Chapter 542: Loud Mouth

Arion stared at Matthias for several seconds after the older knight informed him that the entire forest would hear him if he called properly.

Then he sighed.

"Wonderful."

Matthias’s mouth curved.

Arion leaned back in the chair and rubbed one hand over his face, already imagining the administrative consequences with considerably more clarity than he wanted.

The beasts were simple enough.

Relatively.

They could remain inside the restricted territory, where the transformed populations had already demonstrated that they were capable of behaving like ordinary wildlife once the corruption stopped forcing their bodies into monstrous forms. There were questions about population control, territorial boundaries, long-term medical monitoring, and whether introducing restored predators into an ecosystem altered by nearly a century of infection would create another problem, but those were problems for specialists.

People were different.

Knights had names. Families. Old military records. Property that had been inherited or sold decades earlier. Legal deaths that would somehow need to become legal lives again.

Some would discover spouses had remarried, children had grown old, parents had died, and entire generations existed that had never expected them to return.

Arion closed his eyes.

Dean had been right.

Eventually the knights were going to become Arion’s problem.

Matthias laughed softly.

Arion opened his eyes.

"I fail to see what is amusing."

"You are making the same expression Dominic made whenever someone reminded him that controlling us also meant being responsible for us."

"That is not comforting."

"No. He hated it too."

Arion looked toward the observation glass.

Victor had remained suspiciously quiet throughout the conversation, probably because he had begun recording every sentence Matthias said for later analysis.

Arion returned his attention to the former captain.

"The beasts can remain inside the forest if they are stable. People cannot."

"They could."

"No."

Matthias raised his eyebrows.

"I spent most of my adult life there."

"You spent most of your adult life transformed into something with a tree growing out of your back."

"That is fair."

"I am not restoring people simply to leave them sleeping in mud because processing their citizenship is inconvenient."

Matthias’s expression changed slightly.

Approval, perhaps.

Arion disliked that too.

"You really are like him."

"Dominic?"

"Yes."

"I would prefer if everyone stopped saying that."

"You share blood."

"Very distant blood."

"And the same corruption."

Arion’s jaw tightened.

Matthias noticed but did not retreat.

"Your mate will feel it too."

Arion went still.

"What?"

"The connection."

Matthias leaned back, his long black hair falling over one shoulder as he considered how best to explain something that seemed obvious to him and entirely new to Arion.

"A controller does not exist alone once bonded. His mate becomes part of him."

Arion’s expression hardened immediately.

"Dean is not infected."

"I didn’t say he was."

"Then explain."

"The forest does not recognize only corruption. It recognizes what belongs to the one controlling it."

Arion disliked the phrasing enough that his pheromones sharpened faintly before he deliberately pulled them back.

Matthias continued.

"Dominic’s chosen one could sometimes feel us when Dominic reached too deeply into the collective. Not thoughts as clearly as Dominic could, but pressure, emotion, occasionally fragments."

Arion thought of Dean calling him out of altered states.

Of his voice reaching through the sluggishness when corrupted pheromonal cocktails slowed Arion’s mind.

Of the way Dean’s presence consistently seemed to stabilize something inside him without either of them understanding why.

"And Theo?"

That question came quieter.

Matthias smiled.

"The child is different."

Arion’s gaze sharpened.

"How?"

"Pure-bred."

Arion stared at him.

"That is not a term I am going to use for my son."

Matthias laughed.

"I did not invent it."

"What does it mean?"

"Born carrying the royal corruption rather than receiving it through infection."

Arion said nothing.

"Like Dominic."

That caught him.

"Dominic was born with it?"

"Yes."

"You said royal blood could carry it."

"It can. Most carriers never express enough for the forest to recognize them fully, but Dominic did from birth."

"And Theodore?"

"From what you told Elias about his eyes, yes."

Arion’s stomach tightened despite everything he and Dean had already discussed.

Theo was healthy.

Still, the idea that their three-month-old son belonged to the same biological category as a sigma emperor who had controlled corrupted populations a century earlier was not information Arion particularly wanted.

He changed direction.

"If Dominic was born with it and controlled the forest successfully, why did he consider it a curse?"

Matthias’s expression became unexpectedly thoughtful.

"I always assumed because of Adrian."

"His chosen one?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Matthias looked down at his hands.

"Because Adrian could never truly be his mate."

Arion understood immediately.

No marking. No biological mating bond in the form Dominic’s instincts would have expected from a compatible omega.

"He was an alpha."

"Yes."

"Dominic chose him anyway."

"For everything."

There was warmth in Matthias’s voice now, the kind belonging to memory rather than inherited fragments.

"You knew them personally."

"I guarded Dominic for twenty-three years."

That answer carried more weight than Arion expected.

Matthias’s mouth curved faintly.

"He loved Adrian beyond reason. Adrian loved him enough to tolerate it."

Arion almost smiled.

"Sounds familiar."

Matthias looked at him.

"Your mate is considerably louder."

Arion blinked.

Then laughed.

Matthias smiled.

"The knights didn’t like Adrian."

"Why?"

"He interfered."

"That sounds sensible."

"He questioned Dominic constantly, blocked access when Dominic was exhausted, argued about how often we were allowed near the palace, and once had an entire unit removed because they frightened one of the horses."

Arion laughed again.

"And the beasts?"

"They disliked him too."

"Because he was an alpha?"

"Because he told Dominic no."

That made Arion think immediately of Dean.

Matthias did too.

His brown eyes brightened with amusement.

"Your mate is much more popular."

Arion narrowed his eyes.

"With the knights?"

"With everyone."

"Why?"

Matthias’s smile widened.

"They love Dean."

Arion stared.

Matthias continued before he could stop him.

"Especially his loud mouth."

Silence.

Then, unmistakably, Dean’s voice appeared inside Arion’s mind. Clear enough that Arion nearly looked around the room.

Tell him to stop before I send him back to the forest.

Arion froze.

Matthias froze too.

Then slowly, very slowly, he smiled.

Arion closed his eyes.

"Dean heard you."

Matthias looked delighted.

"I told you."

Arion opened his eyes again.

"Do not encourage him."

Another thought brushed through him, sharper this time.

I heard that too.

Arion pressed his fingers against his forehead.

Matthias started laughing.

Through the bond, Dean’s irritation arrived warm, familiar, and entirely unmistakable.

Arion could almost picture him at home with Theo in his arms, offended from several districts away.

For some reason, that made him smile.

Of course Dean would develop access to the infected collective just in time to threaten one of its oldest knights.

Nothing about their life was ever going to be normal.