Chapter 531: Ninety-Nine Years

Arion cleared the room before Victor had finished objecting.

Elias had been transferred from the forest directly into one of the secure medical suites beneath the northern research center, where every wall contained pheromonal filtration, every entrance required two levels of authorization, and enough monitoring equipment surrounded the bed to make the space look less like a recovery room and more like somewhere designed to contain a biological weapon.

Victor had already taken enough blood to offend an ordinary patient.

Hendrik had requested a formal interrogation team.

Hunter wanted Elias’s military history reconstructed before anyone accepted a word he said.

Otto wanted answers.

Arion wanted everyone out.

"He said he came for me," Arion told them, standing beside the foot of the medical bed while Elias watched the argument with the exhausted patience of someone who had spent eight years transformed into something inhuman and had therefore discovered a new definition of inconvenience. "So I will speak with him first."

Victor folded his arms.

"He is an unknown infected subject who walked out of a restricted forest after apparently retaining cognition for eight years."

"He is also sitting three meters away, listening to you describe him as a subject."

"I am a physician."

"That does not prevent manners."

Victor looked offended by the suggestion.

Hendrik stepped closer.

"At minimum, I remain in the room."

"No."

"Arion."

"You will have the full feed."

That did not improve his expression.

Arion gestured toward the cameras embedded above the reinforced glass.

"You can hear every word, watch every movement, and enter in less than five seconds if anything changes."

"Three," Hendrik corrected.

"Then you have even less reason to stand over him."

Otto, who had been silent throughout most of the exchange, studied Elias before looking toward his son.

"Give him the room."

Hendrik exhaled slowly.

Victor muttered something about royal families developing a collective allergy to sensible procedure, but eventually everyone left.

The door sealed.

Beyond the one-way observation glass, Arion knew his father, Hendrik, Hunter, Victor, and probably several specialists were already staring at the feed.

Elias watched the door close.

Then he looked toward Arion.

"Can I have coffee?"

Arion stared at him.

After everything that had happened that day, he had expected a warning, a threat, perhaps some incomprehensible declaration from whatever survived deep inside the infected forest.

Not coffee.

"You want coffee?"

"I haven’t had one in eight years."

That was difficult to argue with.

Arion pressed the communication control.

"Coffee."

Victor’s voice came through immediately.

"He has undergone prolonged metabolic alteration, and we have not established—"

"Decaffeinated, then."

Silence.

Elias looked appalled.

Arion almost smiled.

"Small coffee. Medical approval."

Victor swore before disconnecting.

Ten minutes later, Elias held a warm cup between both hands.

He drank slowly.

The first mouthful made his eyes close with pleasure.

Arion sat opposite him and waited.

He could have demanded answers immediately.

Hendrik certainly would have.

Victor probably wanted to open Elias’s skull metaphorically, if not yet literally, and document every surviving memory before exhaustion altered it.

Arion had spent enough time around physicians and intelligence officers to understand urgency.

He also understood that the man in front of him had spent eight years trapped inside a transformed body with a wound that apparently never stopped hurting.

He could have five minutes with coffee.

When Elias finally lowered the cup, he looked toward Arion.

"My family."

Arion had expected that too.

"We are searching."

Elias’s fingers tightened slightly around the ceramic.

"My parents?"

"I don’t know yet."

"A sister. Mara. She would be..." His brow tightened as he calculated. "Thirty-two now."

"I’ll have Hendrik find them."

"And they think I’m dead."

"Yes."

Elias looked down.

Arion let him absorb that without interrupting.

Eventually, the man took another sip and rested the cup carefully on the table.

Then his black eyes settled on Arion again.

"You need to hear the story before they start asking me questions."

Behind the glass, Hendrik was probably already furious.

Arion leaned back.

"I’m listening."

Elias was quiet for several seconds.

"It starts ninety-nine years ago."

Arion’s expression changed only slightly.

"That is specific."

"It matters."

"Go on."

Elias drew a slow breath.

"Ninety-nine years is how long the beasts have come in August."

Arion knew the records.

Every year, with only rare variations, infected populations moved out of the deepest forests during late summer, approached inhabited territories, attacked defensive lines, and exposed civilians to corrupted pheromones.

Nobody had ever understood why August mattered.

Migration theories had failed.

Temperature models had failed.

Breeding-cycle explanations had failed.

Even Claudia’s interference had only complicated the pattern rather than explaining its origin.

Elias looked toward the dark window, although he could not see the observers beyond it.

"You call it beast season."

"Yes."

"They call it searching."

Arion went still.

"For what?"

Elias looked back at him.

"Their king."

Silence filled the room.

Arion did not speak immediately.

Behind the glass, someone moved.

Probably Hendrik.

Elias continued before anyone could interrupt through the communication system.

"King is not exactly right. Controller might be closer. Leader. Anchor. Whatever word humans would use for something that keeps the infected populations from tearing themselves apart."

Arion’s jaw tightened.

"And they have been searching for ninety-nine years?"

"Yes."

"For one person?"

"For blood."

That answer was worse.

Arion leaned forward slightly.

"Explain."

Elias rubbed one thumb over the side of his cup, apparently organizing a story that had lived inside his head far longer than language had been easy.

"The corruption is pheromonal. That part your researchers understood correctly. Exposure infects almost anyone if the concentration is high enough and the body cannot reject it."

"Dominants are resistant."

"Immune, usually."

Arion thought of his childhood.

Elias noticed.

"You weren’t supposed to survive infection the way you did."

"That has been established."

"No. I mean you weren’t supposed to be infected at all."

Arion’s expression hardened.

Elias continued carefully.

"Dominants reject the corruption. Omegas, betas, ordinary alphas without dominant expression—they can be infected. Some die. Some change. Some become beasts if the exposure and biological structure allow it. Humans who survive long enough become what the forest calls knights."

Arion glanced toward the observation glass.

"Knights."

"That is the closest word."

Elias touched his own chest.

"I was one."

Arion remained silent.

"And the king?"

Elias hesitated.

"Royal blood changes the response."

Arion’s pheromones sharpened faintly before he controlled them.

"What royal blood?"

"Yours."