Taming the Wild Beast of Alamina

Chapter 385: Chapter 385: Planning

"What if reliable people had to die for someone to get the infection out into the world?"

Arion went still, his thoughts spiraling with every scenario that could happen.

The hospital room seemed to shrink around them, white walls, sterile glass, monitors still protesting Nero’s removed sensors, and the faint smell of antiseptic unable to drown the older scent of blood. Nero stood beside the bed, pale and upright, his split lip darkening again from the punch, his hands bleeding because he had forgotten to unclench them.

Arion looked at those hands.

Then at Nero’s face.

"Reliable people," he said.

Nero’s mouth curved without humor. "Anchors. Commanders. Stabilizers. People who can hold a line when everyone else breaks."

The names formed between them without needing to be spoken.

Otto.

Hendrik.

Arion.

Dean.

Nero.

Thomas.

Eva, if Andrea’s leash had ever truly been cut.

Other dominants that got on the field through rotations.

Sebastian.

Especially Sebastian.

Arion’s expression hardened. "You think the visions showed the collapse after the useful people were removed."

"I think temples are excellent at describing corpses and terrible at identifying crime weapons."

Arion did not answer.

He remembered the report. The raw statements. Roslew compromised. Defense failing. Dominants falling. Nero and Sebastian dead in several branches. Dean’s field overextended or absent in others. The temple had treated Sebastian’s shift as the center of the disaster because the body was easier to understand than the system around it.

But what if the disaster had never been Sebastian becoming a dominant omega?

What if that was only one wound among many?

What if someone had learned exactly which people had to fall before the infection could stop being a battlefield problem and become a civilian plague?

Nero looked toward the wall again. "Andrea knew two resistance points."

"Yes."

"Enough to cause a breach. Not enough to end Roslew."

"Unless the first two points were all he needed."

"No." Nero shook his head once. "He wanted Sylvia infected to hurt Thomas. That was personal. Petty. Andrea has always been small enough for that. But the movement of the infected humans was not only personal. They were trying to continue past the first point before he lost control."

"To the second."

"And then?"

Arion’s jaw tightened.

Beyond the second point were controlled civilian corridors, evacuation routes, old palace service paths converted into emergency shelters, and places deliberately hidden from anyone outside command clearance.

Nero’s voice became quieter. "If the infected had crossed into the civilian structure, command would have split. You would have gone one direction. Dean, another. Otto and Hendrik would have moved from backup into active containment. Thomas would have broken himself protecting Sylvia. Eva would have been useless if Andrea still had his leash on her. And if I had stayed on the battlefield, the breach might have passed behind me."

Arion stared at him.

Nero smiled faintly. "Efficient, is it not?"

"Do not sound admiring."

"I am not admiring it. I am recognizing it."

His bleeding fingers flexed once.

"This was not Andrea’s design alone," Nero said. "He is cruel, patient, and vain enough to be a part of this. But he is not the mastermind."

Arion wanted to disagree.

He could not.

Andrea had waited two weeks. He had played harmless, obedient, and humiliated. He had known enough to target Sylvia through Thomas and enough to use Eva’s blood as a medium.

But the larger design?

That smelled like training. Or instruction. Or a hand behind his shoulder, pointing.

Arion’s voice lowered. "Andrea stays alive."

Nero’s eyes flicked to him.

"We will find out who is behind this." Arion rubbed a hand over his face, the motion rough enough to make him look briefly older than he was. "If even a part of what we guessed is true, then someone kept the beasts under control all this time."

Nero said nothing.

Arion looked at him, hollow-eyed. "Do you realize that if that is true, beast season is a joke? A schedule. A performance. They could attack any time."

The hospital room seemed too clean for that sentence.

Nero leaned back against the pillows, split lip dark, hands still marked by his own nails. "Yes."

Arion laughed once, without humor. "Of course you do."

"That is why Andrea lives."

"For now."

"For as long as useful."

Arion’s gaze moved toward the wall again. Beyond it, Andrea Vale was sealed under suppression, barely alive because the continent suddenly needed the contents of his skull more than it needed the satisfaction of his death.

"He has no family who can claim the body," Arion said slowly.

Nero’s mouth curved faintly. "Draxil will not want it."

"No." Arion’s expression emptied. "Not after what he did to Eva and Thomas."

For one moment, the silence held Thomas’s blood, Sylvia’s scream, Eva’s disbelief, and the corridor full of teeth.

Then Arion straightened, getting ready to work and hide the ugly world of dominants from the civilians.

"We report Andrea as dead."

Nero’s eyes sharpened. "Officially."

"Officially, he died during the breach. Mauled by a beast while under limited field clearance. His body is classified as contaminated, unrecoverable, and destroyed under infection protocol."

"Convenient."

"Necessary."

Nero studied him. "Every alarm contradicts that."

"Then every alarm gets cleaned."

Arion’s voice was flat now. Administrative. Terrible.

"The emergency messages will be scrubbed. The first-point breach becomes a temporary containment failure triggered by Andrea’s pheromone instability at the moment of death. No human-infected classification leaves the command archive. No mention of Andrea surviving. No mention of transfer. No mention of Sylvia."

Nero’s smile faded. "That is a lot of lies."

"Yes."

"Dean will hate it... Will you still do it?"

Arion looked toward the room where his mate was probably already standing over Sylvia’s scans and understanding too much.

His expression cracked for half a second.

Then sealed again.

"He will do it because if this spreads now, every noble house with a dominant child will panic, every temple advocate still breathing will start screaming prophecy, and every enemy will know exactly what we are afraid of."

Nero exhaled slowly.

Arion continued, each sentence harder than the last. "The sealed area will be monitored every minute. Pheromone traces, infection residue, sensor ghosts, air samples, soil samples, dead tissue, and anything that moved wrong. I want Hendrik’s people, Dean’s field team, Sahan analysts, and Otto’s internal guard layered over it until the ground itself feels interrogated."

Nero’s mouth twitched. "Poetic."

"I am furious."

"It suits you."

Arion ignored him. "Dax and Chris will be told."