Caught by the Mad Alpha King-Chapter 471: Exchange

Zion had been wrong.

The gathering was more than bearable; it was normal, which was perhaps the most dangerous thing about it. By the end of the first hour, he had already decided he wanted to send Nero to Palatine under the dignified excuse of an ’exchange experience for crown princes,’ mostly because he preferred the company of Dax and Chris to that of his grandfather.

Caelan was no longer Emperor, but retirement had done absolutely nothing to improve his temperament. He remained perfectly capable of reminding Zion, with chilling efficiency, that he came from an abomination and was therefore one too.

Fate, naturally, had a sense of humor. Zion looked almost exactly like Caelan had at that age - same blonde hair, same green eyes, and the same aristocratic face refined into something too elegant to be kind.

Across from him, Nero and Dean were bickering with the ease of people for whom affection and combat had never developed into separate instincts.

It did not help that they looked similar enough to encourage stupidity in strangers.

Both were tall for their age. Both were blonde, though Nero’s hair was so pale it veered almost white, while Dean’s held a warmer gold. Both had purple eyes too; Dean’s a shade darker than Nero’s.

People still mistook them for twins.

This was absurd.

Aside from the general aesthetic and the mutual air of trouble, they looked like opposites in motion. Nero had Dax’s scale, Dax’s confidence, and a tendency to expand into every room like he had been built to dominate space on principle. Dean, by contrast, carried his danger more quietly. Less visible until he chose otherwise.

Nayra had abandoned them after two hours with the serene decisiveness of a nine-year-old who had concluded that better company existed elsewhere and she was entitled to seek it. She had gone off to meet girls her own age and had looked visibly relieved while doing so.

Which left Zion with the boys.

And Sebastian.

Sebastian was stretched across the chaise opposite Nero and Dean with the posture of someone enduring social collapse through elegance alone. He had one arm flung over his eyes and looked, with remarkable dignity, like he was considering whether jumping into the newly redesigned fountain below the window might count as self-care.

Zion let his head fall back against the chair and looked at the ceiling for a long moment, as if appealing to architecture for strength.

Across from him, Nero and Dean were still arguing over something that had begun with fountain pressure and had somehow evolved into whether one could improve airport baggage systems with better royal oversight.

Sebastian had not moved from the chaise. He still looked one sigh away from becoming decorative tragedy.

Zion lowered his gaze again and said, with the calm of a man making a serious policy proposal under deeply unserious circumstances, "I think Nero should come to Palatine."

The room paused.

Dean stopped mid-sentence.

Nero looked up at once. "Please don’t put me between you and the disaster of a grandfather you have."

Zion looked at him for a moment, then said, with complete sincerity, "That is exactly why I want to."

Dean made a strangled sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough.

Sebastian removed his arm from his eyes just enough to stare at Zion properly. "That is not the reassuring clarification you think it is." 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

"We are supposed to wait patiently," Dean accented the last word with deliberate suffering, "for Uncle Dax and Chris. Not start plotting revenge on our mutually hated grandfather."

"It isn’t revenge," Zion said.

Nero raised a brow. "That sounded like revenge."

"It’s diplomacy."

"That sounded worse," Sebastian muttered.

Dean pointed between them. "See? This is how terrible ideas put on formal shoes and become policy."

Zion sat up a little straighter, clearly deciding that if he was going to be judged, he might as well be eloquent about it.

"All right," he said. "Let me phrase this differently."

"That has never improved anything," Sebastian said.

Zion ignored him. "A short visit. Structured. Properly supervised. Framed as a crown prince exchange. Cultural, political, educational."

Nero nodded along immediately. "Excellent."

Dean looked at him with visible betrayal. "You are far too easy to recruit."

"No," Nero said. "I’m selective. This is simply a very good idea."

Sebastian sat up fully now, one foot hitting the floor with the weary finality of a boy accepting that the room had become his problem.

"No," he said. "It is an entertaining idea. That is not the same thing."

Zion turned to him with infuriating calm. "You don’t think it would help."

"I think," Sebastian said, "that sending Nero to Palatine because your grandfather is intolerable would not be called ’help’ by any government with survival instincts."

Dean brightened. "That means some governments might still allow it."

Sebastian looked at him. "You are not helping."

Dean smiled. "I know."

Zion crossed one ankle over the opposite knee, his posture elegant enough to be irritating. "It would not be unsupervised. It would not be informal. And it would not be framed as what it actually is."

Nero looked interested. "And what is it actually?"

Zion’s expression flattened. "Relief."

That quieted the room for half a beat.

Then Dean, softer than before, said, "That’s still not enough to justify offering him to Caelan."

"I’m not offering him to Caelan," Zion replied. "I’m placing him near Caelan."

"That sounds exactly like the kind of distinction that gets written into incident reports," Sebastian said.

Before anyone could answer, the door opened.

Rowan stepped in first, followed by two palace staff carrying trays loaded with drinks, pastries, fruit, and the kind of controlled hospitality that suggested someone in the main household had decided adolescent royal company required fortification before property damage escalated.

He took in the room in a single sweep - Zion upright and composed, Sebastian visibly exhausted, Dean too bright-eyed to be trusted, and Nero looking pleased with himself for reasons that could only be dangerous.

Then he heard the last useful part of the conversation.

"...placing him near Caelan," Zion was saying.

Rowan stopped.

The staff behind him wisely kept moving, setting down trays with the quiet efficiency of people who had worked in palaces long enough to know when not to become noticeable.

Rowan looked at Zion.

Then at Nero.

Then back again.

"No," he said.