"I have selective restraint."

"That is just lack of restraint with branding," Dean said.

Mia lifted her glass slightly. "Branding is important."

Arion’s mouth curved, but the amusement did not reach the colder place behind his eyes. His phone had already buzzed twice while they spoke, both notifications from the secure channel attached to Otto’s office. The Vale family was in place. Andrea was isolated from his parents. The first recovered fragments from the attempted leak had been copied into the imperial evidence system.

The morning was no longer waiting politely.

Dean noticed before anyone had to say it.

His gaze moved to Arion’s phone, then to Arion’s face, then to the careful stillness beneath the man’s polished calm. Arion was still beside him, still present, still warm where his hand had settled near Dean’s shoulder, but part of him had already turned toward the secured wing where Andrea Vale remained foolish enough to think technicalities could protect him.

Dean exhaled through his nose.

"You can go," he said.

Arion looked at him immediately.

Lucas’s gaze sharpened, but he said nothing.

Mia lowered her wine glass slightly, her black eyes cooling behind it.

Dean hated all of them for noticing the sentence too clearly.

"I am not dismissing you," he said, because apparently even generosity required clarification in this family. "Do not look at me like that."

Arion’s expression did not change much, but his eyes did. "Dean."

"No. You need to go." Dean leaned back into the sofa, one hand sinking into Boreas’s fur as the dog pressed closer against his knee. "Otto is waiting. Andrea is sitting there convincing himself he is clever. His family is probably already rehearsing words like misunderstanding, emotional distress, and private correspondence. Someone has to go ruin their vocabulary."

Mia’s mouth twitched. "That was almost poetic."

Dean pointed at her. "Wine makes you sentimental. Be careful."

Lucas looked at Dean quietly. "Are you sure?"

Dean almost snapped that he was perfectly sure, because that was his first instinct with concern. But Lucas’s voice was too careful, and Arion was watching him as if the answer mattered more than the crisis.

So Dean forced himself to tell the truth.

"No," he said. "I am angry, embarrassed, and one badly phrased sentence away from climbing into a cabinet until the wedding is over."

Mia murmured, "Progress. He admitted cabinet instead of restricted beast zone."

Dean ignored her with great effort.

"But," he continued, looking at Arion, "I am safe. Lucas is here. Mia is here. Boreas is perfect to watch for intruders. I do not need you to stay in this room just because Andrea tried to make my name feel like something that needs guarding."

Arion’s jaw tightened.

Dean softened despite himself.

"I need you to go make sure he understands that touching my name was the stupidest thing he ever did."

For a moment, Arion said nothing.

Then he stepped closer.

Dean should have anticipated the kiss, but he did not. Arion bent and pressed his mouth to Dean’s forehead, slow and deliberate, right in front of Lucas, Mia, Boreas, and the collapsing remains of Dean’s dignity.

Dean closed his eyes.

When Arion drew back, his expression had gone very calm.

"I will not be long," he said.

Dean gave him a dry look. "Do not rush on my account. I want him educated thoroughly."

Mia lifted her glass. "I support education."

Lucas finally spoke, voice quiet and cold. "So do I."

Arion inclined his head once, accepting both the permission and the expectation beneath it.

Dean caught his sleeve before he turned fully away.

Arion stopped at once.

Dean looked up at him. "And Arion?"

"Yes?"

"Do not make it clean if they do not deserve clean."

Something dark moved through Arion’s eyes.

"I won’t."

Dean released him.

—

The moment Arion stepped out of the Crown Prince’s palace, his pheromones cooled to the old register of murder Dean had spent months calming out of him.

The part of him that had existed long before Dean walked into his life with sharp eyes, sharper words, and the absolute audacity to make Arion want to be gentler without ever asking him to be harmless.

The corridor changed around him.

Staff stopped looking directly at him.

Guards straightened without being ordered.

One aide waiting near the entrance to the secured wing took one look at Arion’s face and wisely forgot whatever greeting he had prepared.

Arion did not slow.

His coat moved around him in clean black lines, the gold at his cuffs catching the morning light as he crossed from the private residential palace into the administrative wing. The modern glass corridor between them overlooked the inner gardens, all polished stone, filtered sunlight, old trees, and discreet security panels hidden beneath royal elegance.

Beautiful, controlled, civilized.

A lie, like most palaces.

Alamina had always been good at dressing violence in polished architecture.

Arion was better.

His phone buzzed once, but ignored it as he had only one thought.

Andrea had been warned twice.

Once, after the white dress at his engagement party with Dean.

Arion had quietly warned him after. Politely enough that witnesses could pretend nothing had happened.

He had told Andrea that Dean was not a space to test, not a line to cross, not a weakness to circle because Arion seemed newly occupied by affection.

Then yesterday, after the field. Arion had warned him again.

And now this.

Dean’s name on a cropped file.

Caelan’s rot sharpened into bait.

A dead man’s attempt to sell Dean’s future dragged toward media feeds because Andrea had been discarded and could not bear being less desired than the people he considered beneath him.

Arion’s pheromones dropped another degree.

One of the guards at the secured wing visibly swallowed.

The lead security officer bowed. "Your Highness."

"Status."

"Andrea Vale remains in Suite Four. No external communication. No contact with family. Counsel request logged but not yet granted pending His Majesty’s review. Full surveillance active."

"Has he spoken?"

"He asked whether palace security understands the difference between restriction and unlawful detention."

Arion’s mouth curved faintly.

Several people in the corridor decided, at the same time, to look anywhere else.

"And your answer?" Arion asked.

"That the Crown Prince would clarify procedure shortly."

"Wise."

The officer’s face remained professionally blank. "Thank you, Your Highness."

Arion stopped before the suite door.

For one second, he thought of Dean’s fingers catching his sleeve.

’Do not make it clean if they do not deserve clean.’

Arion’s hand lifted toward the access panel.

’Oh, I will, Dean. I was never one to revenge cleanly before you.’

The scanner read his bracelet, his palm, his clearance.

The door unlocked with a soft digital chime.

He stepped inside.

Andrea turned from the window.

He had dressed in pale gray trousers, a white shirt, and a fitted jacket left open with careful negligence, with red hair falling over one shoulder in glossy waves. He looked beautiful in the way expensive knives looked beautiful inside museum cases.

Something meant to be admired from a distance but useless once removed from context.

Andrea’s eyes flicked over him and paused as he detected the prince’s cold pheromones.

The thing in Arion that Dean’s presence had warmed for months but never erased.

Andrea’s mouth curved anyway, because he was still arrogant enough to mistake fear for an aesthetic choice.

"Your Highness," he said. "Have you come to enjoy the spectacle personally?"