Chapter 529: Make It Stop

Otto was out of the vehicle before Hendrik finished confirming the thermal reading.

Hunter emerged from the second carrier at almost the same moment, weapon already drawn and aimed toward the narrow break between the trees, while the technical team remained behind reinforced doors and redirected every available drone toward the approaching figure.

Arion stepped onto the frozen road behind them.

The air smelled wrong.

Not immediately dangerous, not in the violent way corrupted pheromones had once flooded Claudia’s Palace, but dense enough that something bitter scraped beneath the familiar scent of wet bark, cold soil, and old vegetation.

The man was close now.

Close enough that Arion no longer needed the drone feed.

He appeared between two enormous pines perhaps sixty meters away, moving with a gait that looked almost human until the shape of his body became clear.

His arms were too long.

The fingers hanging beside his thighs had extended into dark claws, each curved enough to tear through flesh without effort, while thick black growth covered most of his back and shoulders like armor fused directly to the body beneath it. His spine seemed slightly elongated, forcing his torso forward, and the exposed skin of his neck carried the same dark glandular channels Arion had seen beneath infected beasts.

What remained of a military uniform hung from him in strips.

The insignia on one torn shoulder was Alaminan.

Otto raised his weapon.

"Stop."

Arion’s voice cut across the clearing.

His father looked toward him.

The infected soldier kept approaching.

Hendrik stepped sideways, positioning himself between Arion and the eastern tree line, while Hunter shifted far enough to create a second angle of fire.

"Arion," Otto said quietly, "move back."

"No."

The answer came without hesitation.

Hunter looked toward him.

"That thing is not behaving like the animals."

"I know."

"That is precisely the problem."

Arion watched the soldier.

Something about him felt different from the beasts, but not because there was more aggression.

There was less.

The malformed body looked horrifying, and every instinct trained into the men around Arion read the claws, black armor, and corrupted pheromonal profile as a threat, but Arion could feel no intention to attack.

Only pressure.

A terrible, concentrated pressure.

"Lower the weapons."

Nobody moved.

Arion glanced toward Otto.

His father’s jaw tightened.

Every experiment until now had proved that corrupted beasts recognized Arion and generally obeyed him, but nobody had ever tested whether the same relationship extended to a human being whose body had undergone comparable changes.

They had discussed the possibility.

They had never expected to find the answer walking toward them from the middle of an abandoned forest.

Hendrik looked at the distance reading on his wrist display.

"Forty-two meters."

"I can see him."

"If he charges, that distance disappears quickly."

"He isn’t going to charge."

"You cannot know that."

Arion looked toward the soldier again.

"I think I do."

That was not enough for any competent security officer.

Hunter’s expression said exactly that.

Otto studied his son for several seconds before finally speaking.

"What do you need?"

Arion considered the question.

"Space."

His father’s eyes narrowed.

"Absolutely not."

"You brought me here because the infected populations respond to me. If all four of us remain around him with weapons pointed at his head, we may provoke the exact reaction you’re trying to prevent."

Hendrik glanced toward the approaching man.

Thirty-five meters.

Arion continued.

"Pull back to the vehicles. Keep the drones on me. If he attacks and I cannot stop him, then intervene."

Otto did not like it.

Arion could see that clearly enough.

Neither did Hunter.

Hendrik looked as though he wanted written authorization from several government departments before allowing the crown prince to remain alone with an infected human whose hands had become claws.

Otto lowered his weapon first.

"Twenty meters," he said. "We do not go farther."

"That is enough."

Hunter exhaled sharply but followed the emperor’s order, retreating without turning his back on the infected soldier, while Hendrik moved toward the vehicles and immediately began repositioning the perimeter teams through the shared channel.

Arion remained alone on the road.

The soldier stopped ten meters away.

Arion studied him.

Up close, the corruption looked worse.

The black armor across his back was not clothing or equipment but hardened tissue, layered into overlapping plates that extended over his shoulders and partially down his ribs. His hands were distorted beyond anything functional for ordinary human life, the joints stretched around the claws, while dark veins crossed his throat and disappeared into his jaw.

His blond hair had grown long enough to hang unevenly around his face.

His black eyes remained fixed on Arion.

Then Arion heard him.

Inside his own head.

MAKE IT STOP!

Arion’s breath caught.

He stared at the man.

The soldier’s mouth had not moved.

MAKE IT STOP!

The thought was not sophisticated.

There were no images, memories, names, or explanations attached to it.

Only pain compressed into four words.

Arion understood immediately that this was different from the beasts.

With them, he had felt instinct translated through his own mind, hunger or expectation acquiring language because his brain needed a way to interpret it.

This was a person.

Arion could hear him.

The soldier took one uneven step closer.

His claws dragged briefly against the trunk of a young tree beside him, stripping bark without apparent intention.

MAKE IT STOP!

Arion’s chest tightened.

"Alright."

Behind him, Otto’s voice came through the earpiece.

"Arion?"

He ignored it.

He did not know how to use whatever lived inside him.

He had never known.

The transformations had happened because he wanted something from the beasts strongly enough that his body somehow understood before his mind did.

Now the desire was simpler.

Make it stop.

Arion let his pheromones expand.

Vetiver spread through the clearing first, deep and familiar, before the secondary undertone rose beneath it, darker and metallic enough that Hendrik swore quietly over the communication channel.

Black lines appeared beneath the skin of Arion’s throat.

They traced the pathways of his scent glands, moving beneath his collar and along the exposed veins of his hands while his gold eyes sharpened.

The soldier shuddered.

Arion felt the connection catch.

The corrupted man bent forward with a broken sound that was almost a gasp, his claws digging into frozen soil while the black armor across his back rippled.

"Stop."

The word carried through his pheromones.

The soldier screamed.

Otto moved behind him.

Arion raised one hand without looking back.

"Stay there."

The hardened plates along the man’s spine began collapsing inward.

They softened and withdrew beneath the skin one section at a time, the enormous ridges along his shoulders shrinking until human bone and muscle gradually replaced them.

His arms shortened.

The stretched joints contracted with a series of sickening movements, claws receding as fingers reformed around them, while the dark channels beneath his skin pulled backward toward his glands.

The soldier collapsed to his knees.

Arion kept his pheromones around him.

"Enough."

His body continued changing.

The forward curve of his spine straightened, his jaw contracted into ordinary proportions, and the corrupted thickness across his neck disappeared until the figure kneeling in the frozen leaves looked human again.

Tall.

Lean.

Blond.

An alpha perhaps somewhere in his thirties, although exhaustion had hollowed his face enough that judging his age was difficult.

The remains of the military uniform hung loosely from his restored body.

His hands were human.

His back was human.

His breathing was ragged but steady.

Only the eyes remained unchanged.

Completely black.