Taming the Wild Beast of Alamina

Andrea Vale had never enjoyed being underestimated by idiots.

Unfortunately, the world was full of them.

It was worse, somehow, when the intelligent ones watched him and pretended not to.

He stood beside Eva with one hand near the stabilizing band locked around his wrist, his assigned range clearly marked on the field display projected across the inside of his visor. Ten meters forward. Six meters left. No independent command access. No open channel to Draxil units without Sahan relay approval.

A leash.

A very elegant leash, polished with diplomatic language and Eva’s old plea until everyone could pretend it was a kindness.

Andrea had smiled when they granted it.

He had thanked them.

He had even lowered his eyes at the correct moment, as if the humiliation of his field interdiction being temporarily lifted under foreign supervision had humbled him.

It had not.

It had merely taught him how many eyes were on his hands.

On the right flank, Thomas Lancaster moved like a wall given a pulse. His soldiers followed every gesture with brutal precision, Rohan discipline folding seamlessly into Alaminian command. Beasts struck the flank and broke against it, not because Thomas was loud, but because he was exact.

Annoying man.

On the left, Nero Ezekiel was worse.

He barely seemed to fight.

That was the infuriating part.

The Sahan prince moved through the field as if the beasts had told him their intentions in advance. A step back before claws struck. A turn of the wrist. A shot. A blade. A command spoken softly enough that the comms caught it and the Sahan unit obeyed before Andrea even understood what had been ordered.

Beautiful, controlled, inhumanly calm.

Andrea hated him on principle.

At the center, Arion and Dean held the line.

Arion was the obvious danger. That was tolerable. Dominant alphas like him were weapons the world liked to parade as men. Andrea understood weapons.

Dean was the problem.

The Crown Consort’s neutralization field moved through the battlefield like clear, cold water, cutting panic from the soldiers, thinning infected pressure, and steadying unstable dominants before they realized they had begun to slip.

Andrea kept his mouth relaxed.

His face was appropriately focused.

His pheromones were gentle.

Beside him, Eva exhaled shakily, then straightened.

”There,” Andrea murmured, just for her. ”Better.”

Eva did not look at him, but her shoulders eased by a fraction.

He felt it.

That old, familiar satisfaction.

Eva had forgotten how much she relied on him.

That was the cruelty of long strain. If a person suffered continuously for years, pain became weather. Tension became personality. Exhaustion became duty. She no longer remembered what it felt like to be right until Andrea gave her just enough of it back.

Not enough to free her.

Enough to make her continue.

His pheromones slid around her field with the practiced delicacy of a hand at the nape of a neck. Stabilizing, yes. That was what the files said. That was what the doctors believed. That was what Eva had told herself when she still wanted to believe there was something soft in him worth saving.

He stabilized dominant alphas.

He helped them function.

He kept them standing.

Barely.

Eva raised her weapon and fired into a beast breaking through the forward line. The shot struck cleanly through the infected joint. The creature collapsed, shrieking.

”Well done,” Andrea said.

Eva’s mouth tightened. ”Focus on your role.”

”I am.”

He was.

That was the amusing part.

No one could accuse him of failing.

Every reading would show stabilization support. Every visible movement remained inside his assigned limits. Every word he spoke to Eva could be interpreted as encouragement. Every breath of pheromone remained within the range permitted by the temporary exception.

He could feel Sahan sensors on him.

Feel them measuring.

Feel Nero’s attention from the left like a cold blade resting against his throat.

Andrea did not look at him.

Looking in any other direction than the field he was assigned to would be foolish.

Nero was waiting for vanity.

Thomas was waiting for error.

Dean was waiting for disturbance.

Arion was waiting for permission.

And somewhere behind the command line, Otto and Hendrik were certainly waiting for enough evidence to stop dressing murder as procedure.

Andrea was not stupid.

That was what irritated him most about all of this.

They thought he would try something during the first engagement. That he would be so desperate to prove himself, so arrogant after being granted access, so eager to use the beasts while everyone watched the opening clash, that he would reveal his hand immediately.

Insulting.

The hunt would not end today.

Beast season never moved in one clean wave. It came in pulses, migration breaks, false quiet, night pressure, and sudden breaches. Two weeks at minimum, if the models held. Longer if the infected clusters split across the eastern ridge.

Two weeks of rotations, exhaustion, and commanders learning where the alarms were too sensitive and where they could be ignored.

Two weeks of Eva remembering that she needed him.

Two weeks of Nero watching too closely until even monsters became boring.

Andrea smiled faintly as another beast threw itself against the forward line.

No.

Not today.

Today, he would be useful, he would be disciplined, monitored, insultingly safe, and he would keep Eva standing just poorly enough that she believed the strain belonged to the field and the relief belonged to him.

”Eva,” he said softly.

Her breath caught.

”Left,” he warned softly.

She turned, shot, and the beast coming low through the smoke slammed into the dirt before it reached her knee.

Her pulse spiked.

His pheromones steadied it.

Barely.

Perfectly.

Across the field, Nero’s head turned.

Andrea did not smile this time.

He only adjusted his glove, lifted his eyes toward the next wave, and remained exactly where his leash allowed him to stand.

A patient man, after all, did not fight the trap on the first day.

He learned his lesson and knew that the first one to take down was the wall on his right.