Chapter 500: Claudia

The first body hit the marble less than thirty seconds after Arion crossed the threshold.

So much for surrender.

The central entrance hall was enormous, built to impress before Claudia’s people had converted half of it into something closer to a fortified command post. White stone climbed three floors around an open atrium, dark metal walkways cutting across the upper levels where decorative balconies had once been, while reinforced doors had been inserted between old carved columns with absolutely no concern for aesthetics.

The defecting soldiers had warned them that the remaining specialists refused to leave.

They had neglected to mention how enthusiastic those specialists were about dying.

A man in a laboratory coat stepped from behind a pillar with a handgun.

Arion caught the movement before the weapon cleared the fabric.

His pheromones struck first.

The man’s knees buckled as the sigma pressure hit him, but he still managed to pull the trigger.

The shot went wide.

Nero crossed the distance almost lazily, caught the man’s wrist, twisted until bone broke with an audible crack, then drove the stolen weapon beneath his jaw.

The second shot painted the pale column behind him red.

Nero dropped the body.

"Well."

Amaru walked past it without looking down.

"That answers whether they intend to negotiate."

Gunfire erupted from the upper level.

Arion shoved Victor behind a stone support as bullets struck the floor where the physician had been standing half a second earlier.

"I told you to stay behind us."

Victor crouched behind the column, medical case clutched against his side.

"I am behind you."

"Farther."

"I cannot treat anyone from another country."

Arion decided the argument could wait.

Amaru’s soldiers returned fire from the entrance.

Two men on the upper walkway went down almost immediately, one folding across the railing before dropping into the atrium with a sickening impact.

The others retreated deeper into the palace.

Then the air changed.

Arion felt it before he saw her. Pressure rolled through the hall like rising water. One of Amaru’s soldiers gasped. Another grabbed at his throat.

The pheromones had almost no conventional scent, only a damp mineral edge that made the body interpret every breath as useless. Men began staggering despite their lungs working perfectly, panic spreading faster than the chemical signal itself.

Nero stopped beneath the atrium.

"Oh."

Amaru’s expression hardened.

Arion felt nothing beyond mild pressure against his glands.

A woman appeared on the upper landing.

She looked to be in her forties, dressed in a fitted ivory suit beneath a long black coat, dark hair pinned sharply away from her face. Nothing about her suggested a researcher hiding in a collapsing organization.

She looked like she believed the building still belonged to her.

The strength of her pheromones identified her immediately.

Dominant omega.

She looked down at the soldiers struggling below and smiled.

"Alphas always make the same mistake."

Amaru stared up at her.

"And what mistake is that?"

"Believing strength belongs to you."

Her pheromones intensified.

Three soldiers dropped to their knees.

One began clawing at his collar as though fabric were strangling him.

Arion glanced toward Nero.

Nero looked bored.

Amaru rolled one shoulder. Also unaffected.

The woman’s smile faded.

Nero tilted his head.

"That’s it?"

Her eyes snapped toward him.

Nero looked almost disappointed.

"I expected more from Claudia."

"Do not use that name as though you understand it."

"Oh, I understand enough."

Nero looked toward Arion.

"Dean would have ripped her apart in minutes."

Arion almost sighed.

"This is not the time."

"It is true."

The woman’s face twisted.

"An omega submitting himself to an alpha is not power."

Arion’s attention sharpened.

Nero’s expression lost its amusement.

Amaru laughed once, without humor.

"You really built an entire ideology around being unbearable."

The woman reached inside her coat.

Arion moved, but it was too late to stop her from pressing the injector against the side of her neck.

The cartridge emptied with a sharp hiss. Her pheromones exploded.

The effect on the soldiers was immediate.

Two collapsed completely.

Another vomited against the marble while trying to breathe.

Victor swore behind the column and dragged one unconscious soldier farther from the spreading field.

Arion felt the pressure increase. His sigma profile pushed back instinctively, clearing space around him.

Nero’s enigma field unfolded next.

The hall seemed to contract around it.

Claudia’s drowning effect shattered where the two fields overlapped.

Amaru stepped through the cleared space between them.

The woman stared. For the first time, uncertainty appeared.

"What are you?"

Nero smiled.

"Better."

Gunfire answered from behind her.

Amaru’s brothers appeared on the upper landing with several remaining guards.

One of them fired directly at Amaru.

Arion moved before thought caught up.

His pheromones surged.

The shooter’s arm jerked sideways under the pressure, and the bullet struck Claudia’s railing instead of Amaru’s chest.

Nero drew his weapon.

The next several seconds dissolved into noise.

Shots.

Breaking glass.

Men screaming as Amaru’s soldiers pushed farther inside.

One guard attempted to rush the stairs and met Nero halfway down. Nero caught him by the throat and slammed him into the stone balustrade hard enough to crack it, then threw him over.

The man landed like a broken puppet. His neck broke with the sound of snapping wood.

Arion reached the first brother.

He recognized him from intelligence photographs just before the man fired.

The bullet tore through Arion’s coat near his ribs without touching skin.

Arion caught the gun barrel, drove it upward, and smashed his forehead into the man’s face.

Cartilage collapsed. Blood poured instantly. The brother staggered.

Arion drove one knee into his abdomen, seized the back of his neck, and threw him into the wall.

He stayed down.

Amaru saw him.

His expression changed completely.

"Leave him."

Arion stepped aside.

Amaru crossed the blood-slick marble.

His brother tried to crawl toward the dropped gun.

Amaru kicked it away.

"You ran to her."

The man spat blood.

"Fuck you."

Amaru smiled.

"No."

Then he grabbed him by the hair and dragged him upright.

Across the atrium, Claudia screamed and released another wave of pheromones.

Arion turned.

The enhancer had changed her physically now, veins standing dark beneath the skin at her throat while her eyes watered from the strain of forcing output beyond what her glands could sustain.

Still weaker than all three of them.

She knew it.

"I will not kneel to alphas," she snarled.

Nero walked toward her through the crushing field.

"No one asked you to."

Her gaze moved to him.

"You think being an anomaly makes you superior?"

"No."

Nero stopped a few steps away.

"It makes me unaffected."

She lunged at Victor.

Arion saw the turn of her shoulders.

The hidden blade.

The absolute intention to take the one man in the room without combat training.

He hit her with pheromones before she completed the step.

The pressure slammed into her like a wall.

She dropped to one knee.

Nero caught her wrist and crushed it.

The blade clattered across the floor.

She screamed.

Nero leaned closer.

"Dean really would have killed you by now."

Claudia looked up at him with naked hatred.

"Fucking alpha pets."