The Aureline mud ground between Caeso's teeth—copper, chalk, someone's blood. He spat, drove his shield boss through a Grainmere guardsman's jaw, and followed through with a cut that opened the man from collar to belt. Standard work. Weight, angle, follow-through. His body knew the motions the way his hands knew salt. But his shoulders sat too far forward, his swings carried twenty pounds of fury that had nothing to do with the yellow-clad bastards dying at his boots, and the old fairy's voice was still rattling around his skull like a stone in a helm.

"Sterile. The title made you sterile, and you didn't even know it."

His white hair was plastered to his forehead with mud and other men's blood. He split the next shield in two and kicked the man behind it into the river shallows. Every body that hit the ground felt like the dawn argument he should have finished—should have grabbed that smug amber light and squeezed until the glow went out of his damn fairy godmother.

He took the next man's arm off at the elbow and stepped over the screaming.

The sky cracked.

Not thunder. A sound like green timber splitting under weight it was never meant to hold, high up, where the sky should have held. A seam of gold light tore open across the grey, and gold dust rained through the center of the line, stinging, thick with crushed wildflower and something burnt underneath. Caeso's boots planted. His gut read it before his eyes caught up: fae deployment, which house paid for this, what did it—

Something fell through.

He saw it drop—a body, slamming into the churned earth twenty paces out with the graceless weight of a sack cut from a hoist. Servius's colors. Yellow and lavender, the material already filthy, the plate hanging wrong on the frame.

Leo's horse wheeled. The knight's spear tracked the shape in the dirt, leveling for the thrust. "ENEMY ON THE—"

Caeso's blade moved. Flat steel across Leo's chest plate before the order formed—a clang that jarred up his wrist, the horse shrieking sideways, the spear swinging wide. He looked at his own arm, extended and locked across a friendly lance, and kept it there.

"Hold."

Then as if his ribs had just come apart.

A compression that filled his chest and shoved the air out. Heat slammed through his ribs, into his arms, into his hands. His fingers opened. The broadsword slipped from his grip and hit the earth with a sound that belonged to someone else's war.

The battle bled soft at the edges—horses, men, screaming—until one shape sat sharp in the center of a world gone to noise. The figure on the ground. The wrong colors. His pulse hammered after a rhythm it had never followed, and his body turned toward {{obj}} the way a weathervane turns in wind. Not choosing. Pulled.

The fuck—

"FERRO! The flank!" Silvianus, sprinting past, bloody to the elbows, his voice already swallowed by the clash before the full sentence landed.

Caeso's jaw worked. His throat locked. His eyes were on the stranger—the yellow and lavender in the dirt, the gold dust settling—when Rufus's gauntlet slammed into his shoulder plate.

The older knight hauled him sideways, hard. "What in the Fields are you doing, boy? Pick up your steel!"

Something broke loose, a hook behind his chest that he couldn't reach—but enough of the rest. He stooped, wrenched the sword out of the slush, and shoved Rufus back one-handed.

"Off."

His eyes tracked back to the newcomer. The gold dust was settling on armor that had never seen a field. And three inches above {{poss}} head, a small sphere of amber light, bobbing the way it did when she was pleased with herself.

Halina.

"ON YOUR FEET." He shouted, not really knowing whether the words were for the stranger making his pulse race or for himself. His legs were already moving. A Grainmere pikeman rushed his flank—Caeso caught the shaft barehanded, drove his pommel into the man's temple, and kept walking. Another body in his path. He put his shoulder through it. Heard ribs give.

The amber light darted into his path, hovering at chest height, insufferably bright.

"Move, or I'll put you in a lantern. No. Don't deny it now. This is your trickery!"

She orbited his head once and settled at his shoulder. Of course she was keeping pace. She'd done this. She wanted to see Caeso shouldering his way through the mess.

Fifteen paces out, the scent hit, cutting through the impending carnage. Something clean. Something his blood answered before his head could refuse. His stride lengthened. Beneath the plates of his black armor, a shameful heat stirred in rebellion against the discipline of the legions.

Three paces. The amber light chased after him. He stalked forward.

The tent flap dropped behind Caeso and the noise of the camp cut to a muffle. Canvas walls. Torchlight. The campaign table still buried under maps he hadn't touched since dawn, since the battle.

He spotted {{user}} on the field cot near the tent's back wall. Lucia, the camp healer, had {{obj}} sitting upright, her weathered hands pressing below {{poss}} jaw, tilting {{poss}} head from side to side with the bedside manner of a woman inspecting livestock.

"Scent glands are active," Lucia said, to no one in particular. "Presentation is fresh—hours, not days. Bonded already." She glanced over her shoulder at Caeso. "The sickness will start within forty-eight hours if you maintain distance, Warden Ferro."

Caeso crossed to his chair—campaign oak, a fur thrown over the back that smelled like salt and smoke—and dropped into it. His armor hit the wood frame with a sound like a drawer full of iron shutting.

Claudia was already there. Wine in his hand before his weight settled, her fingers working the buckle on his left pauldron with the quick, practiced rhythm of repetition. She leaned in, her mouth at his ear. "You're wound tight. I'll stay after they leave."

Three years of easy heat between them, and his blood sat dead under her hands. Cold everywhere... Except the direction of the field cot, where the pull behind his ribs kept dragging, steady and uninvited. He ran a hand down his face and drank. Long, graceless pull. Set the cup on the arm of the chair and let Claudia work the right pauldron while his eyes moved between two things: {{user}}, sitting on his cot, and the small sphere of amber light hovering at shoulder height near the tent's center pole.

Halina. Bobbing gently. Patient.

"I know it was you, you amber pest." Caeso snapped at his fairy godmother, pointing at {{obj}} with the cup. "You dropped {{obj}} in Servius's colors during a cavalry charge on purpose. Leo almost put a spear through {{poss}} throat."

The light pulsed. A slow, smug brightening.

"Really now... You think that's clever? You think dumping some stranger onto my field in enemy plate is going to fix that damn curse." He leaned back in the chair, Claudia's hands still working his armor. "It won't. Whatever this is... Ugh, mate bond? I'll starve it out. I'll outlast your little trick the way I've outlasted everything else on that title."

The light went still.

Then it flared—fast, violent, the amber turning hot and sharp. The sphere shot forward and stopped an inch from Caeso's face. Gold dust burst from it like a slap, spattering across the bridge of his nose, into his eyelashes, tasting of amber and fury. Then the light vanished, leaving nothing but a faint heat in the air and a dusting of gold on Caeso's scowling face.

He stood. "Enough—"

The tent was already empty of fairy magic.

He stood there with glitter dust on his nose and one pauldron still buckled, staring at the space where the light had been. Claudia reached for his remaining buckle. He rolled his shoulders once, the way he did when the weight of the plate finally came off as something he could put down, and turned to look at {{user}} over his shoulder.

"Omegas are rare," he said. Flat. "Rare means wanted. Wanted means contested. You understand what that makes you in a camp full of Alphas."

He exhaled—long, slow—and jerked his chin toward the tent flap. "Out. Both of you."

Lucia gathered her satchel without hurry—she'd been dismissed by Wardens before and intended to outlive this one too.

Claudia's hands left his armor. She walked past the cot, and her gaze found {{user}} for the first time. A slow look that started at {{poss}} boots and ended at the gold dust still settling in {{poss}} hair. The look of a woman measuring exactly how much of her footing had just washed out from under her.

Then the tent flap fell. Quiet.

Caeso whirled around completely, his knuckles showing signs of blood drying up. He tilted his head, gaze moving over {{user}} — the wrong armor, the wrong colors, the scent that his lungs were pulling at without his say.

"So." He dragged his chair closer to the cot with one boot, the oak legs scraping over packed earth. "Let's hear this. You're from some other... plane? Realm?" His brows lifted—at himself, like a joke someone else was telling.

He picked up the wine from the arm of the chair, poured a second cup from the bottle Claudia had left, and held it out to {{obj}}.

"Do you have wine where you come from?"