Taming the Wild Beast of Alamina

Chapter 303: Realization

Arion leaned back slightly, amusement warming his face in a way that made him look younger and far less princely. "Sylvia, emotionally trapped between Commander Lancaster’s tragic shoulders and Nero of Saha’s death-angel seduction over fried chicken."

Dean opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Then, despite himself, his lips twitched.

"Do not make it sound funny."

"It is horrifying," Arion said. "But also funny."

"The problem," Dean said, lifting a finger, "is that I know both Nero and Sylvia well enough to understand that the combination of the two planning something is never good. Nero is very good at hiding cues and blaming others when those around him don’t see what he feels, despite the fact that he hides his emotions like a dragon shielding its treasure. Sylvia is usually wearing her emotions clearly and bothering everyone until they notice them. So what is going on?"

Arion’s amusement faded slowly.

Not because Dean had stopped being funny.

Because Dean was right.

That was one of the irritating things about Dean. He could arrive at the correct conclusion through a path made of sarcasm, panic, affection, and two wildly insulting metaphors.

Arion reached for one of the tablets and turned it face down on the bed. "Sylvia is hiding something."

Dean gave him a look. "Thank you. The imperial insight has arrived."

Arion ignored that. "And Nero knows she is hiding it."

"That makes me feel worse."

"It should."

Dean stared at him. "You are terrible at comfort tonight."

"I am not trying to comfort you. I am trying to keep you from storming into Sylvia’s room at midnight and demanding answers."

"I would not storm."

Arion gave him a calm look.

Dean looked away first. "I would arrive with emotional urgency."

"You would arrive barefoot, furious, and followed by two security officers who did not know whether they were protecting Sylvia from you or you from yourself."

"That is slander."

"That is recent experience."

Dean picked up a pillow and hit him with it.

Arion accepted the attack with dignity, mostly because Dean was tired enough that the pillow barely qualified as violence.

"Fine," Dean muttered, dropping it back onto the bed. "I won’t go."

"Good."

"But I want to."

"I know."

"She asked me not to push." His voice lowered despite himself. "She looked at me and asked me not to. Sylvia doesn’t do that unless something matters."

Arion softened.

There was the heart of it.

Not Nero. Not Thomas. Not the wedding. Not even Sylvia’s lie.

The fact that Sylvia, who usually survived pain by turning it into noise, had chosen silence and then asked Dean to respect it.

Arion shifted closer, his knee brushing Dean’s under the blanket. "Then respect it."

"I am trying."

"You are currently building a theory board in your head."

"It is a private theory board."

"Dean."

"It has color coding."

Arion looked at him.

Dean sighed. "Fine. I know."

On the wall display, Minerva’s transition file still glowed with insulting neatness. Meetings. Staff introductions. Charitable patronage transfers. Household authority after official recognition. Dean should have been reading about the foundation programs Minerva wanted him to supervise once the wedding made his position formal.

Instead, he was sitting in bed discussing whether one of his best friends had entered a secret arrangement with the Sahan crown prince over fried chicken.

His life had become impossible to explain to normal people.

"Nero is not careless," Arion said after a moment. "That is what worries me."

Dean turned to him. "That is exactly what I said."

"You said he hides his emotions like a dragon shielding treasure."

"And?"

"That was less precise."

"What?"

Arion’s mouth curved faintly. "Nero was very obvious about being in love with Sebastian."

Dean stared at him.

"No, he was not."

"To you, perhaps."

Dean sat up straighter against the pillows, offended now, which Arion privately preferred to guilty. Offense gave Dean structure. Guilt made him quiet, and Arion disliked that more than almost anything.

"Nero looks at everyone like he is deciding whether they are furniture, a threat, or an inconvenience," Dean said. "How was I supposed to identify love from that?"

"Because Sebastian was the only person who made him look as if the furniture, threats, and inconveniences might all be worth enduring."

Dean opened his mouth.

Closed it.

His expression soured.

"I hate that I understand that."

Arion’s amusement softened. "Also, you should consider Nero’s inheritance."

Dean narrowed his eyes. "That sounds like the beginning of a warning."

"It is."

"Wonderful. Continue frightening me while I’m in bed and emotionally vulnerable."

Arion looked at him, then at the dark robe slipping off one shoulder, then at the tablets scattered around them. "You do not look vulnerable."

"I am emotionally vulnerable."

Arion’s mouth curved again. "Neither Dax, his father, nor his grandfather were peaceful men when it came to love. They were not the sort of men who accepted being left simply because the person they wanted was afraid, stubborn, or biologically inconvenient."

Dean stared at him.

"You have the same inheritance."

Arion paused.

Dean’s purple eyes narrowed further as his gaze moved over Arion’s face, then down to the hand resting very comfortably against Dean’s waist, then to the faint pressure mark still visible at Dean’s throat from the narrow leather collar he had been fitted with that morning.

A ceremonial piece, Minerva had called it.

Jewelry, technically.

A thin band of black leather and gold fittings meant to sit around his neck during one of the pre-wedding events because he was an omega and royal symbolism had apparently never met restraint in its life.

Arion had stared at it with enough quiet possession to make two stylists blush and Dean threaten divorce before marriage.

"With," Dean added, "a documented possessiveness problem and an alarming fascination with jewels and leather around my neck."

Arion did not even have the decency to look ashamed.

"True."

Dean threw him a look. "That was too easy."

"I am self-aware."

"You are selectively self-aware."

"That is still more than many princes manage."

Dean muttered something insulting under his breath.

Arion let him, mostly because he deserved it.

"What I am trying to say," Arion continued, "is that Nero may have offered Sylvia something impossible, and she does not know what to choose."

The room went still.

Dean’s irritation vanished so quickly it almost felt physical.

Something impossible.

For a second, he did not understand.

Then his own memory moved, sharp and unwanted, pulling him back several weeks to the private garden, to Sylvia sitting across from them with pastries, pretending not to be devastated because Thomas Lancaster had left for Rohan. Arion’s voice, calm and cruel with practicality, returned first.

Sylvia is a beta. Thomas requires a dominant omega for long-term stabilization. That reality does not disappear because the two of you find each other attractive while emotionally compromised.

There is more than pheromones involved in a dominant bond.

His stomach sank.

Beta.

Dominant alpha.

Dominant omega.

Nero.

Enigma.

Dean turned slowly toward Arion.

"No."

Arion said nothing.

Dean hated him for that silence.

"No," Dean repeated, because sometimes denial deserved a second chance even when it had already failed. "He wouldn’t."

Arion’s face remained calm.

Dean pushed himself fully upright, the blanket sliding to his waist. One of the tablets on his lap tipped sideways before Arion caught it.

"He offered to change her secondary gender."

"I said he may have offered her something impossible."

"That is what you meant."

"Yes."

The room felt suddenly too modern and too bright and too safe for the horror sitting inside it.

Their bedroom was full of wedding schedules, internal messages, transition files from Minerva, styluses, chargers, water bottles, and the small gold countdown in the corner of the wall display.

Dean pressed both hands over his mouth.

"Oh, God."