Chapter 477: Reveal Two
The genius inventor of the Shield, Professor Cecilia Araceli, wanted the Shield to be open-source technology. She wanted it to be freely available, endlessly replicable, and to be a design that could be copied and reinvented and improved by anyone with the facilities and the will.
She wanted it to spread like wildfire across the world. She wanted it to one day be like the wheel. A circular object people used to move everything faster and easier. Not a luxury. Not a privilege. Just a tool.
That was the dream.
"Now that Father-in-law is here, am I even needed in this battle?"
"Of course you are." Damon had relocated. He was no longer kneeling. His knees had made their point and were now grateful to be sitting in a proper chair across the table from her, a glass of cucumber-mint water in his hand.
His eyes were as sharp as ever when he said, "But you can choose to sit in the background while we take care of everything."
Cecilia studied him. The morning light caught the faint lines around his eyes, the evidence of too many late nights and too many crises managed on too little sleep. He looked tired, but there was something steady beneath the exhaustion.
This was always the Damon Iondora she knew.
"So..." She folded her hands over her belly. "The reason you signed with Arzhen is to one day sue him in court like this?"
"Of course not." Damon snorted, a flash of his usual sardonic self breaking through. "How would I know Arzhen would take the invention hostage like this? I’m good, Lesser Goddess, but I’m not clairvoyant."
"Then, what was your original plan?"
She narrowed her eyes. Damon met her gaze without flinching.
"It’s a waiting game," he said simply. "One day, Arzhen will discard you. And when you want revenge, I’ll come to you at exactly the right time."
How cunning.
Again, this was Damon across universes.
"Of course," he added, "now that you have three powerful boyfriends with you, you can actually take the easy path and have that man assassinated. I, for one, am not in the appropriate place to do that. Well, maybe my wife can, but not me."
"Sure," Ivy said from her perch on the arm of a nearby wicker chair. She examined her nails, gesturing like she was discussing dinner plans rather than murder. "You want to assassinate him instead?"
Cecilia pursed her lips. Her eyes cast down to her hands, still folded over the curve of her belly. She shook her head. "No."
Ivy and Isla hissed in disappointment at the exact same time. Even the sound was identical. The gesture, both women tilting their heads at the same angle, both sets of blue eyes narrowing, both mouths snarling lopsidedly. It was like watching two copies of the same video playing side by side, perfectly synchronized.
But then, Cecilia continued, "Before I want him assassinated, I want him humiliated first."
"Oh!" Isla straightened her body with Ivy, again, at the exact same time, with the exact same motion, as though they were marionettes pulled by the same string. Their eyes lit up, twin grins spread across twin faces.
"Good choice," Isla said, nodding approvingly. "So, while we humiliate him, you need to start thinking of what manner of death you want him to experience."
She said it brightly, before Ivy added, "Remember, think it through. We can only kill him once, after all."
Cecilia stared at the two women. These two... why were they so invested in helping—ahem—killing her ex-husband?
One of them had never met her before today. They had no stake in her divorce, no history with Arzhen, no reason to care about any of this.
And yet here they were, so eager, offering assassination services like caterers offering hors d’oeuvres.
No. In the first place, why were they here?
The twins, Ivy and Isla, had appeared on this rooftop and obviously had planned their entrance carefully. But they hadn’t explained why they were here. Not really.
"Cecilia..."
She turned. Anton was looking at her with gentle and hesitant eyes. He had moved to sit beside Damon, his massive tiger frame somehow folded into the wicker chair with surprising grace.
His silver-striped ears were tilted forward, and his tail had stopped its anxious lashing.
"Are you okay? I heard you are pregnant..." His voice was soft. "All of this... must’ve been hard for you. Especially when you’re pregnant."
Cecilia sighed. She had answered this question and variations of it approximately eight hundred times since her pregnancy. "Come on, it’s just a baby, not the end of my personality."
She groaned, tilting her head back against the wicker chair. "Why do people treat me like I stop being myself the moment they know I’m pregnant? Am I just going to be branded as a pregnant woman, and then a mother from now on?"
"Oooooo~ feminine crash out~" Isla and Ivy giggled in tune from their perch, their blue eyes sparkling with identical mischief.
"You know that he’s just worried about you, right?" Eastiel side-eyed her, his lion tail giving her ankle a gentle flick.
"If he’s worried about me, he should’ve told me he’s faking his death." Cecilia crossed her arms, her gaze flicking back to Anton. "Not showing up by the Association Director’s side while revealing it."
Anton smiled a sad smile. "I was wrong..." He dipped his head, his tiger ears flattening briefly. "I’m glad you are alright, seeing that you can even make the Association Director kneel on the ground."
The Association Director in question side-eyed everyone present, his temples pulsing with visible popping hot veins.
"Also..." Anton hesitated, his golden eyes flicking toward the handsome lion beastman still standing protectively behind Cecilia’s chair. "Is this guy... the father of your..."
Cecilia nodded. "Yup. He’s one of the fathers."
Anton bluescreened.
"Little Eggy will come out in a couple of months." Cecilia’s smile turned warm. "Father-in-law, I will tell them to call you grandpa too."
"EGG—?!" Anton booted right back up, his tiger ears shooting forward, his eyes going wide as the implications crashed over him. A dragon’s egg. A baby dragon!
His daughter-in-law—ex-daughter-in-law—was carrying a dragon’s egg, and she wanted him to be—
"Ah, about those two tigers who are close to you." Damon, sensing the old man’s impending system crash, smoothly changed the subject. "The secretary and the lawyer?"
Cecilia blinked. "Gregor and Thalia? Do you want to contact them to join?"
"Well, I want them to start returning to Mr. Anton’s side to prepare his own side of the argument." Damon leaned back in his chair. "I assume you’d have their private channel?"
Cecilia nodded, already pulling out her phone. "I will send them to you."
But as her thumbs moved across the screen, her mind was still turning over the puzzle of the twins.
Were they the ones who helped Damon exchange and hide Anton? That wouldn’t make sense, though. If that was the case, one of them might come along. Actually, none of them needed to come for things like this.
But both? Both twins had come and dressed identically. Why?
"Lesser Goddess."
Cecilia looked up. Ivy had leaned forward on her chair, her blue eyes serious now.
Cecilia couldn’t figure it out. She couldn’t guess why they were here at all. Was it just a simple introduction since they were both passing by? A courtesy call from the President of the Hunter Association’s sister-in-law?
"Yes, President?"
"Did Damon tell you you were going to hear shocking news today?" Ivy asked. "Are you feeling okay?"
Cecilia’s eyes flicked to Anton. Wasn’t the shocking news already delivered? Her ex-father-in-law, alive and well, after years of believing he was dead? What could possibly be more shocking than that?
Ivy reached into her file bag, a sleek leather satchel that matched her blue dress, and pulled out a folder. It was thin, unassuming. She held it out to her.
"What is this?" Cecilia asked, her fingers brushing the manila surface.
Ivy nodded at the folder. "You can look for yourself."
Strange. What was this? This felt a bit... unsafe.
Cecilia opened the folder.
Her fingers moved slowly, carefully, as though some part of her already knew that whatever lay inside would change things.
The manila surface gave way to a single sheet of paper. A DNA test report, stamped with the Hunter Association’s official laboratory seal, the ink still crisp and fresh.
Her eyes found the numbers—
99.9% sibling relation.
The words blurred. She read them again. And again. Her lips parted, but no sound came. Her hands, steady a moment before, began to tremble. The paper rustled softly in the breeze, and Eastiel’s hand found her shoulder, grounding her.
Then the other world rushed in her mind.
In the real world, she knew what had happened to the Cassia Royal Family.
She had read the files, the cold official reports, the grim details no one spoke about at state dinners.
The Queen, Ivy and Isla’s mother, had been kidnapped while heavily pregnant. For weeks, the empire had searched. For weeks, the King had grown more desperate, more hollow.
And then they had found her. Dead. Her body discarded like refuse, her belly ripped open with something sharp and cruel, the baby inside her gone. Taken. Vanished into a darkness no investigation had ever penetrated.
The file had never been closed. The child had never been found.
Cecilia looked up from the DNA report. She looked at Ivy’s gentle, waiting face. At Isla’s nervous smile.
They were her—
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