Taming the Wild Beast of Alamina

Chapter 384: Chapter 384: Consequences

Arion entered the hospital wing with the kind of silence that made physicians move out of his path before realizing they had done it.

Sylvia and Thomas had been admitted to the same room because Thomas had threatened anyone who approached her after she lost consciousness minutes after Nero fell too. He had been half-conscious, bleeding through two layers of sealing foam, and still managed to make three doctors reconsider their careers.

Sylvia was asleep now, pale against the pillows, one hand trapped in Thomas’s uninjured one. Thomas was sedated but not deeply enough for anyone’s comfort. His eyes opened every few minutes, found Sylvia, then closed again.

Nero was in the adjacent treatment room, conscious, sitting on the bed with the irritation of a man being ordered around by Hale and clearly threatened with Chris as a consequence.

A medical monitor blinked beside him. His skin still looked too pale. His hair had been pulled loose from its tie and spilled over one shoulder in a silver-white mess. Someone had cleaned the blood from his face, but a faint red smear remained near his collar because Nero had slapped one medic’s hand away before the work was done.

Hale stood at the foot of the bed, arms crossed.

Nero glared at him. "I am not concussed."

"You fainted."

"I collapsed dramatically."

"You bled from your nose and passed out."

"Fashionably."

Hale’s expression did not change. "I am calling Queen Christopher."

Nero’s entire face sharpened. "You will not."

"I will if you remove one more sensor."

Arion stopped in the doorway.

Hale saw him first. His eyes moved once over Arion’s face, then down to his hands.

Hale’s curse and usefulness was that he understood too much without words.

"I will check on Sylvia," Hale said, clearly knowing what would follow and decide that he didn’t want to be a part of it.

Nero looked at him. "Coward."

"Alive coward," Hale replied, and left.

The door sealed behind him.

For half a second, there was only the quiet pulse of hospital machines.

Nero turned his head toward Arion. "If you are here to glare, form a line. Hale has priority, Dean has emotional seniority, and Chris will probably invent a new category."

Arion crossed the room.

Nero’s brows lifted. "You look—"

Arion punched him.

The sound was clean and ugly.

Nero’s head snapped sideways. His shoulder hit the bed rail. One of the monitors shrieked.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Then Nero slowly touched the corner of his mouth. His fingers came away red.

He stared at the blood.

Then at Arion.

"What the fuck did I do?"

Arion’s voice was low. "I entrusted you with a secret."

Nero’s eyes narrowed with annoyance. "This is about Sebastian?"

"Yes."

"I did not touch Sebastian."

"That is not the point."

"It is exactly the point."

Arion stepped closer, golden eyes cold enough that the room seemed to shrink around them. "I gave you something I should not have given you. I told you about the visions because I believed you understood the weight of knowing things no one else could know."

"I do."

"No," Arion said. "You understand power. You understand opportunity. You understand how to stand in front of a disaster and decide everyone else will survive whether they like your method or not."

Nero’s mouth twisted. "That sounds useful today."

"It was." Arion’s fists clenched. "That is why I am only punching you once."

Nero barked a laugh, sharp and disbelieving. "Generous."

"I gave you that report because I needed you to be careful. Not because I trusted you to carve a new biological precedent into Sylvia Croft in the middle of a breached corridor without telling anyone what you were capable of."

Nero’s expression hardened.

"I did not plan that."

"Do not lie to me."

"I am not."

Nero swung his legs over the side of the bed, ignoring the monitor’s sharp protest. Two warning lights blinked red near his shoulder. One sensor had already peeled loose from his chest.

"I reacted the moment Andrea confirmed our worst nightmare," he said. "He was not only controlling beasts. He was holding part of the infection pattern in place. If I killed him there, all of them would have broken free at once."

Arion’s jaw tightened. "So you transferred his pheromonal output into Sylvia."

"Yes."

"And did not think to mention you could do that?"

Nero’s eyes flashed. "No, Arion. I did not pause in the middle of a breach to politely inform command that I can extract pheromonal structure, strip it from one body, and embed it into another. Especially since that is a secret not even my parents know."

He rose from the bed.

The movement was too fast. Another sensor tore free and dropped against his ribs. The monitor shrieked.

Nero ignored it.

His face had gone pale again, but his voice stayed sharp enough to cut through the sound.

"I did not let the infection spread. I moved the control point to a person we trust." He stepped closer, violet eyes bright with pain and fury. "Because, Arion, if we killed Andrea, the beasts would have gone berserk on their own. Who the fuck would have stopped them then?"

Arion said nothing, eyes moving to the wide forest full of infection.

Nero laughed once, bitterly. "Exactly."

"You should have told me."

"There was no time."

"You had time to drag Andrea through half the field."

"Because I needed him alive."

Arion’s gaze sharpened.

Nero smiled without humor. "There it is. Now you understand."

The room fell quieter.

Andrea Vale was not dead.

The physicians had sealed what was left of him in a containment room two doors down, under sedation so heavy it bordered on mercy, with four layers of pheromone suppression and enough armed guards to defend a border crossing. He had lost the power. His body had nearly collapsed from the extraction.

Unfortunately, nearly was not enough.

Andrea still had a brain, memory, and answers.

And gods only knew if he had been the only one.

Arion’s eyes moved briefly toward the wall, as if he could see through it to the containment room beyond. "You think there are others."

"I think Andrea Vale was too arrogant to invent a whole method and never share it, never learn it from somewhere, never leave a trail." Nero’s voice dropped. "He is not the brightest tool in the shed, but someone could be responsible for his training. The visions said the resistance fell after Sebastian and I died."

His fists clenched hard enough to draw blood from his palms.

"But what if that was only part of the story?" Nero asked. "What if reliable people had to die for someone to get the infection out into the world?"