Taming the Wild Beast of Alamina Chapter 160: Failed confession

"I like you."

Sebastian went still.

Not shocked, exactly. That would have implied surprise. This was sothing else. The expression of a man who had known a door was there and still hoped it wouldn’t open.

The silence that followed was not long, but it was enough for Nero to see the understanding settle fully into him.

Enough for the cold on the balcony to suddenly feel very far away.

Then Sebastian exhaled once, and his face changed. The way beautiful n closed themselves when people wanted things from them that they had no intention of carrying.

"Nero," he said with a tone that he used when people made him problematic declarations. Warm and polite at the surface, but dismissive.

Nero felt sothing in himself harden before Sebastian even finished.

"This would be a mistake."

Nero said nothing

Sebastian’s voice remained even, practiced in a way that made every word sound worse. "You’re young. This is proximity, admiration, ttiming, orwhatever version of intensity your life keeps handing you. It happens."

The words were not cruel, but for Nero, it felt like he was stabbed.

They were the sa words Sebastian most likely said to everyone who took flirting too seriously, everyone who made the mistake of believing it ant sothing, and everyone who stood in front of him expecting to be treated as an exception only to discover they were just another one.

Nero looked at him and, for the first ti in a long ti, understood what it ant to be genuinely hurt by sothing quiet.

Sebastian kept going, probably because he thought he was doing this well.

"It would be best," he said, "for both of us to forget this."

For both of us.

As if that were sothing that could be filed away by mutual agreent and turned into background noise.

Nero’s hand was still on the door. He made himself loosen it before it cracked under his strength.

Sebastian, perhaps mistaking the silence for surrender, softened his voice further. "We work well. We know each other. There’s no reason to ruin that over sothing you’ll outgrow."

That one hit the cleanest of all.

Nero almost laughed.

’Outgrow.’

As if this were childish. Sebastian still saw him the way Arion said he did: too young, too close to the family, and too safely put away in a category that couldn’t possibly hold danger.

Sothing colder than anger settled into Nero’s chest.

When he spoke, his voice was perfectly calm.

"I won’t outgrow it."

That finally changed Sebastian’s face.

Nero saw Sebastian realize this was not a confession he could dismiss with charm and light correction. That it was not flattering noise. Not harmless heat. Not one more thing to de-escalate and then forget by dinner.

Still, Sebastian tried.

"Nero—"

"No." Nero straightened fully now, stepping back from the doorway so there was space between them again. "You don’t get to do that."

Sebastian’s brows drew together. "Do what?"

"Dismiss it like I’m one more person trying his luck."

A pause.

Then, because Sebastian was still Sebastian, he said, "That isn’t what I’m doing."

"It is exactly what you’re doing."

The softness had gone from Nero’s voice. Not raised, not emotional, but completely devoid of anything that could be mistaken for pleading.

Sebastian looked at him for a mont too long. "I’m trying to avoid making this worse."

"You already did." The words reached Sebastian’s mind at least; Nero could see it.

But Sebastian, stubborn in his own way, stayed where he was. "What do you want to say?"

The answer ca to Nero imdiately.

Sothing honest.

Sothing that did not assu he was a phase.

Sothing that did not reduce what he had just handed over to immaturity and timing and youth.

But suddenly he did not want any of that from Sebastian anymore.

Not if he had to force it from him. He made a mistake by expecting at least honesty from a man that clearly saw the adult in Nero while fighting but chose to see him as childish now.

So instead he said, "Nothing."

Sebastian blinked.

Nero t his gaze and realized, with startling clarity, that he couldn’t go back to pretending he didn’t like Sebastian or not confessing his feelings.

"I can’t see you as a friend anymore," he said.

For the first ti since the confession, Sebastian looked genuinely unsettled.

"Nero."

"I an it." Nero’s voice stayed level. "We’ll speak when duty requires it. etings. Assignnts. Public functions. Anything necessary." He took one asured breath. "Outside of that, I think it would be better if we were strangers."

Sebastian stared at him.

Then his expression shifted again, and this ti Nero recognized it at once: the private disbelief of a man who thought he was hearing dramatics. Posturing. A wounded retreat that would cool by morning.

"You don’t an that," Sebastian said.

Nero looked at him and understood, with a kind of exhausted finality, that this was the last injury.

Not the rejection itself, but the assumption that he was bluffing, when Sebastian was one of the few people that knew him long enough to know that Nero, like Dax, never bluffed.

"I do," Nero said.

Sebastian’s mouth flattened slightly. "You’re angry."

"No."

"You’re hurt."

"Yes."

Sebastian took that in, then said, more carefully, "Then don’t decide this now."

Nero almost smiled at the irony.

Sebastian wanted a delay now. Space now. Caution now. After all the tis Nero had given him exactly those things without being asked.

"I already decided it," Nero said.

The corridor seed quieter than before. Or perhaps Nero was simply hearing less of it now.

Sebastian looked at him in a way that suggested he was still waiting for the turn, the softening, the mont where Nero would admit that this was pride speaking and not reason.

It never ca.

Nero stepped past him into the corridor.

"You said it would be best for both of us," he said. "This is my part of that."

"That’s ridiculous."

"No," Nero said. "It’s clean."

Sebastian gave a short, humorless breath that sounded too close to disbelief. "You’re overreacting."

Nero exhaled once, slow and controlled, trying to ignore the hot, humiliating burn gathering behind his eyes. "Just because this didn’t go the way you expected doesn’t an I’m overreacting."

Sebastian huffed, and there it was again: that tone, that faint edge of treating Nero as if he were younger, as if this were all pride rather than sothing genuine. "Nero, be serious. You’re an enigma. Do you have any idea what that ans for soone like ? For this to even beco a real option, I would have to change everything. I don’t want that."

Nero went still.

Sebastian, perhaps mistaking the silence for room to keep talking, added more quietly, "No one would want that."

The words hung in the air between them, a final, dismissive judgnt. And in that mont, sothing inside Nero that had been straining against its leash finally snapped. The hot burn behind his eyes cooled, crystallizing into sothing sharp and dangerous.

A low chuckle escaped Nero’s lips. It was a sound Sebastian had never heard before - devoid of any warmth, utterly empty of amusent.

"No one would want that," Nero repeated, his voice a soft, predatory rumble. He took a step forward, and Sebastian instinctively took one back, his shoulders hitting the cold wall of the corridor.

Nero leaned in, bracketing Sebastian’s head with his hands, planting them flat against the wall on either side of him. He was close enough now that Sebastian could feel the unnatural stillness radiating from him.

"You talk about what you would have to change," Nero whispered, his lips brushing the shell of Sebastian’s ear. "As if your consent is the only thing that matters here. As if you have a choice."

Sebastian froze, his breath catching in his throat. "Nero, don’t."

"Don’t what?" Nero pulled back just enough to et Sebastian’s wide, panicked eyes. His own gaze was purple, unblinking. "Don’t show you what you’re so afraid of? You call dangerous, Sebastian, but you have no idea what that word truly ans when it applies to ." He laughed again, that sa chillingly hollow sound.

He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial murmur, a terrible intimacy. "Did you know that terror, true, primal terror, can pry a person open from the inside out? That a dominant presence can overwhelm a lesser one until the body simply... surrenders?"

Sebastian was trembling now, his face pale. "You’re insane."

"Maybe," Nero conceded with a slight, terrifying smile. "Or maybe I’m just the only one being honest." He leaned in one last ti, his voice dropping to a venomous promise.

"Stay out of my way. Stay out of my head. Because the next ti... I might just decide to solve the problem myself."

Nero pushed himself off the wall, the movent sudden and fluid. He didn’t look back. He simply walked away, leaving Sebastian slumped against the wall, gasping for air in a corridor that suddenly felt like a tomb.