Taming the Wild Beast of Alamina

The second beast hit Thomas like a thrown vehicle.

His blade caught it through the open jaw, steel scraping bone, but the impact drove him back against the broken corridor wall. The wound at his ribs tore wider. Heat spilled down his side, slick beneath armor, but Thomas did not let the beast push past him.

Behind him, Sylvia was breathing too fast, her eyes widened in horror and panic.

That was more important than blood.

Thomas shoved the beast back, twisted his blade free, and fired twice into the exposed throat. The skull ruptured, black infected fluid splattering across his chest and the cracked floor.

The body fell.

Another scream came from the breached door, several beasts trying to get through the gap in the wall.

Thomas’s eyes darkened.

—

On the central field, Dean saw the first resistance point flash red again.

He swore under his breath and opened a channel only for him and Arion. ”Do you think...”

”Even if the prophecy is real, the infection will not pass the second point,” Arion said, his voice stern enough to sound like command and fear at the same time. ”I will make sure of it.”

Dean closed his eyes for half a second.

The prophecy.

Roslew compromised. Defense collapsed. Dominants falling.

No.

Not today.

His field sharpened until the edges of it hurt.

Then Nero’s voice slid into the private commanders’ channel, bright and poisonous. ”Hey, lovely birds, it is not the time to discuss secrets.”

Dean’s eyes snapped open. ”Nero.”

”Thomas is close to berserk.”

Arion went still.

Across the battlefield, Nero dragged Andrea Vale by the back of his armor as if the unconscious man weighed no more than an irritating coat. Andrea’s broken wrist hung at a wrong angle. His mouth was bloody, his face slack, but he was alive.

Unfortunately.

Eva had already been pulled back under medical care. Her marker blinked amber, then stabilized under Dean’s neutralization field and a Draxil medical unit. She would live.

Andrea was kept alive, though Nero had not decided yet how much he resented that fact.

Hale ran beside him, burning through the remaining half-formed beasts before they could reform around the flank. ”You are taking him with you?”

”Yes.”

”Why?”

”Because he has been useful exactly once in his life. I am preserving the miracle.”

Hale looked deeply unhappy with that answer.

Nero smiled without warmth and lifted his gaze toward the first resistance point on the command map.

Thomas’s pheromones were visible to him now, even through filters, blood, smoke, steel, and panic. To ordinary sensors, they appeared as dominant-alpha pressure spiking under combat injury.

To Nero, they were a storm trying to become a blade.

Thomas was not losing control because he was afraid.

He was losing control because Sylvia was behind him.

Because beasts were between him and her.

Because Andrea had said exactly the right cruelty to make restraint feel like a waste of time.

”He is going to tear the corridor apart,” Nero said.

Arion’s voice dropped. ”How long?”

”Minutes. Less if Sylvia bleeds.”

Dean’s field flared. ”She is not bleeding.”

”Then let’s pray that it remains that way.”

—

Inside the resistance point, Minerva had drawn Rina and Sylvia back behind the overturned command table. Two guards still stood. One was shaking. One had a broken arm and kept firing anyway.

Thomas stood between them and the breach.

The next beast came through the torn door sideways, half its body crushed from forcing itself past reinforced metal. It should have died there. Instead, it dragged itself forward on exposed ribs and claws, shrieking with a human note twisted through the sound.

Thomas met it halfway.

His blade took one foreleg off.

His boot crushed the second.

The beast snapped at his thigh; he put his pistol into its eye and fired until its skull emptied against the wall.

Sylvia’s hands were clamped over her mouth.

Rina’s face had gone pale.

Minerva watched Thomas with the cold calculation of someone who knew exactly what a dominant alpha looked like one step before breaking.

”Commander Lancaster,” she said.

Thomas did not turn. ”Your Majesty, stay back.”

”That was not a request for instruction.”

Another beast slammed into the doorway, using the corpse to push through.

Thomas exhaled once.

The air changed.

Sylvia felt it before she understood it.

The pressure.

Not like Dean’s field. Not like Arion’s steady dominance. Thomas’s pheromones were heavier, darker, trained into discipline for years, and now cracking open from the inside.

Every surviving guard stiffened.

Rina’s breath caught.

Minerva stepped forward.

”Thomas,” Sylvia said.

His shoulders locked.

For one heartbeat, he almost looked back.

The beast used that second, and its claw hooked into the wound at his ribs and ripped.

Blood sprayed across the floor.

Thomas made a sound that was not pain.

It was worse.

A growl tore out of him, deep enough that the corridor lights flickered as if the building itself wanted to retreat. He caught the beast by the throat with one hand and drove it backward into the wall so hard the stone cracked.

Then he started crushing.

Bone broke under his grip. The beast thrashed, claws scraping his armor, mouth snapping near his face. Thomas did not release it. He drove his blade up under its jaw and through the skull, then ripped sideways.

The head came apart.

Still, he held it.

Still, his pheromones rose.

Sylvia stood before anyone could stop her.

Minerva’s hand shot out. ”Sylvia.”

”He hears me.”

”That does not mean he can stop.”

Sylvia looked at Thomas’s back.

Blood ran down him in dark sheets.

He was shaking now from the effort of staying human.

”Tom,” she said, her voice trembling.

Thomas’s head turned slightly.

Another beast crawled over the ruined doorway.

Then the corridor behind it lit blue-white.

The beast burned from the inside out.

Nero stepped through the breach with Andrea unconscious in one hand and fire in the other, looking very much like Saha had opened a door and sent its worst answer.

”Lancaster,” Nero said.

Thomas’s eyes were dark.

Nero tilted his head, reading the air, the blood, the pheromone pressure, and the profile of a dominant alpha seconds from berserk.

”Move wrong,” Nero said softly, ”and Sylvia will see you become something you hate.”

Even that barely reached him through the haze of being berserk.

Thomas’s jaw clenched hard enough to make the muscle jump.

Nero tossed Andrea’s body to Hale. ”Keep him breathing.”

Hale caught him with visible disgust. ”Unfortunately?”

”Unfortunately.”

Thomas looked at Andrea.

The pressure surged again.

Nero stepped between his line of sight and the unconscious man. ”No. Later.”

Thomas’s voice came out rough. ”He sent them here.”

”I know.”

”He wanted Sylvia infected.”

”I know.”

Thomas’ hand tightened around his blade, the movement usually silent, squelching from the blood on his hand.

Nero’s smile was sharp and merciless. ”And if you go berserk now, he wins something from the floor.”

That stopped him better than comfort would have.

Sylvia took one step forward.

Thomas’s head snapped toward her. ”Stay back.”

”No.”

”Sylvia.”

”You are bleeding.”

”That is not relevant.”

”It is extremely relevant to me.”

His face cracked enough for the fury to reveal the fear beneath it.

Nero saw it and said nothing.

Dean’s field reached the corridor at last, cool and clear, washing through the broken resistance point. It cut the infected pressure, thinned the panic, and wrapped around Thomas without trying to dominate him.

Arion’s voice came through the comm. ”Thomas. Hold position. Nero is there. Medical is entering in thirty seconds.”

Thomas breathed once.

Then again.

The blade lowered by an inch.

Outside, beasts still screamed against the first point.

Inside, Sylvia stared at Thomas’s blood spreading beneath his armor.

Nero looked past them toward the deeper corridor, where emergency lights marked the route to the second resistance line.

His expression changed.

Andrea had known two points.

The first had been breached, the second was next, and behind that, if the line failed, were civilians.

Nero’s violet eyes went cold.

”Arion,” he said quietly, ”I think Andrea’s plan was never the battlefield.”

The comm went silent.

Thomas swayed once.

Sylvia reached for him.

Before her fingers touched his arm, his knees buckled.

”Tom!”

Thomas dropped to one knee, one hand braced against the bloody floor, breath harsh, and the wound at his side open and dark.

Nero turned toward the breach as another roar rose from outside.

”Medical,” he said. ”Run.”