Chapter 217: Unbelievable
Dean made it exactly as far as the corridor before realizing two things.
First, walking was still a hostile political act against his lower back.
Second, Arion had not followed him, which meant the man had either developed a rare burst of self-restraint or was confident enough in the damage already done to let Dean walk into his parents’ line of sight alone.
Frankly, both possibilities were threatening.
He moved at a dignified pace that would, to any outside observer, suggest calm control and princely composure. Unfortunately, the outside observers in question were his parents, and neither Trevor nor Lucas had ever been particularly vulnerable to performance when it came to him.
The suite prepared for the Palatine delegation was at the end of the private wing, all quiet luxury and overdesigned discretion, the sort of space that had been built by men who believed diplomacy should come with imported marble and expensive silence. Dean stepped inside without knocking.
Lucas sat near the window, a cup of coffee in one hand and a tablet in the other, dressed with such effortless elegance that even being comfortable appeared aristocratic. Trevor stood a few feet away beside the low table, reading something on a screen with the expression of a man being personally offended by numbers.
Neither looked up immediately.
Dean had one glorious second to think perhaps, miraculously, he could sit down first and control the direction of this conversation.
Then Lucas lifted his eyes.
And stopped.
Dean felt it like an impact.
Lucas’s gaze dropped, not to Dean’s face, not to his shoulders, not to the carefully neutral expression Dean had assembled with the last scraps of his dignity, but directly to his left hand.
To the ring.
There was a pause.
Trevor looked up next, following the silence rather than the sightline, which was somehow worse. His eyes landed on Dean, narrowed once in immediate assessment, then shifted downward.
Another pause.
Dean considered retreat.
"Good morning," he said, because if he sounded normal enough, perhaps reality would become optional.
Lucas set the tablet down with exquisite care. "At last one of you is doing things right." He exhaled.
The words were dry. The relief beneath them was not.
Dean saw it anyway.
Saw it in the way Lucas’s shoulders loosened for the first time since he had entered the room, in the way Trevor’s expression had settled out of that dangerous stillness into something quieter, warmer, almost amused now that the immediate panic had passed and the evidence in front of them kept insisting on the same impossible, inconvenient fact.
Dean was happy.
Not merely compromised. Not merely ringed, bruised in pride, and walking like a man whose recent choices had involved entirely too much enthusiasm and too little strategic foresight.
Happy.
Lucas crossed the distance again and sat beside him properly this time, close enough that their knees brushed. Trevor remained in the armchair opposite for all of ten seconds before, apparently deciding distance was for other families, rising again and taking the space on Dean’s other side.
Dean looked between them, trapped now in the middle by old affection and territorial parenting.
"This feels coordinated," he said.
Trevor’s mouth shifted. "It is."
Lucas leaned back into the sofa with a grace Dean had inherited and never managed to weaponize half as effectively. "You look less like someone marching toward a political execution and more like someone who has been allowed to keep the prize he wanted."
Dean let out a quiet laugh. "That is a very specific description."
"You are a very specific child," Lucas replied.
Trevor, who had gone silent in that way he did when feeling too much, reached over and took Dean’s left hand again, turning it slightly to look at the ring once more.
Dean watched the change in his father’s face and felt something inside him go soft in a way that had nothing to do with Arion, though Arion had certainly made him more vulnerable to these things than was reasonable.
Trevor’s thumb brushed once against Dean’s knuckle, careful and brief. "It suits you."
Dean’s throat tightened a little. "You already said that in the language of structural concern."
"That was before," Trevor said.
"Before what?"
"Before I knew you’d chosen it with that expression."
Dean blinked. "What expression?"
Lucas and Trevor shared a look.
Dean narrowed his eyes. "Never mind. I don’t trust either of you to answer that fairly."
Lucas smiled, but it was gentler than before. "The one you get when you’ve already given more of yourself than you intended and are still somehow pleased about it."
Dean looked away at once. "That is slander."
"That," Trevor said, quiet and very calm, "is heredity."
Lucas laughed softly at that, and Dean, despite himself, did too.
For a little while, the room eased into something softer. Breakfast arrived in stages under the efficient terror of palace service, and for once no one seemed interested in politics, logistics, or who needed to leave by what hour. Lucas abandoned the tablet entirely. Trevor stopped pretending the screen in the corner mattered more than his son sitting between them with a private ring on his hand and a look on his face that said some long, guarded part of him had finally been met and answered.
Dean ate because both of his parents were staring at him with enough unified pressure to move governments.
It was absurd.
It was suffocating.
It was home.
Lucas took his coffee black and in insulting quantities, while Trevor cut fruit with the ruthless precision of a man who had once probably considered knife work a practical life skill. Dean let himself lean back deeper into the sofa, plate balanced on one knee, and watched them the way he used to when he was younger and pretending not to study what safety looked like.
Lucas glanced at him over the rim of his cup. "What?"
Dean shrugged, a little too casually. "Nothing."
Trevor did not even look up from the knife in his hand. "That means something."
Dean sighed. "You’re both being extremely... parental."
Lucas’s brows rose. "Extremely?"
"Yes."
Trevor placed the sliced fruit on Dean’s plate without asking and only then lifted his gaze. "You say that as though it’s a surprise."
"It’s not a surprise," Dean said. "It’s just very concentrated this morning."
Lucas leaned into the sofa, one ankle crossed over the other. "You arrived engaged in two ways, bright-eyed, limping, and visibly in love. Concentration was inevitable."
Dean choked slightly on his tea.
Trevor, traitorous man that he was, laughed.
It was not loud. Trevor never laughed loudly unless Lucas was involved somehow. But it was real, warm enough to soften the whole line of his face, and Dean had the absurd thought that perhaps he should have gotten engaged sooner if only to see that expression more often.
Dean put the cup down with as much dignity as he could salvage. "I would like it noted that no one warned me this breakfast would involve character assassination."
Lucas looked delighted. "It’s not assassination if you walked in carrying the evidence."
Trevor’s shoulders shook once with another quiet laugh, and Dean stared at him in open betrayal. "You are supposed to be the reasonable one."
"I am the reasonable one," Trevor said.
Lucas made a soft, offended sound. "Excuse you."
Trevor glanced at him with the ease of long practice. "You’re the elegant one."
Lucas considered that, then nodded. "Fair."
Dean looked between them and muttered, "And this is why I never stood a chance."