Taming the Wild Beast of Alamina

Beasts should have followed blood, heat, pheromones, and panic. They should have slammed themselves against the strongest scent on the field and died there, stupid and hungry.

These turned, shielded themselves, and attacked only when the chance arose, as opposed to the previous behavior of attacking regardless of their chances of success.

Nero saw it from the left, fire still burning along his blade, human-infected bodies falling apart in blue-white ash around him.

Arion saw it from the center.

Hendrik saw it from the command map.

”North-east deviation,” Hendrik snapped. ”They are not pushing the line. They are bypassing.”

Dean’s neutralization field flared. ”Toward what?”

For one heartbeat, no one answered.

Then Otto’s voice came through, cold enough to cut bone. ”First resistance point.”

The field went silent in all the wrong places.

There were ten resistance points built behind the forward line. Ten civilian-secure locks hidden under evacuation protocol, medical corridors, false supply depots, reinforced shelters, and old palace routes no map outside the command circle should have held.

Andrea Vale knew about two.

Only commanders knew all ten.

And the first resistance point was where the observation convoy had been moved after the second alert.

Where Minerva’s civilian staff had been redirected.

Where Rina was.

Where Sylvia was.

Thomas went utterly still.

Andrea, kneeling in the mud with his wrist broken and blood on his mouth, started to laugh.

Thomas heard it and his hand tightened around Andrea’s collar.

Andrea smiled up at him, face pale with pain and triumph. ”You understand now.”

Thomas hit him once across the mouth.

Andrea spat blood into the mud and laughed harder. ”She is there, is she not?”

The right flank blurred at the edges of Thomas’s vision.

Sylvia.

Andrea’s deep blue eyes gleamed. ”Beta bodies take infection so beautifully. They do not fight it the same way alphas or omegas do. No field, no resistance worth admiring, only meat learning obedience.”

Thomas’s fist struck him again.

This time Andrea’s head snapped sideways.

Nero arrived in a gust of heat and burned air, violet eyes bright with a violence that no longer looked elegant.

”Lancaster,” he said, his tone so cold that it seemed to freeze the air around them.

Andrea looked at him and smiled through blood. ”Too late, Your Highness.”

Nero tilted his head.

Thomas hauled Andrea up by the front of his armor.

Andrea’s feet barely found the ground.

”You wanted Thomas to hear it,” Nero said softly. ”How theatrical.”

Andrea’s smile widened. ”I wanted him to imagine it.”

Thomas’s face changed as his resolution set in.

He slammed Andrea downward, knee driving into his chest hard enough that something cracked. Andrea choked, body arching. Thomas struck him once at the side of the head with the reinforced grip of his pistol.

Andrea collapsed into the mud, unconscious.

For a second, the field held its breath.

Then Thomas shoved Andrea toward Nero’s boots. ”Yours.”

Nero looked delighted and murderous. ”Go.”

Thomas was already moving.

”Thomas,” Arion’s voice cut through the command.

”I am going to first point.”

”You will not go alone.”

”I am the closest to it.”

”You are exposed.”

Thomas did not slow. ”Then catch up.”

He tore across the damaged right flank while his unit shifted to cover the gap behind him. Beasts screamed from the forest line. False bodies collapsed under Dean’s field. Real ones hit the barricades with wet, heavy impacts, claws shearing metal, jaws cracking against reinforced mesh.

Ahead, the first resistance point lit red on every command display.

Breach imminent.

Inside the secured corridor, alarms screamed.

Sylvia had stopped pacing.

That was how she knew something had become truly wrong.

The floor vibrated once. Then again.

Rina grabbed the edge of the table. ”That was not artillery.”

Minerva’s face had gone cold. ”No.”

A guard shouted from the outer hall.

The monitors flashed.

First resistance point compromised.

Sylvia’s blood turned cold, and her hands clenched tightly, her knuckles white.

A second later, the reinforced door at the far end of the corridor buckled.

Something hit it from the other side with enough force to bend the locking spine.

Rina stepped in front of Sylvia before Sylvia understood what she was doing.

Minerva stood.

”Behind me,” she said.

There was no panic in her voice.

That almost made Sylvia panic more and forget that Minerva was in fact a dominant omega trained to fight when needed.

The door split.

A beast forced its head through first, jaws opening around a shriek that sprayed black saliva across the polished floor. One guard fired into its mouth. Another cut at the joint of its foreleg as it dragged itself through metal and security glass.

The beast did not stop.

It tore the first guard in half before his second shot landed.

Sylvia screamed.

Rina pulled her back hard enough to hurt.

The beast lunged.

Then the corridor wall exploded inward.

Thomas came through smoke, dust, and broken emergency paneling like a punishment given human shape.

He hit the beast from the side, blade punching through its neck and out beneath the jaw. Momentum carried both of them into the opposite wall. The beast thrashed, claws shredding through his shoulder armor.

Thomas did not release it.

He drove his pistol into the wound and fired until the skull burst apart in black, wet fragments.

The body dropped.

For half a second, all Sylvia saw was him.

Alive.

Covered in blood that was not all his.

Then another beast hit the corridor behind him.

Thomas turned so fast that Sylvia’s eyes couldn’t register it, but it was a fraction of a second to slow.

A claw caught him across the side, tearing through armor at the ribs. Blood sprayed dark against the wall.

Sylvia’s breath vanished.

”Tom!”

Thomas staggered one step.

Then he planted himself between the beast and the room, weapon rising again, his blood running down his side and dripping onto the shattered floor.

His eyes found Sylvia for the briefest second. Those brown eyes were calm but furious that she had seen.

”Stay behind me,” he said.

The second beast charged.

Thomas lifted his blade.

And the corridor closed around him in teeth.