Chapter 532: Dominic

"Yours."

Arion did not move.

Elias held his gaze for several seconds before continuing, apparently understanding that the answer required considerably more explanation than a single word could provide.

"The imperial line carried it before. Not constantly, and not in every generation, but often enough that the infected recognized the blood even when there was nobody capable of controlling them. That was why the beasts kept approaching the imperial territories instead of dispersing permanently into the mountains."

Arion’s thoughts immediately moved to Theodore.

Theodore, whose eyes had opened completely black before changing to gold.

Theodore, who had inherited something Victor had already concluded was woven into Arion deeply enough to become part of his biology.

Arion kept his expression still.

"You said the ability can pass through the bloodline."

"It does."

Behind the observation glass, somebody moved abruptly enough for Arion to hear the faint vibration through the insulated wall.

Probably Otto.

Arion rested his forearms against his knees.

"How do you know?"

"The knights remember more than the beasts do."

Elias touched his own temple, frowning slightly as though even now he struggled to separate his memories from whatever had existed inside the infected collective

"Not everything. It isn’t a history book. Most of it comes as fragments, instincts, old impressions that belong to people who were infected long before us. But names survive when enough of them knew the same person."

"Knights," Arion repeated. "How many?"

"I don’t know."

"Estimate."

Elias looked toward the floor.

"Dozens, at least. Maybe more."

Arion’s jaw tightened.

The forest contained infected humans.

Not one extraordinary survivor.

Dozens.

"Soldiers?"

"Mostly. Soldiers stayed behind during evacuations, held defensive lines, searched for civilians who didn’t reach the roads in time. Some were bitten. Others inhaled enough corrupted pheromones before their units could extract them." Elias paused. "There are civilians too. Hunters. Forestry workers. People who lived in settlements swallowed by the restricted territory."

"And they are conscious?"

The question visibly troubled him.

"Not the way I am now."

Arion waited.

Elias searched for the words.

"You don’t disappear entirely when the change finishes, but everything becomes buried beneath the infection. Hunger, territory, commands, pain—those become louder than anything human. Sometimes I remembered my sister. Sometimes I remembered my name. Then I could lose both for months."

Eight years.

Arion imagined remaining conscious enough to know something had been taken from him while never possessing enough control to reclaim it.

His voice hardened.

"Can I restore them?"

Elias looked directly at him.

"You restored me."

"That isn’t an answer."

"It is the only one I have."

Arion accepted that for now.

Victor would want controlled trials before anyone allowed Arion within sight of another infected human. Hendrik would demand security plans, Hunter would demand several more, and Otto would inevitably insist on accompanying him again if there was any possibility that transformed soldiers retained the ability to attack.

Dean would have opinions about all of it.

Many opinions.

Arion almost smiled despite the circumstances.

Then Elias said, "There was another like you."

Arion’s attention returned immediately.

"When?"

"Ninety-nine years ago."

The number connected before the name did.

The final controller.

The beginning of the recorded beast seasons.

Elias leaned back slightly against the medical bed.

"Dominic."

Arion stared at him.

"Emperor Dominic?"

"Yes."

That was impossible enough that Arion’s first reaction was not disbelief but rapid reconstruction.

Dominic of Alamina had ruled briefly more than a century earlier, one of the stranger figures in the imperial archives because several portions of his reign remained heavily sealed even now. He had been a sigma, one of the few confirmed within the modern imperial line, and a younger branch relative rather than the expected heir before succession rearranged itself around several deaths.

A grand-grand uncle somewhere along Arion’s ancestral line.

Powerful.

Reclusive in his later years.

And childless.

Arion sat back.

"Dominic controlled the infected."

"The beasts and knights."

"How?"

"The same way you do."

"That explains nothing."

A tired smile touched Elias’s mouth.

"I don’t think he understood it much better."

That, at least, Arion believed.

"He could call them back when they moved too close to settlements. He could stop transformations from progressing in newly infected people if he reached them early enough, and the older memories say the beasts remained deep inside the forest while he was alive."

Arion thought of the absence of attacks this August.

"They started coming out after he died."

"After he disappeared from them," Elias corrected. "To the infected, the difference may not matter."

"And they began searching for another controller."

"Yes."

Arion’s mind returned to old imperial histories.

Dominic had no heirs.

The official biographies offered several explanations depending on the period in which they had been written, but one detail appeared consistently in restricted family records: Dominic had allegedly refused children because he considered his sigma traits a curse and would not knowingly pass them onward.

Arion had read that story when he was seventeen.

He also knew it was largely nonsense.

A short laugh escaped him.

Elias looked confused.

"Something amusing?"

"Only the official history."

Arion rubbed one hand over his mouth.

"Dominic supposedly refused to produce heirs because he didn’t want to pass on his curse."

"That is what the forest remembers."

"Of course it does."

Arion knew considerably more than the sanitized biographies did.

Dominic had considered one person his mate for nearly four decades.

Adrian Smith.

An alpha man who had commanded the emperor’s personal guard before becoming his consort in everything except the terminology polite historians preferred to use.

They had been together until Dominic died.

There had been no biological possibility of children between them.

Dominic had not nobly sacrificed his lineage to spare descendants from some mysterious curse.

He had loved an alpha.

Apparently later generations had found hereditary tragedy more dignified than admitting an emperor had simply chosen his mate and never sought anyone else for reproduction.

Arion almost wanted to tell Dean.

Dean would find the historical revisionism hilarious.

Then the implication of Elias’s statement reached him fully.

"The ability is inherited by children."

Elias’s expression became serious again.

"Yes."

Theodore.

Arion’s amusement disappeared.

"How reliably?"

"I don’t know. The infected memories say the blood carries it, but whether every child expresses it, I can’t tell you."

Arion’s voice lowered.

"My son already has signs."

Beyond the glass, the room on the other side went completely silent.

Elias studied him.

"Black eyes?"

Arion went still.

"Yes."

Something in Elias’s expression shifted—not alarm, but recognition so immediate that Arion hated it.

"And gold?"

"Yes."

Elias exhaled slowly.

"Then he carries it."

Arion looked toward the dark observation window, knowing Otto stood somewhere beyond it, hearing every word.

Theodore was three months old.

Healthy, smiling, increasingly fascinated by every relative permitted through the palace doors, and currently far more interested in discovering his own hands than inheriting a biological legacy buried in Alamina’s imperial line.

Arion intended to keep it that way for as long as possible.

He returned his attention to Elias.

"You said you were a messenger."

"Yes."

"For whom?"

Elias’s fingers tightened around the now-empty coffee cup.

"For the knights."

Arion waited.

"There are many of us still inside."

His black eyes remained fixed on Arion.

"And they know their king has finally come back."