Chapter 538: One at a Time

"Are you going to meet them?" Elias asked, staring at the old fortress marked on the enlarged map. "They are waiting for you."

Arion did not answer immediately.

The question itself was simple enough.

Everything surrounding it was not.

He leaned back in his chair and looked at the faded military survey projected across the wall, where the abandoned fortress sat deep inside territory Alamina had treated as effectively lost for almost a century. If Elias was right, there were transformed humans inside that forest in numbers none of their current monitoring systems had ever identified properly, and at least some of them might have retained fragments of themselves beneath the infection.

Which meant leaving them there without investigation was difficult to justify.

Bringing them out blindly was worse.

"What happened to you could have killed you," Arion said.

Elias looked toward him.

"We don’t know that."

"That is exactly the problem."

Dean’s expression shifted from amusement to attention.

Arion continued, his gaze still on Elias.

"I changed your body without understanding what I was doing. You survived it, your organs remained stable, and Victor has spent two weeks complaining because he still cannot explain why. That does not mean the next person will respond the same way."

Elias was quiet.

"What if someone has been infected longer than you?" Arion asked. "What if the transformation has replaced structures their body can no longer restore? What if I force someone human again and their heart cannot tolerate the change?"

The room became still.

Dean looked toward the projected fortress again.

That possibility had not been discussed in quite those terms before.

Elias rubbed one hand over his jaw.

"I don’t know."

Arion nodded once.

That answer was better than false confidence.

"The beasts changed without complications," Dean said, "but they also weren’t people who had spent decades transformed."

"Exactly."

"And we don’t know whether the knights are all the same kind of infected."

"No."

Elias exhaled slowly.

"Some are much older."

Arion’s attention sharpened.

"How old?"

"I can’t give you years."

"Estimate."

Elias hesitated.

"Some were there before me by a long time. Long enough that the others treated them differently."

Dean rested one forearm against the table.

"The elders?"

"That is what I called them. I don’t know if that is what they call themselves."

"Are they more coherent?"

"Sometimes."

Arion looked at him carefully.

"What does sometimes mean?"

Elias searched for the explanation.

"They have less of an ordinary life left to remember, but they understand the forest better. They know the old patterns, the places connected to Dominic, and they remember things I only caught fragments of."

Dean glanced toward Arion.

"That sounds useful."

"It also sounds dangerous."

"I knew you were going to say that."

Arion ignored him.

"If they have been infected for decades, they may be physiologically more altered than Elias was."

"Probably," Elias admitted.

"And you want me to walk into a fortress containing an unknown number of them."

"When you say it like that, it sounds bad."

Dean stared at him.

"It is bad."

Elias smiled faintly.

"I spent eight years living with them. My standards changed."

Boreas lifted his head from the carpet at the sound of voices rising slightly, then settled again when nobody appeared to be in actual danger.

Arion looked back toward the map.

There was another problem.

Security.

Not his own.

Everyone else’s.

Even if the knights recognized him, there was no guarantee that recognition would extend to Hendrik, Hunter, Otto, the medical teams, or anyone required to accompany them. Elias had approached peacefully because he wanted help, but one frightened reaction from another infected human could turn a controlled recovery into an attack.

And if Arion tried to force several transformations at once without understanding the limits of whatever he was doing—

No.

He was not doing that.

Not yet.

"We are not going to the fortress," he said.

Elias nodded as though he had expected the answer.

Dean’s eyebrows lifted slightly.

"You decided quickly."

"Because there is no reason to expose a team to dozens of unknown infected humans when we have one person here who can communicate with them."

Elias looked toward him.

Arion met his eyes.

"You said you were a messenger."

"Yes."

"Can you send a message back?"

Elias considered that longer.

"Maybe."

Dean leaned forward.

"How?"

"The connection didn’t disappear completely when I changed back."

That caught both their attention.

Elias touched the side of his neck, near the glands Victor had been monitoring obsessively.

"I don’t hear them the way I did inside the forest, but sometimes I feel something. Direction. Pressure. Like someone standing on the other side of a closed door."

Arion’s expression hardened.

"You did not mention that to Victor."

"I did."

Dean blinked.

"And he hasn’t chained you to a scanner?"

"He added three appointments."

"That sounds more like him."

Arion ignored the commentary.

"Could you ask one of them to come?"

Elias looked back toward the fortress on the display.

"One of the elders?"

"Yes."

"Probably."

Dean’s gaze moved between them.

"Probably again."

"I cannot promise how they will react outside the forest."

Arion nodded.

"That is still safer than bringing an entire team inside."

Elias considered the idea carefully, and for the first time since entering the palace that morning, something resembling genuine anticipation appeared beneath his uncertainty.

"One would come if they knew you asked."

"How do you know?"

"Because they have been waiting for you longer than I was alive."

The answer did not make Arion feel better.

Dean noticed.

"You hate that sentence."

"Very much."

"I thought so."

Elias leaned over the map and pointed toward a location much closer to the current restricted perimeter than the fortress.

"There is an old service station here. The forest reaches it now, but the monitoring roads are still within a few kilometers."

Arion studied the point.

"We could establish a controlled perimeter."

"Yes."

"One knight."

"Yes."

"No others following."

Elias gave him a look.

"I can ask."

"That sounded deliberately noncommittal."

"Because I cannot issue orders to them."

Dean smiled.

"Apparently only the king of beasts can do that."

Arion turned his head.

Dean looked innocent.

Elias laughed under his breath.

Arion decided not to encourage either of them.

"If one comes," Arion continued, "we observe first. No transformation until Victor clears the attempt medically as much as he can."

Dean raised a brow.

"Victor is going to adore that phrase."

"He can complain."

"He will."

"He always does."

Elias looked toward Arion.

"And if the elder asks you to change him?"

Arion was silent for a moment.

"Then I still decide whether it is safe."

That answer seemed to matter to Elias.

He nodded.

"Good."

Dean studied him.

"You were worried Arion would just do whatever they wanted."

"I was worried he would feel responsible."

Dean slowly turned toward his husband.

Arion did not appreciate the sudden alliance forming across the table.

Dean smiled without humor.

"That is an excellent concern."

"I am sitting here."

"Yes, and both of us know you."

Arion exhaled through his nose.

Boreas looked up again.

Even the dog appeared judgmental now.

Elias leaned back and folded his arms.

"If you want, I can try tomorrow."

"No."

He looked confused.

Arion tapped the schedule open on his tablet.

"You are still under medical observation, and I am not sending you toward the forest without Hendrik arranging containment, extraction, and a perimeter first."

Elias stared at him.

Dean smiled.

"Welcome to working with Arion. Everything eventually becomes an operation."

"That is rich coming from you."

"I never denied being difficult."

Arion looked toward Elias again.

"We do this properly. One elder. One controlled contact. Then we decide what comes next."

Elias nodded.

For a moment, he looked less like a former infected soldier dragged out of an eight-year nightmare and more like exactly what he had once been—someone receiving orders, understanding the risk, and already organizing the next step in his head.

Then his attention returned to the mountain of Dominic’s records.

"So until then?"

Dean slid another folder across the table.

"You help us read."

Elias looked at it.

Then at Dean.

Dean smiled pleasantly.

"The forest is not an escape from paperwork."

Elias closed his eyes.

Arion laughed.