Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1039 - Taming Contentment - End

Aldric noticed without anyone saying anything. Seiya was running the calculation that people ran when they saw something that could have been different, and finding that the answer to ”why wasnʼt it me” was more complicated than the question had made it seem.

Not only Luna, three beautiful women. All three with the kind of presence they had, and all three here by choice at some level, because if they were only political pieces had the power to stop this, and if he wasnʼt to their liking they wouldnʼt be looking at Ren the way they were looking at him.

ʼSome people have too much luck,ʼ thought Seiya.

Then he corrected himself: it likely wasnʼt only luck. But he didnʼt have a good name for what the rest of it was.

Aldric put a hand on his shoulder, briefly.

The universal gesture for: let it go…

♢♢♢♢

Some of Lunaʼs uncles, detractors who had survived the dismantling of Orionʼs faction with enough left over to continue existing as a faction on paper, because they had not directly participated in the coup, had arrived at the ceremony with a specific intention. The betrothal announcement was the moment to do the only thing their current resources permitted: noise. Not much, but the kind of noise that in the right place at the right moment could create enough discomfort to at least slightly damage something they would have preferred didnʼt exist.

They opened their mouths when Julius was giving the announcement.

The sound went nowhere.

Liu had not stopped smiling at any point since Julius began speaking. The sound specialized beasts that made up his system had capabilities that nobody in this hall could approach, and the suppression field was positioned with an exactness that was not coincidence, corresponding precisely to the two sections where Lunaʼs uncles and Lioraʼs uncles were seated.

Lioraʼs uncles, who had also arrived with the same intention at the same moment, discovered simultaneously that they had a problem in the vicinity of their trousers that had nothing to do with sound, much to do with wetness and that was urgent and uncontrollable enough to displace any other intention entirely.

Min, at some point between the start of Juliusʼs announcement and the moment Lioraʼs uncles became aware of their situation with the urgency of people who urgently needed to find a way to cover their pants, had ceased to be visible. The full concealment capacity of his beastsʼ combo was one of the things Min rarely needed to use, which meant that when he did, nobody without Renʼs level of awareness in the immediate area knew exactly what had happened or when, only that something had changed in their undergarments unexpectedly and at the worst possible time.

The sentiment of the detractors remained at just that.

Without ruining anything.

♢♢♢♢

What did weigh a bit, and Ren noticed it in the second when the hallʼs attention redistributed itself toward the conversations and commentary that always followed an announcement of this nature, was what was absent.

Larissaʼs mother was not in the hall.

It wasnʼt a logistical absence... It was a posture. And a posture persisted beyond the ceremony, it didnʼt dissolve when the program ended, couldnʼt be silenced by Liu or dampened by Min, because it existed in a different space from noise and inconvenience.

Lunaʼs parents couldnʼt be there for reasons that were circumstance rather than choice. Lioraʼs parents either.

That was also sad, but it was different from choosing not to be there.

Yet Ren stored it.

And then he looked at the three of them.

Larissa, who had noticed the same thing Ren had at exactly the same moment and was wearing the face she put on when she was processing something she wasnʼt going to show, because showing it served nothing useful at this specific moment. The face that was doing its job again.

Liora, whose eyes had that particular quality they had when something had reached her at the place where things reached her for real, holding that back with the same decision she had used to hold back the tears when she received the earrings. Present yet contained.

Luna, with the composure Ren knew well enough to read what was underneath it.

All three were standing in the right place.

All three were wearing the dresses he had made.

All three had the crystal earrings he had designed specifically for them, not for this announcement, but for what would come after the military service, when the formality would be real rather than just the beginning of becoming real. Objects that had been made with that future in mind.

Ren moved.

The Mantis held his posture. What was his did the rest.

He positioned himself in front of the three of them with the exactness of someone who had calculated the correct angle, and in the sight of hundreds of families, of the three Dravenholm brothers, of the master of ceremonies who had spent enough years in the profession to have seen nearly everything and who had not seen exactly this, he extended his hand toward all three.

Asking them to dance, a brief, light turn, the traditional signal of acceptance and comfort between betrothed parties. An acknowledgment of closeness and ease.

The light turn was its own declaration: showing yourself complete, allowing nearness without reservation. Something like the kiss that sealed a contract at a wedding, but much lighter for being preliminary. But not only as protocol.

As what it was.

The three of them looked at him.

Larissa was the first to respond, which wasnʼt a surprise to Ren. She took his hand with the exactness of someone who had also calculated this gesture and was executing it with the precision of something verified. But her eyes had something in them that no calculation produced.

Liora arrived with the warmth and energy that was entirely hers, the way she entered moments without measuring the space she needed because the space always turned out to be exactly sufficient. Not stepping into the moment so much as already being in it.

Luna arrived last, with the composure she had for the world and without it at the same time, both things present simultaneously in the way the things that mattered most to her coexisted in her.

Chaotic as she was, held and unheld at once, controlled and not