Mate Collecting System: The Beast Kings Are Obsessed With Me

Chapter 53: The Alpha Learns to Be Cute

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[ Cooldown countdown initiated: 23:59:57 ]

Hahh!! Finally, after breaking almost every single wooden needle I made, I’m done making my panties! Nuan thought triumphantly. She picked the fresh pair up by the waistband, holding it up against the morning sun to inspect the tight, neat stitches.

She stared at her brand-new leather underwear collection and puffed her chest out proudly. It wasn’t Calvin Klein, but it was a massive upgrade from going commando.

She swept the bundle into her system inventory and tossed the splintered, broken wooden needles into the nearest dead fire pit.

Beside her, Kael’s tail gave a heavy, excited wiggle against the dirt. He had successfully shown absolute, uninterrupted patience just like she asked. Now, he was sitting up straight, practically vibrating as he waited for his well-deserved praise.

Nuan finally looked down at him. His eyes were sparkling with needy expectation, his entire face lighting up the moment they made eye contact. She raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Okay... something is highly suspicious about your behavior today."

"Suspicious... no. It is cute," Kael corrected smoothly, instantly scooting closer and pressing his chest right back against her legs.

"Hmm, what the hell happened to you, Kael? You are acting completely different," Nuan murmured, leaning down. "Did you actually hit your head last night while you were out pissing on that tree? Have you finally lost it?"

"I didn’t hit my head!" Kael huffed. To prove his point, he reached up and placed his large, heavy hand firmly onto her bare thigh. His calloused, paw-like skin felt incredibly warm and a little ticklish against her leg.

Nuan stared at the hand, then at his face. "Seems like you are desperately in need of attention today," she murmured, reaching out and gently scratching the sweet spot right behind his ears.

Kael’s lips curled into a smug smirk as he closed his eyes, resting the full weight of his head right across her lap. Nuan didn’t think much of it; she just figured the big, terrifying Alpha was secretly just a needy, attention-starved puppy at heart. She let out a soft yawn, staring out at the rest of the pack waking up to start their day while the sun baked her clay pottery on the rocks.

But Kael, emboldened by the ear scratches, slowly began to slide his large hand upward along her thigh, his fingers inching past the edge of her loose loincloth.

Without breaking her rhythm, Nuan kept scratching his ear with one hand, while her other hand casually dropped down, grabbing his traveling wrist tightly to halt him mid-way.

Despite being held firmly in place, Kael didn’t back down. He used his raw strength to slowly press forward, his hand trying to creep upward millimeter by millimeter.

Feeling the ticklish pressure, Nuan’s eyes narrowed. She delivered a sharp, warning slap right to the back of his wandering palm, grabbed his wrist firmly, and yanked his hand completely off her thigh.

A low, rumbling vibration vibrated through Kael’s chest. He tilted his head up, staring at her from her lap.

"What?" Nuan asked flatly.

"Nothing," he said innocently, blinking his large golden eyes four times in a row, trying to look as completely harmless and "cute" as possible.

Nuan just sighed, pushing his heavy head off her lap and standing up on her good leg. She began to slowly limp across the sunny clearing toward Miss Selka’s den.

Kael scrambled up onto his feet instantly, shadowing her right at her heel like a giant, overprotective bodyguard. "You are going to mother?"

"Yeah," Nuan murmured, keeping her balance.

"Why?"

"Well, Miss Selka promised she’d teach me how to properly identify the Whiteclaw herb plants in the wild, and exactly how to apply it to different types of wounds," Nuan explained, stopping right before the dark mouth of the medicine den.

Kael’s brows knitted together in deep confusion. "But the Whiteclaw herb is a secret only known to the Silver Grey clan. Why is mother teaching you our sacred methods?"

Right then, Selka’s dry, amused voice echoed from the darkness inside as she stepped out into the daylight. "Because she might soon have a very troublesome, brainless beast bothering her on her journey, and she’ll need to know how to patch him up."

Nuan let out a quiet chuckle. Please, I am definitely not taking this giant idiot anywhere with me when I leave, she thought to herself.

Kael completely missed the insult, his ears flattening as a protective growl ripped from his throat. He looked around the camp fiercely. "Tell me the name of the beast who is going to bother Nuan! I will rip their heads straight off their necks!"

Nuan stared at his puffed-out chest and his herb-paste-covered bruises with a completely blank expression. "Look at your own half-ripped-apart state first, hero."

"Dense as a tree trunk," Selka sighed, rolling her eyes toward the sky before grabbing Nuan’s arm and gently pulling the human inside the quiet sanctuary of her den.

Kael didn’t even think about staying outside. He stubbornly marched right in behind them and sat his heavy frame down on a flat rock in the corner of the medicine den, his silver eyes tracking Nuan’s every move.

Selka ignored her son, leading Nuan over to a wide stone ledge covered in various freshly cut branches and leaves. "Look at these plants, furless. These are the specific leaves that, when ground together, become the Whiteclaw medicine."

Nuan leaned in closer, her eyes immediately taking in the details.

The most prominent one featured a large, round central leaf with three smaller leaf lobes branching out at the very tip, perfectly mimicking the shape of a wolf’s paw. The edges weren’t smooth either; they were sharply jagged, looking almost exactly like frost damage on vegetation back on Earth.

Hmm, a paw-shaped leaf structure with serrated, frost-bitten edges. This should be incredibly easy to remember in the field, Nuan analyzed.

"Oh, you have quite a large stockpile of Whiteclaw branches here," Nuan noted, pointing to another heap of green leaves sitting right next to the first pile.

"Right?" Selka countered, her voice dropping into a warning tone. "But do not get fooled by what your eyes want to see."

"Hm?"

"Take a good look at this one," Selka said, picking up a branch from the second pile and handing it directly to Nuan.

Nuan took the stem, automatically bringing it to her nose first. She took a deep sniff—it had the exact same pungent, clean herbal aroma as the genuine Whiteclaw.

She ran her fingertips over the leaves. The physical structure felt identical. Same round shape. Same three paw-like lobes at the tip. Same jagged, frost-like edges along the rim.

Feeling a sudden hunch, Nuan turned on her heel and took a few steps toward the mouth of the den, holding the leaf up so the bright, direct morning sunlight could pass through the tissue.

The moment the light illuminated the leaf, she saw it.

Selka stepped right up beside her, a proud, sharp smile touching the old wolf’s face. "You noticed it? The true Whiteclaw has bright, silver-white veins running through the lobes. This lookalike, the Blackclaw, has slightly darker, duller veins that branch out unevenly across the surface."

Nuan nodded heavily, running her thumb over the underside of the leaf to memorize the exact texture.

"In the frantic hurry of a life-or-death emergency, a regular hunter will easily miss those slightly darker veins," Selka added, her expression turning dead serious. "And during the heavy rainy season, when everything is wet and muddy, it becomes even harder to identify them properly."

"I can see why," Nuan murmured, her mind filing away the specific botanical contrast. "The morphological mimicry is almost perfect."

"And make no mistake," Selka warned, staring directly into Nuan’s eyes. "If you are careless, and you mistakenly grind and consume this Blackclaw plant... you will die a painful death by poisoning within a few hours."