Hale said nothing.

A second Sahan officer entered behind him carrying a tray.

Nero smiled. "I always liked you."

"You like being fed."

"Also true."

Hale waited until Nero picked up the coffee before activating the slate. The map rose in layered light over the table: Alamina’s southern line in red, Sahan support routes in green, northern advance corridors in pale blue, and several ugly clusters of black marking infection density from last season.

Nero’s amusement thinned.

Hale touched the southern ridge. "Sahan units will camp here. Lower ridge, east of Hendick’s main line, close enough to reinforce the trench routes but far enough to keep our supply chain independent."

Nero studied the projection. "Water access?"

"Two filtered lines from the western relay and one emergency purification unit."

"Medical?"

"Shared triage with Alamina for mass casualty. Sahan field medics remain separate for pheromone and enigma-related incidents."

Nero’s mouth curved without humor. "How delicately phrased."

"How accurately phrased," Hale corrected.

Nero accepted that with a small tilt of his head.

Hale moved the map. "Your rotation will begin behind Third Sahan Spear for the first three days. Observation, terrain adjustment, command integration. After that, if Hendrick approves, forward rotation."

"If Hendrick approves," Nero repeated.

"Yes."

"Dax approved forward rotation at sixteen."

"King Dax stood behind you at sixteen."

Nero’s jaw clicked shut.

Hale’s gaze stayed level. "This time he is not here."

"He trusts me."

"Yes," Hale said. "That is why he sent me instead of coming himself."

That landed more gently than Nero wanted it to.

He looked back at the map.

"I know the field."

"You do. Fifth deployment. Second full season. No one is questioning your competence."

"No. Just my judgment."

"Your judgment around beasts is excellent..." Hale stopped for a moment.

That pause was worse than an accusation.

Nero looked up from the projection.

Hale’s expression had not changed much, but the line of his mouth had flattened into something quieter than professional concern. Older, perhaps. More personal.

"Nero," he said, "I didn’t report anything about you and Sebastian to your parents, and I won’t. That is not my place unless it affects field safety." His gaze held Nero’s. "But you have to know what you are doing with him."

Nero let out a soft laugh

"You don’t have to worry this time," he said. "I won’t take the risk for him like before."

Hale went still.

"Nero."

"What?" Nero’s smile remained in place as he glanced back down at the northern route. "That is what everyone wants, isn’t it? Distance. Discipline. No convenient crossings. No noble sacrifice disguised as strategy."

"That is not what I said."

"It is what the situation requires."

"No," Hale said. "The situation requires you not to turn restraint into retaliation."

Nero’s fingers tightened once around his coffee cup.

The heat from it pressed into his palm, grounding and useless.

"I am not retaliating."

"You are."

Nero’s eyes lifted slowly.

Hale did not back away.

"You used to overextend when he was on the line," Hale said. "Not because command ordered it. Not because the formation demanded it. Because you saw him pushing too far and stepped into the pressure first."

Nero’s smile thinned. "How observant."

"I was paid to be observant."

"You were paid to guard Chris."

"I guarded him long enough to recognize when someone is bleeding quietly and calling it control."

For one second, Nero hated him.

Not enough to matter.

Just enough to make his mouth curve.

"Careful," Nero said lightly. "That almost sounded sentimental."

"It was tactical."

"Everything is tactical with you."

"With you, it has to be."

Nero looked back at the map, at the pale northern marker where Sebastian’s team would stand without a dominant omega, without the old invisible safety net Nero had woven beneath him every season since he first entered the field.

At sixteen, Nero had fought under Dax’s shadow, freshly stabilized after his first rut, his body too strange for standard protocols and too useful for anyone to ignore. Dax had stayed close enough that every commander knew one mistake would bring Saha’s king down on them like a blade.

Sebastian had been there too.

Older. Controlled. Beautiful in the infuriating way he had always been beautiful, with discipline where most people had nerves.

Nero had noticed the first time Sebastian pushed his pheromones too hard.

No one else had. Or perhaps no one else had cared quickly enough.

So Nero had moved.

He had carried the next wave and the next, and then it had become habit. Sebastian advanced; Nero cleared space. Sebastian steadied the line; Nero took the uglier beasts before the pressure reached him. Sebastian’s shoulders tightened; Nero made sure the fight shifted before anyone asked why.

No one called it devotion.

No one called it obsession either.

That had been polite of them.

"I won’t do it now," Nero said.

Hale’s gaze remained fixed on him. "Because he asked for distance?"

"Yes."

"Or because you want him to feel the absence?"

Nero’s eyes flashed.

Hale did not soften the blow. He simply waited, because Hale had the irritating patience of a man who had survived Dax, Chris, and the kind of court that taught silence to hold knives.

Nero’s laugh came out lower this time. "You are asking ugly questions this morning."

"I am asking necessary ones."

"Do you want the answer?"

"Yes."

Nero looked back at Sebastian’s marker.

The northern route glowed pale and indifferent.

"Sebastian has to deal with the ugly part of his country retaliating and keeping strategically useful dominant omegas to themselves," Nero said. "Because his fathers mated and married without much care for the other dominant alphas on the brink of insanity, and because Fitzgeralt delayed telling the world that Dean was a dominant omega while Arion was nearly tripping over himself trying to get to him, the rest of the world has agreed on one thing."

Hale said nothing.

Nero smiled.

It was not pleasant.

"They will deal with Sebastian’s mating to a dominant omega."

Hale’s eyes narrowed.

"He is the last one on the list," Nero continued. "And he knows it. It is a matter of time until he comes back to me."

The silence that followed was precise enough to cut.

Hale looked at him for one long moment.

Then he said, "That is not an answer. That is a strategy poisoned by resentment."

Nero’s smile did not move. "It is politics."

"It is arrogance."

"It is also true."

"Truth can still be ugly."

"Yes," Nero said softly. "That was my point."

Hale folded his arms.

The maplight cast pale shadows over his face, making him look even harder than usual. Nero had seen Hale face armed men with less severity than he was showing now over one eighteen-year-old prince and one name on a field projection.

"Say it cleanly," Hale said.

Nero’s gaze flicked up.

"If you believe Sebastian will return to you because his options narrow, say it. Don’t dress it in geopolitics."

Nero’s jaw tightened.

For a moment, the room went still.

Then Nero laughed once, low and humorless. "Hale, I’m still Dax’s son."

He leaned one hand on the table, the other loose at his side, his long, white-blond hair sliding forward over one shoulder.

"I shielded Sebastian long enough in fights," Nero said. "He believes I’m a child, but what adult like him believes that a child should shield him just because I’m an enigma?"

Hale did not answer.

The map glowed between them, blue and red and clinical, reducing rot, blood, pheromone collapse, and human stupidity into tidy symbols that could be moved with a finger.

Nero’s smile sharpened.

"None of us are perfect," he continued. "Or particularly nice, for that matter. Sebastian will get close to berserk and endure it with his usual charm. He’ll smile through it, write clean reports, make everyone around him believe he is still functional, and if he collapses, he’ll do it politely enough that people will call it unfortunate instead of predictable."

Hale’s gaze stayed on him.

Nero rubbed the back of his neck, the gesture almost boyish until his next words ruined the illusion.

"I will wait patiently for him... Well, no." His mouth curved. "That sounds better than the truth."

"And the truth?" Hale asked.