"Ah!"

Arkai caught Cecilia as she stumbled forward, his hands closing around her upper arms reflexively. His brow furrowed, the faint crease between his dark eyebrows deepening.

"What’s wrong? Do you need the bathroom? Do you feel sick again?" He asked, his crimson eyes scanned her face intensely.

Cecilia raised her chin and immediately began scrutinizing him. Her gaze swept over his face first. Eyes dark, not crimson. No feral glow. Then lower. His hands, still resting on her arms, were normal. No claws, no fur sprouting along his knuckles. No visible sign of the rampage stirring beneath his skin.

He was standing there without his shirt. Well, he had gone to work in his dark overalls as usual, the practical, durable uniform of his trade, but at some point between the front door and the bathroom, he had stripped down to his undershorts.

His chest was bare. His broad shoulders caught the soft light filtering through the bathroom window.

"Are you... okay...?"

Arkai blinked. "I’m totally alright."

He smiled, having no idea why his pregnant housemate had just tried to break down the bathroom door. "Just that today’s work is done, and my clothes are dirty. So I went straight to the bathroom to change."

Cecilia narrowed her eyes. She smelled something fishy. Not metaphorically either, but literally. A faint, coppery-sweet scent drifting from somewhere behind him.

Her gaze flicked toward the space beyond his shoulder, but Arkai’s larger body and broader frame blocked the view. He even shifted subtly, deliberately keeping himself between her and whatever was behind him.

"Let me see." She said flatly.

"It’s alright," Arkai’s smile didn’t waver. "It’s just messy."

He leaned down and kissed her. His lips met hers gently, his tongue lapping softly against the seam of her mouth, coaxing, misdirecting. This man... he was insistent on distracting her!

"Mmmh! Mph!"

Cecilia tried to pull away, her hands pressing against his bare chest and her body squirming in his grip. She finally wrenched her face to the side, gasping. "Arkai!"

He took a deep breath. His shoulders sagged by a fraction. And there it was, the guilty look. Seeing this sheepish expression of him, it was confirmed that something was up.

"Show me." Cecilia’s glare could have cut glass.

Arkai hesitated. His hands, still resting on her upper arms, tightened for just a moment. For five long seconds, he didn’t budge. He didn’t let her swivel past him.

Then he caved.

"You are pregnant. And I’m sure you’re not used to seeing something like this, so..." He trailed off. He pulled her gently into his embrace, wrapping one arm around her shoulders, and pivoted them both so she could see what was behind him.

Crumpled on the bathroom floor were Arkai’s overalls. They were drenched in something dark and wet and red, the fabric soaked through, and the distinctive, iron-rich scent of blood was filling the small space.

But not just blood. There was something else mixed with it. A strange, faintly chemical smell, like industrial solvents, and beneath that, the unmistakable odor of raw meat.

"It is not... all... my blood," Arkai said gently, trying very hard not to alarm a pregnant woman. "You see, our company is still the best in the world to handle things like this. Just that occasionally..."

Cecilia had researched what a plumber meant. It had been one of the first things she looked up, after the ultrasound and the Beast Wiki article.

A plumber, she had learned, was a tradesperson who specialized in installing and repairing systems used for potable water, sewage, and drainage.

They worked with pipes that carried water into buildings and waste out of them. Pipes that ran through walls and under floors and connected every sink and toilet and shower to the vast, invisible infrastructure of the city.

It was a skilled trade, essential and respectable, and it involved, as far as she could determine from her research, exactly zero quantities of people’s blood.

But there was a subset of plumbing, she had also learned, that dealt with more than just water and waste.

Industrial plumbing. Hazardous material containment. Emergency response to systems that had been compromised by things far more dangerous than a clogged drain.

And in a world where rifts tore open in the fabric of reality on a daily basis, where monsters spilled into the streets coated in black, tar-like filth, where contamination was a constant threat and containment was a matter of life and death—

Some pipes carried things that were not water.

"Arkai..." Cecilia fixed him with a glare that could have frozen lava. "Explain why a plumber would end up like this. Hm?"

Arkai’s ears flattened against his skull. Fear flashed in his crimson eyes.

"Alright..." He took a breath and his shoulders slumped. "It’s... just that today... a rogue rift suddenly opened in the middle of the purification chamber."

Cecilia’s eyes flew wide.

Purification chamber. Rogue rift.

She had seen the rifts on the hospital television. But a rift opening inside a purification chamber, a facility that was supposed to be safe, that was something else entirely.

"Actually, it was a relief that I was there today." Arkai said calmly, as if recounting a minor workplace incident rather than a brush with interdimensional horror. "I could bring the Saintess to safety, there were no casualties, and minimal infrastructure damage too, which is great."

Cecilia made him spin as she inspected him, her hands running over his bare shoulders, his arms and his back, searching for wounds that his accelerated werewolf healing might already have closed. "Saintess. So you work closely with the Saintess?"

She had done her research. The center of the corruption purification project in this world was the Saintess herself, a figure protected by all the world’s governments, a living conduit of divine power who could purify the black filth that coated everything that came out of the rifts.

Thankfully the Saintess in this world was not Ruby Vaiva. According to the internet, it was actually, surprise surprise, eight-year-old Lilyca Celeste.

Perhaps because the title in this world actually required a Saintess to be connected to the divine, to be able to purify the corruption, and not merely a fraud presenting prophecies from a future she had experienced through time travel, Ruby Vaiva had never been qualified.

"I didn’t..." Arkai sighed, his eyes dropping to the floor. "I didn’t want you to... you know, get worried, or something. And I did say I am a plumber. It’s... it’s actually an inside joke, because I do deal with waste and... pipes, and... well, structural engineering..."

"Then what are you, actually?" Cecilia’s glare could have cut glass.

Arkai took a deep breath once again. The jig, it seemed, was well and truly up. "I own this company. Aro Industry. Which, you know, just does a little bit of this, and a little bit of that..."

Cecilia’s eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. The name clicked into place in her mind, connecting to articles she had skimmed, headlines she had half-noticed.

Aro Industry. One of the largest private infrastructure and containment corporations in the world. Government contracts, international reach, and a reputation for ethical labor practices that was almost unheard of in the industry.

Cecilia raised her eyebrows and looked down on him.

"You’re just another billionaire."