted herself from thinking too deeply over things.

But it was frustratingly itchy.

If not for her husbands’ constant presence, she truly wouldn’t have survived.

The beach stretched out before them like a ribbon of gold sewn into the blue. The sand was warm beneath Cecilia’s feet, the waves curling in lazy arcs that foamed white against the shore.

Gulls wheeled overhead, their cries distant, almost musical, and the sun was perfect, hanging low enough to warm without burning, casting long shadows that danced across the sand with each step.

Cecilia’s dress was a soft, pale yellow, the fabric light as air, catching the breeze and billowing around her legs like the petals of some enormous flower.

The straps slipped off her shoulders constantly, and she let them, too lazy to fix them, too comfortable in the warmth and the quiet and the particular peace that came from being somewhere that no one knew her name.

Her feet were bare. Her hair was loose. Her mind, for once, was still.

Three steps behind her, Oathran walked.

He had been watching her for the better part of an hour now, and he could not stop. Not like he wanted to stop either.

The way the sunlight caught in her hair, turning it to molten gold. The way her dress moved with her, flowing around her, becoming her.

The way she walked, slow and easy, without purpose, without destination, simply being in a way he had rarely seen her allow herself.

His feet found the marks she left behind. Always. His larger steps deliberately swallowed her smaller footprints, erasing them for himself as he went, claiming the proof of her presence like a possessive, selfish bastard he accused himself of being.

He knew it was absurd. The sea would wash away their tracks soon enough. The wind would smooth the sand, the tide would rise, and by morning, there would be no trace that either of them had ever been here.

But for now, for this moment, he wanted her footsteps for himself. To match her pace. To learn the rhythm of her steps so perfectly that he could walk beside her without ever needing to be told where she was going.

She turned, once, to look at him. Her dress spun, the fabric lifting, and she caught it with her hands, laughing at herself, at the wind, at the ridiculousness of a woman holding her skirts on an empty beach with no one to see.

He smiled.

"What are you doing back there?" She asked, teasing him at his little game, immediately noticing there was only one set of footprints. The stride was too short for a man his size. Because they were hers.

He stopped. Let his feet settle into the sand that had once held her prints.

"Following," he said.

"Mmm." Cecilia hummed, her eyes narrowing and suspicious.

She turned, resumed walking. "You know that approximately 60% of all women and girls intentionally killed are murdered by an intimate partner or family member, right?"

She giggled, the sound bright, wrong for the words she was saying. She peeked over her shoulder. "I was one of them, thanks to Arzhen." Another step. Another footprint swallowed. "Are you erasing my footsteps to kill me today, then? Ensuring there are no traces of me?"

Oathran took a breath, let it fill his lungs, slow and deep. He looked around, at the empty beach, the distant dunes, the horizon where the sea met the sky and there was no one, no one at all, to see what happened here.

His smile grew. Shifted. Became something darker and sinister, something that made Cecilia have to bite her lower lip, her eyes faltering.

"Rather than killing you," he said, and his voice had dropped, had roughened. Ahh, that was it. The voice that lived in the space between her dreams and her waking, "I am more likely to do something else to you, if I had an ulterior motive for erasing your traces."

Cecilia blinked in mock ignorance, her eyes wide. "Like what?"

Oathran’s smile widened. He took a step forward. Then another. The distance between them shrank, three steps becoming two, becoming one.

"Like doing all sorts of naughty things with you before Arkai and Eastiel arrive." His hand found her waist, light, barely touching. "For them to never find that you were with me."

"Naughty!"

Cecilia laughed, her hands coming up to push at his chest.

The waves crashed. The sound swallowed her laughter, carried it out to sea, buried it beneath the rhythm of the tide.

Oathran’s hand slid around her waist, pulled her closer, just a breath. His eyes found hers, held them, dark and light and something that had been waiting for this moment for longer than she could imagine.

"If I ever kill you, Saintess," he said, and his voice was soft now, softer than the sand, softer than the breeze, softer the foam of the waves and anything that had ever come from a man who had spent four hundred years learning to be hard, "it will be because I am about to die myself."

His thumb traced the curve of her hip reverently. "And the world is no longer worthy of you."

Cecilia kept her smile and nodded once.

"If the voidcrawlers somehow break free into our real world." His voice was barely a whisper now, the words meant only for her, for the space between their lips...

"If they come and destroy everything..."

...and the small bubble of stillness they had carved out of the endless wind and waves.

"With my strength, we will be the last people on the planet." His forehead touched hers. His eyes closed. "And that day will end with us dying in my hands."

The sun sank lower, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink and the deep purple of a world ending.

Cecilia’s hands rose to his face, cupping his jaw, her thumbs tracing the line of his cheekbones and the shape of his lips.

"Then," she said, "we should make sure that day never comes."

He opened his eyes and smiled.

"Deal."

Sometimes, foreshadowing like this was unnecessary.

Because Cecilia knew now—

That the gods were on their side.