Taming the Wild Beast of Alamina

Dax found Arion alone later that evening.

The Sahan delegation had finished the formal portion of the visit hours earlier, and most of the northern wing had gone quiet after dinner, leaving only security moving through the outer corridors and the muted hum of climate systems behind the old palace walls.

Arion had expected the conversation.

Dax had watched him too carefully that afternoon for it to be anything else.

They met in one of Otto’s private studies overlooking the eastern gardens, a smaller room furnished in dark wood and worn leather rather than anything intended for diplomacy. The windows had been left cracked despite the cool spring night, allowing damp air and the scent of flowering trees to move through the room.

Dax closed the door behind himself.

He had changed out of the formal coat he wore earlier and now stood in black trousers and a simple dark shirt, silver visible at his temples beneath the warm lamplight.

Arion remained near the window.

"You noticed something."

Dax did not bother pretending otherwise.

"There is corruption in your pheromones."

Arion’s expression barely changed.

For months, some part of him had been waiting for someone to say exactly that.

He looked toward the dark gardens outside.

"So it is confirmed."

Dax crossed the room slowly.

"I did not say that."

Arion turned.

"You just told me there is corruption in my pheromones."

"There is a tone underneath them that I recognize as corrupted."

Dax stopped near the low table between the sofas, his expression thoughtful rather than alarmed.

"That is not the same as saying you are infected now."

Arion folded his arms.

"Victor cannot find anything. Every gland sample is clean. Every blood panel is normal. Boreas reacted for months and eventually stopped caring."

"I know."

"Dean may have been neutralizing something through the bond without realizing it."

"I know that too."

Dax looked mildly irritated by being given information Nero had already passed along.

Arion exhaled.

"Then what exactly are you telling me?"

Dax studied him for several seconds before answering.

"That you do not smell dangerous."

Arion’s brows drew together.

"That is supposed to reassure me?"

"It should."

Dax moved toward the window beside him.

"When corrupted pheromones are actively infectious, unstable, or trying to overwrite something, there is a wrongness to them. Pressure. Instinctive rejection. Dominants react before they understand why."

Arion thought of Boreas.

"And you feel none of that?"

"No."

Dax leaned one shoulder against the stone frame.

"What I smell is quieter than that."

Arion waited.

Dax had known him from infancy.

Dax had been present through enough visits between Saha and Alamina that he had known Arion’s pheromonal profile before childhood dominance developed into anything recognizable.

That made the next words considerably harder to dismiss.

"You smell more like yourself when you were a child."

Arion stared at him.

Dax continued before he could misunderstand.

"Not identical. Your adult profile is still there. The vetiver, the sigma expression, everything you have been for years. But underneath it is something older."

"The corruption."

"Yes."

Arion’s jaw tightened.

Dax looked toward the gardens.

"You were infected at eight."

"I remember."

"You recovered because they forced manifestation early."

Arion’s expression darkened at the memory.

The fever.

The weeks in Saha.

Physicians who had eventually decided that activating a dominant gene far earlier than normal was less dangerous than allowing the corruption to continue consuming him.

His first induced rut had nearly killed him.

It had also saved him.

Dax had been there.

"You think it never left."

"I think we assumed recovery meant eradication."

Arion looked back toward the room.

"That sounds like a dangerous distinction."

"Maybe."

Dax’s voice remained calm.

"Or maybe the corruption was integrated into your development so early that some part of it simply became part of your baseline."

Arion was quiet.

For months, he had imagined the possibilities in increasingly unpleasant ways.

An infection hidden beneath Victor’s detection limits.

Something Claudia’s cocktail had awakened.

Something Dean’s ability had been suppressing to protect himself and their child.

Dax’s interpretation was different.

"The Veyran exposure could have triggered it."

"That is what I suspect."

"Then why did Boreas react?"

"Because Boreas knew your adult scent before that layer became noticeable again."

Arion looked at him.

"He recognized something unfamiliar."

"Or familiar in the wrong proportion."

That explanation was almost annoyingly simple.

Arion rubbed one hand over the back of his neck.

"I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that."

Dax’s expression softened by a fraction.

That, more than reassurance, showed that he understood how little control Arion currently had over the situation.

"You do nothing reckless."

Arion almost laughed.

"That narrows the options considerably."

"It is meant to."

Dax moved toward the low table and poured himself water from the glass carafe waiting there.

"Victor is looking for pathology."

"He is a corruption specialist."

"Exactly. If there is no pathology, he may be searching for something that is not there."

Arion remained by the window.

"You are suggesting I stop testing."

"No."

Dax took a drink, then set the glass down.

"I am suggesting you test the thing your body may actually recognize."

Arion’s attention sharpened.

Dax looked at him.

"An infected beast."

The room went still.

Arion’s first response was immediate.

"No."

"Under control."

"Dean is pregnant."

"I did not say take Dean."

"That means separating from him."

"For a controlled window, if Seven approves it."

Arion’s expression hardened.

Dax raised one hand.

"Listen first."

Arion reluctantly did.

"Take Victor. Use one of Hendrik’s secured sites. Sedated beast, containment barriers, full extraction protocols, no unnecessary exposure."

Dax’s tone had shifted into the same measured cadence he used when discussing military operations.

"You do not touch it. You do not release full pheromones unless Victor asks. You stand close enough for them to compare whatever is in you against something confirmed."

Arion looked away.

The dormant beasts had remained stable for months.

Going near one intentionally still felt like tempting an already unpleasant situation.

Dax continued.

"If the layer in your pheromones reacts to corrupted beast output, Victor may finally have something measurable."

"And if it does nothing?"

"Then perhaps that tells you something too."

Arion looked back.

Dax’s eyes were steady.

"It may genuinely be nothing dangerous."

Arion said nothing.

"It may simply be part of you," Dax continued. "Something formed when you were eight, buried under everything that developed afterward, then brought closer to the surface when Veyra exposed you again."

Arion’s gaze dropped briefly to his hands.

"And Dean?"

"If Victor believed you were endangering Dean, he would already have tried to isolate you regardless of how much you both objected."

That was true.

Victor was not sentimental enough to hesitate.

Dax stepped closer.

"You are assuming corruption means threat because that has been true in every case you know."

"It usually does."

"Usually."

Arion exhaled slowly.

There was still no answer.

Only a different direction.

Dax rested one hand briefly on his shoulder.

"You survived it once before anyone knew what you would become."

Arion looked at him.

"Perhaps they were wrong about what survival looked like."

The words stayed with him after Dax left.

Outside, the gardens moved softly beneath the spring wind.

Arion remained at the window, thinking about Victor, the beasts, the childhood infection, and the possibility that what everyone had spent months trying to find was not an invader inside him.

It might simply be an old part of Arion that had finally become loud enough to smell.

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