Taming the Wild Beast of Alamina

Dean felt the boundary of his field as clearly as he felt his own skin.

Anything that entered that invisible radius around him lost its pheromonal advantage, and, with enough concentration from Dean, anything more complicated attached to it. Abilities dulled. Instinctive pressure disappeared. The subtle biological signals dominants used without consciously thinking about them ceased to matter.

Today, Dean was using it differently.

He kept the field tight around himself and Arion as they moved through the forest, erasing what they could of their presence while never allowing his husband more than a step away.

It made the terrain irritating.

Snake Island had apparently been constructed from wet limestone, roots and things specifically designed to catch Dean’s boots.

Arion caught his elbow before he slipped on a moss-covered stone.

Dean steadied himself without speaking.

They had passed the kilometer mark eight minutes earlier.

No communication now unless necessary.

Hunter had moved away toward the access road, following a route that would put him between the villa and its ordinary security. Nero and Hale had disappeared south toward the younger alpha.

Dean could no longer sense any of them.

That was deliberate.

Ahead, the older dominant alpha continued his morning patrol.

They had watched him long enough to establish the pattern before moving closer.

North wall.

Outer path.

A short stop near the generator building.

Then down along the edge of the property where the forest grew thickest before circling back toward the residence.

Every day.

Nearly the same times.

Nearly the same route.

The repetition should have made him easier to approach.

Dean trusted it less because of that.

The man looked relaxed.

That meant absolutely nothing.

Dominant alphas could appear relaxed while preparing to kill someone. Dean had grown up around enough of them to know that a loose posture and hands outside one’s pockets were not evidence of safety.

The alpha wore a dark field coat over heavy trousers and boots, with no visible weapon except a knife secured at his hip. His pale hair was shorter than it had appeared in the surveillance photographs, almost entirely grey beneath the winter light.

He was large.

Not Arion or Nero large.

Still large enough that Dean would rather not discover how much strength remained once his pheromones and ability were removed.

Arion moved behind Dean through a narrow gap between two trees.

Dean adjusted immediately, shifting half a step so the field never slipped away from him.

Arion’s hand touched the center of his back once.

A warning.

Dean stopped.

The alpha ahead had paused.

Dean’s breathing slowed.

The forest around them remained damp and quiet. Water fell intermittently from the pine branches overhead, tapping against leaves and stone. Somewhere farther downslope, a bird called once.

The alpha turned his head.

Dean watched him through a screen of bare branches.

Nothing in his posture had become visibly aggressive.

That made Dean’s pulse climb anyway.

The man’s gaze moved slowly over the trees.

Arion’s fingers closed briefly around Dean’s wrist.

Dean did not move.

His field remained compressed around them.

He could feel Arion at his back, close enough that the sleeve of his dark coat brushed Dean’s shoulder when the wind shifted.

The alpha stood perhaps sixty meters away.

Too far for Dean’s ability to affect him.

The field was only protecting Dean and Arion from detection methods that depended on pheromones or abilities crossing into their immediate space.

Whatever the old alpha had used four years ago to notice surveillance from nearly a kilometer away, Dean wanted it to reach them and find nothing useful.

For several seconds, that seemed to work.

The alpha looked toward the slope.

Then toward the road.

His expression remained neutral.

Dean almost relaxed.

The man turned back toward the residence.

One step.

Then he stopped again.

Dean’s stomach tightened.

Arion shifted fractionally behind him.

The alpha looked toward their section of forest.

Directly this time.

Dean felt Arion shift behind him.

The man could not see them clearly yet. The ground between them rose in broken limestone shelves crowded with pine trunks and winter brush, and Dean could only make out part of the alpha’s body through the gaps himself.

But he was no longer scanning randomly.

He had noticed something.

Dean looked sideways at Arion.

The relaxed tourist from that morning was gone completely. Arion’s golden eyes remained fixed on the alpha, his weight balanced beneath the dark green coat, one hand loose at his side.

Dean understood the problem at once.

If they withdrew now, the alpha would know there had been something to find. He would return to the villa alert, perhaps warn the younger man, and their single advantage would disappear.

They needed him close.

More importantly, they needed his attention somewhere other than Arion.

Dean leaned back just enough that his shoulder touched his husband’s chest.

"Let him see me," he whispered.

Arion’s gaze dropped to him.

Dean did not need to explain the rest.

The alpha knew the terrain. If he found an unidentified movement in the forest, he would approach cautiously and search for the threat. If instead he found Dean standing somewhere he clearly should not be, young, recognizable, and visibly alone, Dean could give him something much more immediate to focus on.

Arion.

Hidden inside Dean’s one-meter field, stripped of the pheromonal presence that would normally announce a sigma before he ever moved.

Arion’s jaw tightened.

He did not like it.

That was different from thinking it would not work.

Dean met his eyes.

After a second, Arion released the back of Dean’s coat and moved behind the nearest pine, staying close enough that Dean could feel him at the edge of his field.

Dean waited until he was positioned.

Then he stepped deliberately out from cover.

His boots scraped across loose stone as he crossed into a narrow opening between the trees.

The sound carried.

The old alpha’s head snapped toward him.

Dean stopped in plain view.

For perhaps two seconds, neither moved.

The alpha’s surprise was almost satisfying.

Dean knew what he presented: slight beside the dominant men around him, pale blond hair visible beneath the hood of his dark winter jacket, and empty hands hanging loosely at his sides.

Nothing that explained why the crown prince’s omega was standing alone in a restricted western forest.

The alpha’s attention locked completely onto him.

"Hey!"

Dean raised his eyebrows as though he had been caught somewhere mildly inconvenient rather than precisely where he intended to be.

The alpha strode toward him.

"This is a restricted zone!"

Dean did not retreat.

Thirty-five meters.

The man’s coat shifted with his longer stride, one hand already moving toward the knife at his hip. His pheromones thickened around him, not yet an attack but enough warning that an ordinary omega would have felt the command to stop, submit, and explain.

Dean felt none of it inside his own field.

He let the alpha believe he had him alone.

Behind the nearest pine, concealed less than a meter away and completely inside Dean’s neutralizing radius, Arion waited for the man to come close enough to kill.

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