Taming the Wild Beast of Alamina

Chapter 357: Chapter 357: Dinner Without Appetite

Sebastian arrived a few minutes after seven and knew, from the way the corridor had been emptied, that someone had made the mistake of trying to make this look casual.

That was always the first sign of disaster.

He gave his coat to one of the attendants, adjusted one cuff, and knocked on the door even though he knew Arion could feel him through the building.

The door opened before the second knock.

Arion stood there without uniform, crown pin, or guards.

Sebastian’s opinion of the evening worsened.

"Marquis," Arion said.

"Your Highness," Sebastian replied, because if they were going to begin with politeness, he could at least make it expensive.

Then his gaze moved past Arion.

Dean stood near the private dining table, one hand curled around the back of a chair and the other touching the collar at his throat. He looked like someone had put a blade in his hands and asked him to pretend it was cutlery.

Sebastian stepped inside.

Three places had been set. No documents.

So this was not a formal summons.

It was worse.

It was family trying not to look like the state.

Sebastian looked at the untouched food, then at Dean. "What are you hiding?"

Dean flinched.

Arion closed the door.

"I invited you to dinner," Dean said.

"Yes," Sebastian replied. "Like Trevor writes messages when he wants to sound calm before threatening a ministry. What are you hiding?"

Dean let out a pained laugh. "I hate that everyone keeps comparing my texting to Father."

"It was accurate."

"That makes it worse."

Sebastian did not sit. Neither did Dean.

Arion remained by the door for one moment, then crossed the room and stood beside Dean.

"Lucas and Trevor?" Sebastian asked.

"Fine," Dean said at once.

"Nero?"

The answer did not come quickly enough.

Sebastian’s expression did not change, but the room narrowed around him.

Dean swallowed. "Alive. Not injured."

"That was not the question."

"No," Arion said. "It was not."

Sebastian looked at him.

There were not many men Sebastian had to look up at. Arion was one of them, which Sebastian considered a design flaw in the world. Still, height was not authority. Sebastian had been the heir of the Fitzgeralt dukedom long enough to know that rooms bent for composure long before they bent for size.

"Then answer it," Sebastian said.

Arion’s gaze remained steady. "The temple sent reports to Otto. Recent reports. Vision reports from the last year."

Sebastian’s face went still.

Dean pulled out the chair across from him. "Sit, Seb."

"Do not use that voice with me."

Dean stopped.

Sebastian regretted the sharpness immediately.

After a moment, he sat because standing had become performance, and he disliked wasting good performance on incomplete information.

Dean sat opposite him. Arion sat beside Dean.

Sebastian folded his hands loosely on the table. "Continue."

Arion did. "There are multiple visions involving you, Nero, and a large-scale infection disaster. Roslew compromised. Defense systems failing. Dominants falling or losing command structure."

Sebastian’s gaze did not move from his face. "And me?"

Dean’s hand tightened on the table.

"The reports say," Dean said carefully, "that in several possible futures, you become a dominant omega."

The silence after that was clean.

Sebastian blinked once.

Then he looked from Dean to Arion. "Because of Nero."

"The temple interpretation says because of Nero," Arion replied. "We are not accepting that interpretation as reliable."

Sebastian laughed once, quiet and without humor. "How reassuring."

"It is not reassurance," Dean said. "It is the part we know."

"Then what is the part you do not know?"

Dean’s eyes hurt to look at.

Sebastian hated that too.

"We do not know if the original visions actually say what the temple reports claim," Dean said. "We do not know if the shift is cause, consequence, metaphor, fear, or priestly stupidity. We do not know if they saw a real future or panic wearing symbolism."

"And yet you are telling me."

"Yes."

"Why?"

Arion answered. "Because the temple may reach for you."

Sebastian’s fingers went still.

Dean’s voice sharpened. "If they believe their own conclusions, they may try to warn you, guide you, isolate you, or put you under temple protection before Otto’s agents get the original statements."

"Temple protection," Sebastian repeated.

Dean’s mouth twisted. "A cage with candles."

This time, Sebastian almost smiled.

But the words "dominant omega" had already settled under his skin.

He leaned back, his right hand playing with the silk napkin beside his plate. "So... let me understand this. The temple people say that I will shift to a dominant omega because of Nero, or that I did in other timelines. I fail to see how that is connected to Roslew falling."

Arion raked a hand through his black hair and sighed. "We do not know enough details. But according to what the Head of Temple told us, in the branches where you shift, you become like Lucas. A siren type."

Sebastian’s fingers stilled on the napkin.

Dean’s face went pale.

Arion continued, his voice controlled but not cold. "She also said that you and Nero die. Again, no details. No confirmed sequence. No proof that the temple understood what it saw."

For a moment, Sebastian said nothing.

The silence that followed was not fragile.

It was measured.

Marquis Sebastian Fitzgeralt sat at the table with the posture of a man who had received assassination threats, treaty amendments, inheritance clauses, and family disasters before breakfast and had learned, very early, that panic was rarely useful in the first minute.

But Dean knew him.

Dean saw the way his hand stayed too still.

The way his breathing became too even.

The way his green eyes sharpened until they looked almost metallic in the warm light of the private dining room.

"So," Sebastian said at last, "the temple believes Nero turns me into a siren-type dominant omega, that some version of me may be able to relive or touch timelines the way Lucas did, and that both of us die in at least one branch connected to the infection overwhelming Roslew."

Dean swallowed. "Yes."

"And their conclusion is that the shift is the main event."

"That seems to be their conclusion," Arion said.

Sebastian’s mouth curved without humor. "Convenient."

Dean looked up.

Sebastian released the napkin and folded his hands on the table. "If they make the shift the main event, then everything becomes manageable. Nero becomes the source. I become the consequence. The temple becomes the institution wise enough to intervene."

Arion’s eyes narrowed slightly, not in warning, but in agreement.

Dean’s chest tightened. "That is what we think too."

"That they are wrong?"

"That they are at least contaminated by their own assumptions."

Sebastian looked at him. "That is a diplomatic way to say priests looked at a disaster and found the interpretation that gave them authority." He raised a hand, a golden ring catching the chandelier’s light. "I refused Nero."