"You fucker!" Andrea yelled.

The chair went down behind him with a sharp crack on the polished floor.

At last.

Arion did not move.

He only watched Andrea stand there, breathing hard, all that beautiful training split open by one sentence. The red hair still fell perfectly over his shoulders; the dark blue eyes were still framed by those heavy lashes; the posture still carried the remnants of elegance, but the careful, untouchable composure had finally fractured enough for something uglier and more honest to crawl through.

Rage. Humiliation. Fear.

Arion preferred that. Rage could be read. Humiliation could be used. Fear told the truth faster than manners ever did.

"There you are," Arion said quietly.

Andrea’s mouth twisted. "Do not speak to me like you won something."

"I did not win anything. I asked a question, and you finally stopped performing."

Andrea laughed once, harsh and breathless. "You think this is performance? You sit there, behind your desk, with your little folder and your father’s spies and Saha’s little monster whispering in your ear, and you dare tell me Thomas deserves better?"

"Yes."

The answer was immediate.

It hit Andrea harder than a longer reply would have.

Arion leaned back in his chair, almost bored now, though the coldness in his eyes had not warmed. "And let us be clear, Andrea. Nero did not whisper. He reported. There is a difference, even if it is inconvenient for you."

Andrea’s hands curled at his sides. "Nero should have minded his own battlefield."

"Nero did mind his battlefield. That is why he noticed yours had a hole in it."

Andrea’s jaw tightened so hard a muscle jumped beneath the skin.

Arion continued, voice level. "You were the hole."

For a moment, Andrea looked like he might say something reckless enough to become treason.

Then he looked at the closed door.

Arion saw the calculation immediately.

He smiled faintly. "No one will enter unless I call them."

Andrea’s gaze snapped back to him.

"You wanted privacy," Arion said. "So did I."

Andrea’s breathing remained too fast.

Behind the fury, Arion could see it now more clearly than before: not merely resentment toward Dean, not merely wounded pride from being discarded as a possible imperial partner, not even simple reluctance toward Thomas’s mark.

Andrea had built himself around being desired.

By courts, by alphas, by political houses, by families who looked at dominant omegas and saw salvation wrapped in beauty.

And now everything was being taken from him by mere animals ruled by instinct and the fear of going berserk.

That was what Andrea believed, Arion realized. Not in words, perhaps. Andrea was too educated to say it so crudely and too refined to let contempt leave his mouth without perfume around it. But it sat there beneath the pale fury in his face: the resentment of someone who had been raised to be rare, valuable, and untouchable and had discovered that value came with duties he considered beneath him.

Arion’s expression did not soften.

"You think this is humiliating," he said.

Andrea’s mouth tightened.

"You think being expected to stabilize dominant alphas makes you less than what you are," Arion continued, voice even. "You think standing beside Thomas on a battlefield means being reduced to instinct and biology, as if the rest of us enjoy being ruled by blood, pheromones, rut, heat, violence, and the constant risk that one uncontrolled dominant can become a catastrophe with a heartbeat."

Andrea looked away first.

That, too, was an answer.

Arion’s hand remained on the folder. "You are not the only person born into a body with consequences. You are simply one of the few who was protected long enough to believe consequences were for other people."

Andrea’s eyes flashed back to him. "You speak very easily from the position of someone who never had to be given away."

"No," Arion said. "I speak from the position of someone who has had to kill things because other people decided their feelings mattered more than duty."

The office went still.

Arion rose from his chair, and this time there was no attempt at patience in the motion.

"You withheld stabilization during a breach season," he said. "Do you understand what that means outside whatever personal drama you have built around Thomas?"

Andrea said nothing.

"No, I don’t think you do." Arion’s voice sharpened. "So let me make it simple. If infected beasts break through a civilian buffer because a stabilizing anchor is too proud to do his job, people die. Not nobles. Not enemies. People. Children in annexes. Beta staff who cannot burn through exposure. Medics, drivers, cooks, engineers, and evacuees who trusted the line to hold because the people assigned to hold it were supposed to do so. Or maybe getting into the cities."

Andrea’s face had gone pale again, but Arion was not finished.

"If a dominant alpha goes berserk under strain because the person assigned to stabilize him decides to keep his field sealed around himself, that is not a lover’s quarrel. That is not disappointment. That is a small city radius of bodies if containment fails. Thomas is disciplined, which is the only reason we are having this conversation in an office instead of over a casualty report."

Andrea’s lips parted slightly.

Arion’s eyes were merciless. "And the soldiers around him? The alphas who took residue exposure? The secondary line, who trusted your presence, meant they had an anchor? If infected pheromones clung too long and pushed them past recovery, if one of them broke formation, if one exposure became three because you wanted to prove you were not merely a function of your biology—then your pride would not have looked elegant in the report. It would have looked like bodies."

The silence after that was ugly.

Andrea stood rigidly, hands clenched at his sides, his beautiful face stripped of enough polish that he looked almost like someone Arion might have pitied in another life.

Not this one.

"You will never set foot on a battlefield again," Arion said. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

Andrea’s head snapped up.

"What?"

"You heard me."

"You cannot—"

"I can," Arion cut in. "And I have. Otto signed the restriction this morning. Hendrik will receive the formal command after this meeting. Alamina will not recognize you as a stabilizing combat asset in any joint campaign, containment season, field deployment, or emergency response operation. If Rohan requests your placement on a battlefield, Alamina will file an objection and provide supporting evidence."

Andrea stared at him, disbelief overtaking rage for the first time.

"You are banning me from field service."

"I am formally banning you from any Alaminan-recognized battlefield capacity," Arion said. "You may attend councils. You may write reports. You may sit in silk and discuss policy with people who enjoy clean hands. But you will not stand behind a line of soldiers again and pretend your restraint is discipline while others carry the strain you refuse."

Andrea’s breath hitched.

Arion stepped around the desk, not close enough to threaten physically, but near enough that Andrea could no longer pretend this was merely administrative. "As for Thomas, you have one chance left to leave this office with more than a title and a disgrace sealed beneath polite language. You will go to him. You will tell him the truth before he leaves this palace. You will tell him what you withheld, why you withheld it, and whether you want him as your mate or only the power attached to his name."

Andrea’s voice came thinly. "And if I do?"

"Then you beg him to choose you back."

The words landed harder than any threat before them.

Andrea looked as if Arion had struck him.

Arion did not blink. "Yes. Beg. Not imply. Not arrange. Not stand beautifully in a doorway and expect his devotion to crawl back to you because you were born rare. You will ask. You will give him the dignity of refusing you, because that is what you took from him every time you let him reach and answered with nothing."

Andrea’s eyes turned glassy with fury. "You want me humiliated."

"No," Arion said. "This is only the consequence of your actions."