Taming the Wild Beast of Alamina

Matthias kept his attention on the distant tree line, where the restricted forest climbed the northern slope in layers of dark trunks and old snow. The wind had strengthened while they spoke, dragging loose powder across the frozen basin and pulling at the hem of his field coat, but he barely seemed to notice it.

"Dean is not taking you from the connection," he said. "We understand when you close it because you are working, sleeping, dealing with your duties, or simply living your own life. None of us expects you to remain aware of the forest every hour."

Arion remained beside the broken foundations of the old service station, his gloves tucked into one coat pocket and his hands bare despite the cold. Hendrik’s teams held their positions farther behind them, while Elias stayed beside Hunter near the vehicles, maintaining far more distance from Matthias than Arion now understood was accidental.

"Adrian was different," Matthias continued. "He wanted the infected gone. Not cured or restored. He believed that if Dominic refused to have children and eventually stopped answering us, we would disappear with time."

His jaw tightened before he finally turned toward Arion.

The calm reserve Arion had seen since Matthias returned to human form was gone. Fury remained there, but it had been worn down by something older and considerably more painful.

"We do not disappear."

Arion’s posture changed slightly.

Matthias lowered his gaze to his hands, flexing fingers that had only recently become human again.

"The corruption does not allow us to age normally once it progresses far enough. Starvation does not work the way it should. Injuries heal unless enough of the body is destroyed, and when one of us deteriorates beyond control, there are very few ways to end it."

Arion already knew one of them.

Matthias’s voice roughened.

"I had to eat men I served beside."

The wind moved between them, carrying the smell of frozen soil and pine resin from the forest.

"Friends," Matthias continued. "Soldiers who complained beside me after inspections, men who knew my wife, younger knights who were infected decades after Dominic died, civilians who wandered too far into territory they did not understand. Some remained themselves for years before the corruption overwhelmed whatever was left."

A tear slipped down his cheek. Matthias did not attempt to hide it.

"Then Claudia’s pheromone mixture reached the forest."

Arion’s attention sharpened.

"The same compound used in her palace?"

"Something related to it. I cannot tell you how it entered the territory. Perhaps infected animals carried it. Perhaps it was released deliberately. We only knew that the pressure changed."

Arion remembered the neurological suppression, the synthetic profiles layered over corrupted pheromones, and the chemical haze that had made thought itself difficult inside Claudia’s palace.

He had experienced it for hours.

Matthias and the others had endured its effects without anyone outside realizing they were still conscious enough to suffer.

He also remembered Andrea Vale and his association with Claudia.

"The younger knights lost control first," Matthias said. "Some attacked anything near them. Others injured themselves because they could feel something moving through their minds and could not escape it. The elders held them whenever we could."

His mouth twisted into something that barely resembled a smile.

"We had more practice surviving."

Arion glanced toward Elias. The younger man had folded his arms tightly across his chest despite the heavy winter jacket, his attention fixed on Matthias with a mixture of fear and something Arion now recognized as memory.

"The August attacks," Matthias said, "were never only about searching for royal blood."

Arion turned back to him.

"What were they for?"

"They gave us relief."

Matthias gestured toward the forest with one hand.

"For one month, we stopped restraining the beasts unless they attacked one another. They left the deeper territory, hunted, fought, exhausted themselves, and returned injured. The younger infected followed the same pressure. It reduced what the elders had to contain long enough for us to recover."

Arion’s expression hardened as the history rearranged itself in his mind.

For almost a century, Alamina had treated August as an annual assault from the restricted territory, reinforcing patrols and settlements while watching corrupted animals spill from the forest with no apparent pattern beyond violence and their repeated attraction to imperial blood.

Inside the forest, the same month had been something else entirely.

A controlled collapse.

The elders had been allowing the system to fail because maintaining it continuously was impossible.

"When Claudia’s mixture reached us," Matthias continued, "even August was not enough. The elders were barely holding themselves together, and the younger ones were worse."

His eyes closed briefly.

"That woman knew what those pheromones did."

Arion could not honestly deny it.

"She did."

Matthias wiped his cheek with the back of his hand.

"We stayed like that until you woke."

Arion knew what he meant without asking.

Whatever Veyra had changed inside him had reached much farther than he had understood.

"When you became clear to the forest, the pressure eased. The beasts stopped fighting every restraint. Knights who had spent years barely aware of themselves became quieter." Matthias met his eyes again. "Forgive me for seeing Theodore and feeling hope that it might never happen again."

Arion had entered the conversation expecting to uncover ambition beneath Matthias’s reverence for his son.

Some of it was still there.

The elders wanted continuity because they remembered what happened when Dominic died without someone capable of replacing him.

But the motive beneath that was not power.

It was exhaustion.

Arion looked toward the trees differently now, imagining people who had spent decades preserving what remained of younger infected minds, unable to age normally, unable to walk away, and forced to destroy friends when the corruption left no other option.

"You want to be restored," Arion said.

Matthias nodded.

"And after that?"

For the first time, there was nothing ceremonial in his expression.

"I want to live whatever life I have left."

His gaze dropped to his hands again.

"I want to sleep without hundreds of instincts pressing against my thoughts. I want to eat ordinary food, wake somewhere warm, and know nobody needs me to hold the forest together."

Arion waited.

Matthias drew a slow breath.

"And eventually, I want to die like a man."

That answer settled more heavily than anything else he had said.

An ordinary ending.

Arion finally understood that Theodore represented more than succession to Matthias. The child represented the possibility that the elders could step away without condemning everyone left behind to the same century of chaos.

It did not give them a claim over his son, but it did explain the reverence.

"And Theo?" Arion asked.

"Hope," Matthias said.

Arion held his gaze.

"Not obligation."

"No."

"If he grows up and wants nothing to do with this, that choice remains his."

Matthias hesitated only briefly before nodding.

"Yes."

Arion studied him for another moment before shifting his attention back toward the forest.

"How many elders want to leave?"

Matthias followed his gaze.

"All of them."

Arion remained silent as the wind swept another thin layer of snow across the basin.

For the first time, he understood that the oldest infected were not waiting for another ruler.

They were waiting for permission to stop.