Taming the Wild Beast of Alamina

Leaving Saha took considerably longer than arriving.

Part of the delay was Theodore.

Dax wanted another ten minutes with him. Chris claimed Dax had already had twenty and took Theo anyway. Nayra appeared with a soft cloth book she insisted was small enough to fit in the travel bag, while Jax contributed a wooden puzzle designed for a child at least two years older and defended himself by saying Theo would grow into it.

Lucas and Trevor were marginally more reasonable.

Lucas held his grandson near the entrance to the private departure hall, smoothing the dark hair away from Theo’s forehead while Trevor checked, for the third time, whether Dean had everything necessary for the flight.

"We have bottles," Dean said.

"Medication?"

"Yes."

"Extra clothes?"

"Three sets."

"Four," Matthias corrected from beside the luggage.

Dean looked at him.

Matthias remained expressionless.

"Four."

Trevor appeared satisfied.

Nero did not.

He had been carrying Theodore for most of the final half hour and had resisted every increasingly obvious suggestion that the baby needed to be returned to one of his actual parents.

Arion eventually held out both hands.

"Nero."

"He is comfortable."

Theo was indeed comfortable, one cheek pressed against Nero’s shoulder while his fingers played lazily with a strand of white-blond hair.

"He has a plane to board."

"So do I."

"You are not coming."

Nero frowned.

Dean kissed Lucas goodbye, embraced Trevor, then turned in time to see Arion physically retrieve their son from his godfather.

Nero looked personally betrayed.

"You could leave him for a week."

"No," both fathers answered.

Chris laughed from behind Dax.

Theo, entirely unconcerned with the custody dispute, reached back toward Nero and giggled.

"That is emotional manipulation," Arion informed him.

"He learned quickly," Dax said.

Nero kissed Theo’s forehead before finally stepping away.

"Come back before he forgets me."

"He has seen you for four days," Dean said. "He will survive."

"That was not the concern."

The farewells ended only when Hunter began looking meaningfully toward the aircraft.

Several hours later, Alamina appeared beneath them.

By the time they returned to the Crown Prince Palace, Theo had slept through most of the flight, woken just long enough to eat, and then become furious when anyone suggested that a proper nap should happen somewhere other than Dean’s chest.

Home corrected him almost immediately.

The familiar scent of the suite, Boreas’s enthusiastic inspection, and the lingering mixture of mint lemonade and vetiver through the private rooms apparently restored the world to acceptable order.

Within two days, their ordinary schedule returned.

Dean resumed the strange version of maternity leave that involved answering correspondence during Theo’s naps and attending selected meetings remotely. Arion returned to the administrative wing, where Zyon presented him with enough accumulated work to make Saha feel like an irresponsible vacation.

The forest waited as well.

Not the ancient creature in the north.

That remained asleep.

The first scheduled restoration did not.

Victor had selected the youngest of the three knights for the initial attempt, partly because his infection was believed to be the shortest and partly because Matthias remembered enough of him to confirm that his human body had been fully developed before transformation.

His name was Leon Varek.

Twenty-seven when infected.

Approximately thirty-four now, assuming ordinary chronological age still meant anything after seven years inside the forest.

Arion read the medical file twice on the morning of the procedure.

Then Dean took it out of his hands.

"You are going to memorize the paper and somehow still know nothing useful."

They were standing near the bedroom windows while Theo crawled across the carpet between them, currently occupied with trying to reach Boreas’s enormous front paw.

Arion looked at his mate.

"That is reassuring."

"It wasn’t supposed to be."

Dean handed the tablet back.

"You changed Elias. You changed Matthias. You know more now than you did either time."

"That does not guarantee Leon survives."

"No."

Dean stepped closer and straightened the collar of Arion’s dark field jacket.

"But you are not doing this carelessly."

Theo reached Boreas.

The dog lifted his paw just before tiny fingers could grab fur.

Dean glanced down.

"Even Boreas has developed better risk management than you."

Arion kissed him.

"That was unnecessary."

"It was accurate."

Theo protested from the floor because neither parent was paying attention to him.

Arion crouched, lifted him, and breathed in the warm, faintly sweet trace of his developing pheromones before kissing his temple.

Then he handed him to Dean.

"I’ll call."

"I know."

The restoration site had been prepared near the same controlled perimeter where Matthias first returned to human form.

Victor monitored from the reinforced medical unit this time rather than remotely. Hendrik had positioned security teams well beyond the immediate clearing, while Elias and Matthias stood on opposite sides of the observation line.

Leon arrived from the forest on four limbs.

His transformed body was smaller than Matthias’s had been but far less human than Elias’s, black tissue rising along his spine in ridges while elongated arms ended in curved claws that cut shallow lines through the damp spring earth.

He stopped when he saw Arion.

Black eyes fixed on him.

A thought reached Arion almost immediately.

Please.

Arion released his pheromones.

Vetiver moved through the clearing, followed by the darker metallic current that made the black gland-lines surface beneath his skin.

Leon lowered himself.

Victor’s voice came through the earpiece.

"Slowly. Monitor his breathing throughout. If there is any sign of cardiovascular collapse, stop."

Arion barely heard the rest.

He focused on the person beneath the corruption.

Human proportions.

Human hands.

A body that belonged to Leon rather than the forest.

The transformation began.

Black armor softened first, withdrawing beneath skin as the spine shortened and shoulders narrowed. Claws split and receded into fingers. The distorted jaw reshaped itself with a series of wet, unpleasant cracks while Leon trembled hard enough that both palms struck the ground.

Arion held the change steady until the last black ridge disappeared.

A naked man remained on his hands and knees in the grass.

For several seconds, Leon did not move.

The medics approached only after Victor gave permission, one of them wrapping a thermal blanket around his shoulders while another knelt to check his pulse.

Leon stared at his hands.

He turned them over, flexed his fingers, and touched his face.

Then his brown eyes widened.

"My head..."

Arion stepped closer.

Leon looked up at him.

"It’s quiet."

His voice broke.

He pressed both hands against his temples as though waiting for something to return.

Nothing did.

"No one else is in there."

Matthias lowered his gaze.

Elias looked away.

Leon laughed once, then again, the sound collapsing into something closer to a sob.

He tried to stand.

His knees failed beneath him.

One medic reached for him, but Leon caught himself first and remained there, almost kneeling in the wet grass with the blanket slipping from one shoulder.

"I’m human."

Arion said nothing.

Leon stared at his own hands again, tears running freely down his face.

"My thoughts are mine."

That seemed to matter even more.

He looked up at Arion with an expression so overwhelmed it bordered on reverence.

Then he bowed his head and laughed through the tears.

For the first time in seven years, there was nobody inside his mind except himself.