Taming the Wild Beast of Alamina

Chapter 376: Chapter 376: Waiting Lines

Sylvia had decided that the secured observation room was a cruel invention.

It was not a room for safety.

It was a room for people powerful enough to receive updates, but not powerful enough to change anything with their own hands.

That made it a cage with expensive furniture.

She paced from the glass wall to the central table, then from the central table back to the glass wall. The screens showed the battlefield in divided angles: central line, right flank, left flank, evacuation roads, drone sweeps, medical relay, and pheromone disturbance map.

Thomas appeared in one square. Too small and far away for Sylvia’s peace of mind, but very much alive, which helped.

Behind Sylvia, Rina stood with her arms crossed, pretending she was not also one bad update away from breaking something expensive.

Her fiancé, Count Connor, was in Arion’s team at the central line. Alpha male. Good family. Worse temper than his polite court manners suggested. Experienced enough in beast fields that Sylvia had heard three different officers call him reliable.

Unfortunately, reliability did not make a person immune to claws, infection, collapsing barricades, or political plans created by royal families who treated murder like a scheduling problem.

Rina’s foot tapped once.

Sylvia turned sharply. "Stop that."

Rina lifted a brow. "You are wearing a trench into the floor."

"That is different."

"How?"

"It is my emotional process."

"My foot is also processing."

"At least process quietly."

Rina opened her mouth.

"Both of you," Minerva said, without looking up from her tablet, "are going to sit down if you make me hear another argument about pacing."

Sylvia stopped.

Rina stopped tapping.

Minerva sat at the head of the table, elegant, calm, and terrifying in the way only a woman who had ruled through real crises could be. Several tablets were open before her. One showed live command reports. Another showed medical readiness. A third showed noble-house movement because apparently even during beast season certain people still had enough stupidity left to become politically suspicious.

She did not look worried.

Sylvia stared at the screens again.

Thomas moved on the right flank, giving a hand signal. His unit shifted with him. A beast lunged through the smoke and was cut down before Sylvia could properly inhale.

She inhaled anyway.

"He is fine," Rina said.

Sylvia glared at her. "Do not narrate him."

"I was reassuring you."

"You sounded smug."

"I am naturally gifted."

Minerva’s stylus paused.

Rina sat down.

Sylvia did not.

On the central screen, Arion’s team advanced half a line. Dean’s field flared in pale notation across the pheromone map, a clean blue-white ring expanding through the pressure zones. Connor’s marker moved with the central formation, exactly where it was supposed to be.

Rina’s gaze locked onto it.

Sylvia saw.

For all Rina’s sharp smiles, dangerous games, and ability to make Thomas Lancaster appear at Sylvia’s door in under ten minutes, she looked very young for a moment. Not necessarily childish, as Alaminian women probably came out of the womb judging weakness. But young in the way people were young when they loved someone who had walked into danger and left them with nothing to do but watch icons move across a screen.

"Connor has field history," Sylvia said, softer now.

Rina did not look at her. "So does Thomas."

"That does not help."

"No."

They stood in shared, miserable agreement.

Minerva finally looked up.

"You are both learning the worst part of loving people trained for war," she said. "Competence does not make them safe. It only makes everyone else depend on them standing where danger is worst."

Sylvia swallowed.

Rina’s mouth tightened. "That is awful."

"Yes." Minerva returned to her tablet. "It is also true."

Rina looked at her mother and decided to redirect her worry in the worst way possible. "You were worried about Father too."

Minerva’s stylus stopped.

Sylvia, who had known Rina for over two years and already understood she was a woman with a profound instinct for choosing the most dangerous available sentence, went very still.

Rina seemed to realize, one breath too late, that she had stepped into a room with no windows.

Minerva slowly lifted her eyes.

"Yes," she said.

Rina’s chin rose by half an inch because apparently survival instincts were optional in the Alaminian royal family. "But Father is not even on the main field."

"No," Minerva said. "Your father is with Hendrik behind the secondary containment line, waiting to step in if something horrible happens. That does not make me less aware that he is there."

Sylvia blinked toward the screens.

She had seen Otto’s name on the backup command feed, but it had been easier not to think about what that meant. Otto was not on the first line. Hendrik was not among the forward teams. They were not placed where claws and infection first broke against armor and pheromone fields.

They were placed behind it.

Which, in royal-family language, apparently meant they were what happened when the first plan failed.

That was worse.

Rina’s mouth tightened. "He should not have to be there."

Minerva’s smile was small and humorless. "No one should have to be anywhere today. Yet here we are."

On the screen, Arion’s central team shifted again. Dean’s neutralization field pulsed outward, clean and bright across the pheromone map. Connor’s marker moved with the formation. Thomas held the right flank. Nero remained on the left like a beautiful threat pointed at Andrea Vale.

And behind the secondary containment line, two markers waited.

Otto. Hendrik. Backup.

Sylvia swallowed. "Backup sounds reassuring until you remember what they are backing up."

"Yes," Minerva said. "That is the correct reaction."

Rina looked at the markers too long. "If they move, it means the field failed."

"If they move," Minerva corrected, "it means the field needs them."

"That is not better."

"No. But it is more accurate."

Sylvia lowered herself into the chair at last because pacing suddenly felt too loud for a room where people were trying not to imagine their loved ones becoming emergency measures.

Rina remained standing, arms crossed tightly. "How do you sit there and work?"

Minerva looked back at the noble-house movement report. "Because if something goes wrong, panic will not make me useful. Information might."

"That is horrible."

"You have already said that."

"It keeps being true."

Minerva’s mouth curved faintly. "Yes."

A new alert flickered across the pheromone disturbance map.

Sylvia leaned forward before she could stop herself.

Rina did the same.

Minerva’s gaze sharpened, all softness gone.

For two seconds, the room held its breath.

Then the alert stabilized. Dean’s field cut across the disturbance, Nero’s left-flank marker shifted position, and Thomas’s right flank tightened without losing ground.

The warning dropped from red to amber.

Then amber to pale blue.

Sylvia exhaled so hard she almost folded over the table. "I am sorry, but Andrea is most likely to go for Tom before any reason gets to him. I know Thomas would be fine, but—"

"But you would still like his bones to remain inside his body," Rina finished.

Sylvia pointed at her. "Yes. Exactly."

Rina leaned back in her chair, spite already brightening her face. "Thomas would be beaming with joy to beat the crap out of Andrea. He found out Andrea was talking shit about you in Rohan."

"Language, Gregoriana," Minerva said.

Rina stilled for one full second.

It was impressive, really. Sylvia had seen beasts shot, dominants pacified, and Dean survive Arion’s affection with dignity, but nothing compared to Princess Gregoriana freezing because her mother’s voice had shifted by half a degree.

The empress was dangerous.

The mother was worse.

Rina folded her hands in her lap. "My apologies. Andrea was speaking dishonorably about Sylvia in Rohan."

Minerva returned her attention to the tablet. "Better."

Sylvia blinked. "Wait. He did what?"

Rina looked at her, and the spite softened into something more careful. "Nothing that matters."

"That always means it matters."

"It was court garbage," Rina said. "Beta, civilian, unsuitable, temporary distraction. The usual words people use when they want to sound refined while being rotten."

Sylvia stared at the battlefield screen.

Thomas was still on the right flank, massive and steady, his formation adjusting around Andrea’s team like a wall that had learned patience.

Her chest felt strange.

"I see," she said.

Rina’s mouth tightened. "Thomas did not."

Sylvia looked at her.

Rina’s smile returned, sharp and unpleasant. "He corrected three men, ruined one informal alliance, and informed a Rohan minister that if Sylvia Croft was discussed again in his hearing without respect, he would consider it an insult to his person."

Sylvia’s throat went tight.

"Oh."

"Yes," Rina said. "It was extremely romantic and politically inconvenient."

Minerva’s stylus moved across the screen. "Lancaster men tend to be more useful when offended."

Sylvia gave a weak laugh. "That sounds like a warning label."

"It should be," Minerva said.

On the right-flank feed, Thomas turned slightly. Andrea had moved within his permitted range, still obedient, still mild, still acting like a man whose leash was merely decorative.

Thomas did not react.

That, somehow, was more frightening than anger.

Rina leaned closer to Sylvia. "See? He is not going to lose control."

"I know."

"You do not sound like you know."

"I know it intellectually. Emotionally, I would like to wrap him in something flame-retardant and lock him in a room."

Minerva looked up. "Do not let Dean hear that. He will assign you procurement."

Sylvia made a wounded sound. "Not the blankets."

"Especially the blankets."

Rina smiled despite herself.

Then another alert flickered near Andrea’s team.

All three women looked at the screen.

Andrea’s marker remained within range.

Eva’s readings dipped, then corrected.

Thomas’s flank tightened.

Nero’s left marker shifted two meters closer.

Minerva’s face went still.

"Is that bad?" Sylvia whispered.

"No," Minerva said.

Rina stared at her mother. "That was too fast."

"It is not bad yet."