Taming the Wild Beast of Alamina

Sebastian had never liked ceremonies.

Not because he disliked formality. Formality was useful. Predictable. It provided people with rules to hide behind and paths to follow when their emotions became too strong to cope without a system.

He disliked ceremonies because they trapped everyone in the same room in the name of... ’honor.’

There were too many eyes.

Too many cameras.

Too many well-placed loyalties beneath white silk and gold banners pretending they hadn’t spent the last month negotiating, threatening, bleeding, bargaining or lying to get here.

Sebastian stood at Dean’s side with Zion beside him, both positioned where Dean’s immediate family and closest royal blood were expected to stand. The placement made sense. Sebastian was Dean’s older brother. Zion, Crown Prince of Palatine, was their cousin and the same age as Sebastian. Twenty-five. Old enough, supposedly, to understand the weight of royal events without wanting to escape through the nearest service corridor.

Zion looked perfectly calm.

That was because Zion had been trained by Palatine.

Palatine produced royals with serene faces and long memories.

Sebastian produced silence through resentment and practice.

Beside him, Zion adjusted the cuff of his formal jacket, pale embroidery catching against the dark fabric. ”You are staring.

Sebastian did not move his gaze. ”No.”

”You are.”

”You are imagining things.”

”I was raised in Palatine,” Zion said mildly. ”Imagining things is considered inefficient unless there is evidence.”

Sebastian’s jaw tightened; he was going to hit Zion later for this.

Unfortunately, there was evidence.

Nero of Saha stood across the ceremony hall among the Sahan delegation, dressed in formal black with violet and gold details, white-blond hair falling with deliberate ease around his shoulders. He looked immaculate in the way all Sahan royals seemed to look immaculate, as if chaos itself paused at their collars and decided not to risk offense.

He was not looking at Sebastian.

That was the problem.

Nero had spent months staring directly at Sebastian, too quietly, with the kind of attention that felt like a hand on the back of his neck from across the room.

Now, on the day of Dean’s wedding, Nero stood beside his younger siblings and watched the aisle.

Respectfully.

Properly.

As if he had learned restraint overnight and decided to wear it like another ceremonial layer.

Sebastian hated it.

Which was irrational.

He hated that more.

Zion followed his gaze and made a small sound.

Sebastian’s eyes cut toward him. ”Don’t.”

”I haven’t said anything.”

”You sounded like you were about to.”

”I was considering it.”

”Consider silence for once in your life.”

Zion’s mouth curved faintly. ”You are very defensive for a man not staring.”

Sebastian looked back toward the aisle. ”I am assessing the room.”

”Nero is not the room.”

”He is part of the room.”

”He is two positions down from King Dax and currently pretending not to look back at you.”

Sebastian went still.

Zion’s smile sharpened by half a degree.

There were disadvantages to having cousins.

Especially intelligent ones.

Especially royal ones.

Especially those who had known you since childhood and had once witnessed you lock yourself in a library for three hours because a tutor had attempted to discuss courtship prospects with enthusiasm.

”Nero is not pretending anything,” Sebastian said.

”Of course.”

”That tone is offensive.”

”It was meant to be.”

Sebastian inhaled slowly.

Across the hall, Nero turned his head slightly to respond to something Nayra said. His expression changed by almost nothing, but the corner of his mouth shifted. His younger sister looked entirely unimpressed, arms folded with the confidence of a fifteen-year-old princess who had already decided most adults were a disappointing species.

Jax, their youngest brother, was fidgeting with a block puzzle while a guard monitored him with the focus of someone preventing a minor coup.

Dax stood behind them, calm, dangerous, and mildly entertained. Chris remained beside him, quieter, elegant, less theatrical, but there was something in the way Dax’s hand stayed at Chris’s back that made Sebastian understand too much.

Saha did not love gently.

It endured, possessed, waited, and, if necessary, moved nations around the person it wanted.

Sebastian knew that.

Everyone knew that.

He simply had the misfortune of knowing it while being wanted by Dax’s son.

The thought should have filled him with alarm.

It did.

Mostly.

Zion leaned closer, voice low enough not to carry. ”You could speak to him after the ceremony.”

”No.”

”I did not say marry him.”

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. ”That was too quick.”

”I felt clarification was necessary.”

”It wasn’t.”

”You looked like you needed it.”

Sebastian said nothing.

The orchestra shifted, low and warm, preparing for the main entrance. Around them, the hall tightened into attention. Otto and Minerva took their positions near the imperial dais. Trevor and Lucas stood not far away, both looking composed in completely different and equally concerning ways. Arion’s siblings straightened. Sylvia stood near Thomas Lancaster, trying so hard not to look at him that everyone with eyes and one functioning instinct could tell she was thinking about nothing else.

Sebastian caught that, too.

He did not know what to do with the fact that Sylvia looked like a woman holding a secret with both hands.

Nero’s gaze moved briefly toward her, then away too fast for most to notice.

Sebastian noticed.

Something unpleasant shifted inside him.

Nero knew something.

Nero always knew something. He collected silence the way other royals collected alliances. He stood in rooms and let people underestimate the patience behind that beautiful face until they realized, too late, that he had already understood the nature of their desire.

Sebastian despised that.

He admired it.

He wanted no part of it.

A lie, then.

His day was going wonderfully.

Zion watched him with irritating calm. ”You’re thinking too loudly.”

”You cannot possibly know that.”

”You look like you are insulting yourself internally.”

”I am.”

”About Nero?”

”About you.”

Zion smiled. ”Unconvincing.”

Sebastian looked ahead, refusing to give him the satisfaction of another answer.

Then the main doors unlocked.

The soft mechanical sound was nearly swallowed by the first swell of music, but it moved through the hall like a signal sent beneath the skin.

Minerva’s fingers moved once against her gown.

Otto’s face became imperial in full.

Trevor went so still that even from where he stood, Sebastian could feel the pressure of a dominant alpha holding himself back through force of love and Lucas’s hand on his sleeve.

Dax leaned back slightly.

Chris looked toward the doors with an expression that made Sebastian wonder how many years it took for a person to become used to being chosen in public.

Nero’s attention sharpened.

Sebastian forgot, for one second, to look away.

Their eyes met.

The hall vanished.

No.

Not vanished.

It remained in too much detail. White silk. Gold banners. Glass. Cameras. Flowers. Zion’s quiet presence beside him. The music rising. Dean behind the doors. The weight of empire pressing into the floor beneath their feet.

But Nero’s gaze cut through all of it.

Nero looked at Sebastian as if he had already decided he could wait through empires, ceremonies, brothers, cousins, distance, refusals, and every wall Sebastian built badly enough to pretend it was permanent.

Then Nero looked away first.

Sebastian hated him for that.

The doors opened.

Light spilled across the aisle.

Arion appeared first, black and gold and severe enough to make the entire hall remember who he was.

Then Dean stepped beside him.

Sebastian’s breath caught.

His little brother looked impossible.

Black and silver, sharp and luminous, the high collar and embroidered jacket made him look less like someone entering a royal family and more like someone who had forced the royal family to widen the door. The long dark fall of fabric behind him moved like night across polished stone.

For a moment, Sebastian forgot Nero completely.

That was his brother.

Dean, who had once bitten through etiquette lessons with sarcasm and spite. Dean, who had chosen Arion with the same reckless confidence he used to choose danger, love, and every argument he had no intention of losing. Dean, who now walked beside the Crown Prince of Alamina as if the empire had not swallowed him, but recognized him.

Sebastian’s throat tightened.

Zion’s voice came quietly beside him. ”He looks happy.”

Sebastian blinked once. ”He looks dangerous.”

”That too.”

Dean’s gaze moved briefly over their side of the hall.

It found Sebastian.

For one second, the black-and-silver, impossible, imperial figure softened into Dean.

Younger brother.

Ridiculous menace.

Family.

Sebastian held his gaze and inclined his head.

Dean’s mouth curved faintly.

Then he continued walking with Arion.

Together.

Not one leading and the other following.

Together.

Sebastian felt something in his chest loosen despite every effort to remain composed.

The music rose.

And across the hall, beneath the weight of ceremony and cameras and everything still unsaid, Sebastian felt Nero’s attention return to him.

For the first time, Sebastian wondered whether he was not afraid Nero would eventually stop wanting him.

He was afraid Nero would not and that this silence was a wick already burning.