Baby System: I'm the Beast World's Only Hope!-Chapter 163: Episode : Where is Roxy?

Back in the ironwood forest, the sun was beginning to dip, casting long, golden shadows across the banks of the Great River.

The atmosphere at the soap-making station was winding down. The fires had been extinguished to embers, and the wooden molds were filled with cooling, fragrant mixtures.

The females sat in clusters, tired but chatting happily, smelling of lavender and ash. No one had noticed Roxy had been gone for too long; they just thought she was with her mate again.

Not Ren, maybe one of her other mates.

From the tree line, four figures emerged.

Torian led the way, carrying a massive boar over his shoulder as if it were a pillow. Kaelen walked beside him, wiping a dagger on a cloth. Syris followed, checking a handheld device, and Zarek brought up the rear, his golden eyes scanning the area with habitual vigilance.

They had returned early. The hunt had been successful, and the urge to rejoin their mate was a pull they couldn’t ignore.

"We left Drax in charge," Kaelen noted, sheathing his blade. "I hope the house is still standing."

"Drax is competent," Zarek rumbled. "He will keep the triplets from destroying the nursery. My concern is whether Ren has kept the other males away from Roxy."

Torian snorted, adjusting the boar. "Ren is probably fanning her with a leaf and feeding her grapes. The Fox knows how to serve."

They walked into the clearing, expecting to be greeted by Roxy’s bright smile or her sassy comments about their catch.

Instead, they found only the females.

Mara, the Wolf Mother, looked up and smiled, wiping her hands on her apron. "Kings! You have returned. The lesson went well. We have enough soap for the winter."

Torian scanned the crowd. He looked for the flash of the tiger-skin dress. He looked for the silver anklet.

"Where is she?" Torian asked, dropping the boar with a heavy thud.

Ren, who was sitting on a high rock, looked down. He looked relaxed, though a hint of boredom played on his features. He hopped down gracefully, dusting off his robes.

"She is around," Ren said, waving a hand vaguely upstream. "She is a hard woman to keep still."

"We came to help carry the pots," Syris said, looking around. "Is she with the children?"

"No," Ren shook his head. "She gave the ladle to Mara about twenty minutes ago. Said she wanted to check some bushes for... aloe vera? She pointed right over there."

Ren pointed toward the dense cluster of berry bushes and willows about fifty yards upstream.

Zarek frowned. He looked at the sun. "Twenty minutes to pick a leaf?"

"She probably got distracted," Ren shrugged, though a small frown formed between his brows. "You know how she is. She finds a beetle and stares at it for an hour."

"I will go get her," Kaelen said, stepping forward. "She probably fell asleep in the shade. The lesson might have been tiring."

But Zarek had a bad feeling clawing at his chest.

Kaelen jogged toward the bushes. The others waited, watching him. They saw Kaelen reach the willow tree. They saw him push the branches aside.

Then, they saw him freeze.

Kaelen’s shoulders went rigid. His head snapped left, then right. He dropped to a crouch, sniffing the ground frantically.

"Kaelen?" Torian called out, his voice losing its playful edge. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Kaelen didn’t answer. He let out a low, chilling whine, a sound of pure distress.

Zarek moved instantly. Torian and Syris were right behind him, with Ren following, confused by the sudden shift in tension. They reached the bushes.

The ground was trampled. There were footprints, Roxy’s boots. And there were other footprints, bare, small, and almost similar to Roxy’s.

But it was the smell that hit them.

It was the scent of Roxy, sweet milk, and lavender. But it was stale. Fading. And overlaid on top of it was a sharp, chemical scent of burnt powder... and something else. A cloying, sickly-sweet scent of a stranger.

"She is not here," Kaelen whispered, standing up. His eyes were wide and dilated, the wolf taking over. "Her scent trail... it leads away. Up the incline."

"Away?" Ren asked, stepping into the circle. "Why would she go up? She said she was just—"

Zarek spun around and grabbed Ren by the throat.

He lifted the Fox King off the ground, slamming him against the trunk of the willow tree. Bark splintered. Ren groaned, caught off guard by the sudden burst of anger from Zarek.

"How could you lose her?!" Zarek roared, the sound shaking the leaves from the branches. The lesson was spelled over, and the female wolves scrambled away back to their homes.

When Zarek got angry like this, no one should have been caught in it.

His eyes were no longer golden; they were slits of burning magma. Smoke curled from his nostrils, hot and acrid. He was at the point of shifting.

"You were right there!" Zarek screamed, tightening his grip. "You were watching her! You swore to protect her! How useless can you be if you are her mate?!"

"Z-Zarek..." Ren gasped, clawing at the Dragon’s arm. His face paled, the oxygen cutting off. "I... she said..."

"She is recovering! She is human!" Zarek snarled, his voice cracking with a terrifying mix of rage and panic. "And you let her walk into the woods alone with a stranger?!"

"I didn’t... know..." Ren choked out.

"Enough!" Torian barked.

The Tiger King shoved Zarek hard, breaking his grip on the Fox. Ren crumpled to the ground, coughing violently, massaging his bruised neck.

"Killing him won’t find her!" Torian yelled, though his own hands were shaking. He looked wild, his stripes seeming to vibrate with tension. "We need to find her now."

"The trail is cold," Kaelen said, his voice trembling. He was already shifting. His clothes shredded as bone and fur erupted. A massive, grey direwolf stood where the man had been. He didn’t wait. He put his nose to the dirt and bolted up the rocky path.

Zarek looked down at Ren. The Dragon’s chest was heaving.

"You’d better hope my mate is safe," Zarek hissed, his voice dropping to a demonic growl. "Or you will pay with your life, Fox."

Zarek didn’t wait for a response. He turned his face to the sky.

With a sound like thunder, Zarek’s form exploded outward. Massive black scales covered his skin. Wings spanning fifty feet burst from his back. The Dragon King took to the air, the force of his launch flattening the bushes and knocking Syris backward.

Syris, usually the calmest, was panicking too. But Torian set his palm down on his shoulder, Syris looked at Torian to see the angry determination in his gaze, and he gulped.

He looked at Torian. "We run."

"We run," Torian agreed.

Both men shifted. A giant, golden tiger and a massive, emerald basilisk surged up the path, following the Wolf.

Ren was left alone in the bushes.

He sat in the dirt, gasping for air. The bruise on his neck throbbed. But the pain in his chest was worse.

He had promised. He had just been healed. He had sworn he was strong enough. And he had failed her. He had sat on a rock, preening like a peacock, while something took her.

"No," Ren whispered.

He closed his eyes. He reached out with his mana and pushed his consciousness into the roots of the trees, into the wind.

He felt a faint trace. A disruption in the mana up near the cliffs.

Ren stood up. His eyes glowed violet. He shifted into his true form.

Red fur erupted. Nine tails fanned out, glowing with ethereal light. The Nine-Tailed Fox leaped, moving through the shadows between the trees, desperate to redeem himself.

***

The Cliff.

The four beasts arrived almost simultaneously.

Kaelen arrived first, skidding to a halt on the wet stone. He sniffed the edge frantically.

Torian and Syris crashed through the brush seconds later.

Zarek circled overhead, casting a massive shadow, before diving and shifting back to human form mid-air, landing heavily on the plateau.

They stood on the jagged rock.

It was empty.

There was no cave. There was only the howling wind and the roar of the rapids hundreds of feet below.

Kaelen shifted back to human, naked and shivering, but not from cold. He fell to his knees near the edge.

"Her scent ends here," Kaelen choked out, pointing to a scuff mark on the moss. "She... she was here."

"And the stranger," Syris noted, kneeling beside him. He touched the ground. "There was a struggle."

Zarek walked to the edge. He looked down into the churning white water.

His heart stopped.

"Roxy?" he whispered.

He yelled it. "ROXY!"

Only the echo answered.

Torian was pacing, clawing at his own hair. "She can’t be gone. She can’t. She just went to get soap. She just..."

We shouldn’t have let her go.

The despair was a physical weight, crushing them. They were the Kings of the Forest. They were invincible. And yet, their Queen had vanished into thin air.

Suddenly, they heard the sound of footsteps. All four heads snapped toward the tree line.

Walking out of the shadows was a girl.

She was petite, with long blonde hair. She was smiling, a shy, sweet smile.

And draped over her shoulders, stained with mud but unmistakable, was the spotted fur mantle Ren had dressed Roxy in that morning.

The mates froze. Their brains tried to process the image. The coat. The scent. But the wrong face.

Alice stopped a few feet away. She raised a delicate hand and waved, her blue eyes sparkling with a twisted kind of hope.

"Hi," Alice said softly, tilting her head. "I—"

She didn’t get to finish the sentence.

Zarek didn’t ask who she was. He didn’t ask why she had the coat. He saw his mate’s skin on a stranger, and the dragon’s brain snapped.

One second, Alice was standing there. The next, Zarek was in front of her, his hand clamped around her throat, lifting her feet off the ground.

Alice’s eyes bulged. She clawed at his hand, shocked. This wasn’t in the script. They were supposed to be confused. They were supposed to be intrigued by her scent.

Zarek slammed her back toward the cliff edge, dangling her over the abyss where his mate had just vanished. His face was a mask of pure, unadulterated murder.

"Where is she?!" Zarek roared, the sound tearing his own throat.

"WHERE THE FUCK IS ROXY?!"