Taming the Wild Beast of Alamina-Chapter 165: Destructive hobby

"Would you like me to ask differently?"

Dean stopped.

That was the problem with Arion. He could be impossible for ten minutes and then, without changing tone, step directly onto the precise weak point under the argument.

Dean narrowed his eyes. "You make that sound suspiciously simple."

"It is simple."

"No," Dean said. "Nothing involving you, me, and monarchy has been simple in weeks."

Arion crossed to one of the cabinets near the inner wall.

Dean’s suspicion sharpened immediately. "What are you doing?"

No answer.

Of course.

Arion opened the cabinet and withdrew a narrow dark case.

Dean looked at it.

Then at him.

Then back at the case.

And because he was not stupid, because he knew exactly whose family habits Arion had absorbed at inconveniently formative ages, and because he had seen enough of Saha’s royal culture to know when an object was about to become a political statement dressed as intimacy, his pulse gave a traitorous, immediate kick.

"No," Dean said slowly.

Arion turned back toward him. "No?"

"That depends very heavily on what is in that box."

Arion came to a stop a few steps away. "You asked where your ring was." 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

Dean stared. "That is not confirmation. That is menace with syntax."

Arion opened the case.

Dean closed his eyes and turned with his back at Arion. "Please explain why you think I need another collar after the one you gave me in Palatine."

Arion laughed. "Could you turn to me?"

"No." Dean kept his back to him with the dramatic resolve of a man who knew retreat was his only remaining weapon. "I refuse to be the victim of another royal man with extremely expensive and symbolic tastes."

"That sounds specific."

"It is specific." Dean folded his arms, then unfolded them because it ruined the line of his shirt, then folded them again on principle. "You already gave me one in Palatine. Why, exactly, do I need another?"

Behind him, he could hear Arion set the open case down somewhere soft, probably the table by the seating area.

Then Arion said, with far too much calm, "Because that one was for Palatine."

Dean went very still.

He knew exactly why Arion had given him that first one. Caelan’s plans, Palatine’s optics, the need to stand in front of his home empire marked and unquestionable and impossible to politically reinterpret. He understood all of that.

He still preferred rings.

Rings sat on hands.

Rings could disappear under sleeves, into pockets, into habits. They did not sit at the throat like a statement. They did not turn a person into something visibly chosen every time he walked into a room and lifted his chin wrong.

One of those was much easier to hide.

Dean said, without turning, "That remains an unconvincing justification for threatening my neck twice."

Arion made a low sound that might have been amusement. "It isn’t a threat."

"That is exactly what a man with symbolic jewelry and no restraint would say."

He heard Arion step closer.

Dean straightened instinctively, then resented himself for doing it.

"Stay still," Arion said.

"That sounds suspiciously like I’ve lost the argument."

"No," Arion replied, and Dean could hear the smile in his voice now, subtle and warm and deeply unhelpful. "It sounds like I’m putting this on you."

Dean closed his eyes for one brief second.

Then, because if he turned around he would almost certainly lose the last usable pieces of his indignation, he kept his back to him.

He felt Arion’s hand first, broad and warm at the nape of his neck, brushing his hair aside with a care that made the entire situation worse. Dean’s throat tightened in immediate anticipation, not because he was particularly brave, but because his body had already decided this mattered too much to behave normally.

The pearls were cooler than skin when they first touched him.

Then softer.

Then simply there.

Arion settled the collar carefully at his throat, one hand beneath the line of Dean’s jaw for a second as the other worked at the fastening behind his neck. The sensation was intimate in the most unfair way possible.

Dean swallowed.

He heard Arion’s breath shift very slightly behind him.

"The clasp has a pheromone lock," Arion said quietly as he fastened it. "Mine."

Dean opened his eyes.

For half a second, he forgot to breathe.

Then he recovered enough to say, "That is a deeply alarming sentence to deliver while standing behind me with expensive pearls."

Arion’s thumb brushed once, lightly, at the back of Dean’s neck as he finished securing it. "It means no one else opens it."

Dean’s eyes narrowed a fraction. "You really took the worst from Dax..."

Arion’s mouth moved behind him, not quite a smile, more the quiet acknowledgment of a charge he was not especially interested in refuting. "That depends who you ask."

Dean turned his head just enough to look at him over his shoulder. "I am asking."

"And you’re biased."

"Yes," Dean said. "Because I’m the one currently being fitted with a pheromone-locked collar in a modern royal suite by a man who thinks that sentence sounds normal."

Arion’s hand remained for a moment at the back of his neck, broad and warm and infuriatingly steady against the clasp. "It is normal."

"In Saha," Dean said.

"In houses that understand status, Alamina is no exception," Arion corrected and turned Dean to face him. "The collar is there for the mark; I don’t want other people to touch or see it."

Dean stared at him.

Then he stared harder.

"That," he said at last, "is not the reassuring explanation you think it is."

Arion’s hand remained at the back of his neck for one more beat, thumb resting just below the clasp tracing the mark under it. "It wasn’t meant to reassure anyone else."

Dean’s brows rose. "You really heard yourself say that and decided to continue."

"Yes."

"Monstrous."

"And accurate."

Dean looked down for a second, not at Arion, but at the line of pearls against his own throat, reflected faintly in the dark glass of the nearby window. He touched them lightly. Warm now. Settled against his skin with an intimate certainty that made it much harder to say no than it should have been.

Then he looked back up at Arion. "You are telling me, with a completely straight face, that this isn’t primarily for status, or Sahan influence, or very old royal instincts. It’s because you don’t want people to see the mark."

"Yes."

Dean narrowed his eyes. "Or touch it."

"Yes."

"That is deeply possessive."

"Yes."

Dean inhaled, held the breath for a second, then exhaled with the long suffering of a man steadily losing the right to be shocked by anything his mate said. "You keep admitting everything like confession is a hobby."

"It saves time."

"That phrase is becoming the villain of my life."

Arion’s mouth moved faintly, almost a smile. Dean saw it and became instantly more offended.

"No," he said. "Absolutely not. You do not get to be pleased with yourself after turning my throat into a restricted zone."

Arion’s fingers finally left the clasp and slid to the side of Dean’s neck instead, his hand broad and steady there. "It already was."