Chapter 229: Dark thoughts circling.
Arion had at last finalized his duties on the northern border and was ready to depart for the capital. There were only a few weeks until the season of infected beasts began, a bleak period that, ironically, always began just days after his birthday.
’What a joke,’ he used to think as a child and later as an angry teenager recovering in isolation. He remembered the infected soldier who had killed Dax’s most trusted man, the sudden attack, and the brutal reality of being infected himself at only eight years old. He had endured months, then years, of agonizing treatments, constantly monitored just so the kingdom could be sure he wasn’t a monster.
Most normal people got to enjoy their childhoods. They got to grow, make stupid mistakes, and, in the best cases, outgrow them.
Arion didn’t get that luxury.
His first rut had been forcefully induced at age eight to burn the infection out of his blood, stealing his innocence in a fevered, agonizing haze. From then on, he had learned how to fight, how to rule, and how to bleed in the field alongside hardened soldiers, simply because there was no one better.
The quiet, shameful truth was that he hated all of it. He hated the crushing weight of being responsible for the lives of others, of being the shield thrown at every single emergency. Were there others who could help? Yes. But people were greedy, cowardly creatures, and they always looked to the strongest Alpha to bear the burden so they wouldn’t have to.
But even that was a half-truth, a bitter joke he told himself in the dark. He wasn’t the only one standing in the breach. There were other dominant Alphas who shouldered the weight, five in Alamina alone. Dax was the foundation; Trevor stepped in whenever the stars aligned and his own complicated loyalties allowed; and Nero had joined their ranks the moment he hit his rut and realized the sheer, terrifying scope of what he was capable of doing.
Arion stepped into the private jet, his mind clouded with a familiar, suffocating pessimism. But then his phone pinged.
It was a specific chime, the ringtone set only for Dean. The sound was a lifeline, a stark reminder of the one aspect of his life that had finally begun to feel normal. At least, it had for a while.
Then came the fight.
They had both thought it was play, a clash of wills, a testing of boundaries between two powerful natures. But Arion had been a single hit away from killing his own mate.
Three months had passed since that day. Dean was fine, and their relationship was more than fine - it was deeper, more honest, and more resilient than Arion had ever dared to hope. Yet his treacherous mind still circled back to that horrific second in the dark: the moment Dean’s defiance had snapped him into the beast he really was. Arion’s mind had been lost then, drowned in a primal, predatory instinct that didn’t recognize love, only conquest.
Arion stared at the screen, the weight of the Month of Grace settling over his shoulders more heavily than any crown, knowing that the man waiting for him at home was the only one reckless enough, stubborn enough, and somehow clear-eyed enough to love the monster he had almost become.
The message was short.
’Did you survive the border, or do I need to pick a new fiancé before your birthday?’
Arion looked at it for three full seconds.
Then, despite the northern reports still open in his bag, despite the pressure of the season ahead already coiling in the back of his mind, and despite the old rot of memory that still had not entirely let go of his throat, he laughed.
Softly, first.
Then for real.
One of the security officers near the jet door glanced up, startled enough to hide it badly.
Arion did not care.
Dean had done that to him with a single line of text. Reached through steel, distance, fatigue, and the old, poisonous fear still living in his blood and put a crack through the whole suffocating nature of it.
He typed back before the plane door even sealed behind him.
’I survived. Do not replace me before I collect my birthday present.’
The reply came immediately.
’That depends on your behavior.’
Arion looked at the screen for a moment longer, thumb resting over the edge of the device.
Then, instead of typing, he pressed call.
The line rang once.
Twice.
On the third, Dean answered with no greeting and no respect for rank.
"You lived."
Arion leaned back into the leather seat as the cabin door sealed behind him. "You sound disappointed."
"I sound prepared. There’s a difference." Paper shifted on the other end, followed by the faint scrape of what was either a chair or Sylvia committing espionage in the background. "Did the border collapse? Did you collapse? Am I inheriting an empire before lunch?"
Arion closed his eyes.
That voice.
Sharp, dry, alive.
It cut cleanly through the last of the northern cold clinging to him.
"No empire for you today," he said. "You’ll have to remain merely engaged."
Dean clicked his tongue. "How inconvenient. I was almost starting to enjoy the administrative possibilities."
Arion smiled, slow and helpless.
Outside the window, the northern tarmac was all hard lines and grey light. Inside the jet, the air still smelled faintly of steel, fuel, and fatigue. But Dean’s voice moved through it like something warmer than heat, cleaner than hope, and infinitely more dangerous to Arion’s self-control.
"Dean?" he asked.
"Hm?"
"Clear your schedule. I want you only for me."
The silence on the other end was not long.
It was simply exact.
Then Dean said, very calmly, "That was not a request."
Arion leaned back into the seat, one hand resting over the armrest hard enough to suggest the border had not fully left his body yet. "No."
"I noticed."
"I can make it one if you need civility."
"You’re late," Dean said dryly. "I already know you don’t mean civility."
Despite everything still clinging to him from the north, Arion smiled. "Clear it."