"Don't look at me like I'm being unfair. You walked into my house, sick, and still found the energy to pick a fight with my father."
Arion didn't deny it. He simply followed Windstone in silence, the corridor quiet enough that every step felt louder than it should have, as if the mansion itself was listening.
The east wing suite was ready in the way Windstone did things: lights turned down to a warm glow, fresh water on the side table, a discreet tray with bland tea, an extra throw folded with military precision, and a comfortable atmosphere that didn't raise eyebrows. The curtains were half drawn, holding back the city lights, and the air smelled faintly of clean linen and whatever expensive neutral scent the Fitzgeralt staff used to make even guests feel like they belonged.
Windstone opened the door, stepped aside, and bowed.
"If you require anything, Your Highness," he said gently, "I will be close."
Arion inclined his head. "Thank you."
Windstone's gaze flicked to Dean - acknowledgement of who would actually decide what happened next - then he withdrew, leaving the door to close with a soft, final click.
For a moment, it was just them.
Arion stood near the foot of the bed like a man who had been trained not to take up space in someone else's home, despite the fact that he looked like he'd never once in his life been told no without the world paying for it. His jacket was still immaculate. His hair was still perfect. His posture was still controlled.
Only his eyes gave him away.
"You tried to apologize," Arion said quietly.
Dean glanced at him. "You heard that."
"I hear most things," Arion replied, as if it were nothing.
Dean made a face. "Of course you do."
Arion's gaze held firm "Why?"
Dean didn't answer immediately. He set his phone down on the console table and toed off his shoes like he belonged here, like he wasn't standing in the blast radius of a man who could collapse governments with a sentence.
Then he looked back at Arion.
"It wasn't for you," he said. "It was for him."
Arion's expression tightened almost imperceptibly.
Dean continued anyway, because if there was one thing he had never been good at, it was pretending.
"My father doesn't do half-anger," Dean said, his voice quieter now. "He's either calm, or he's deciding how to end you. And I don't like seeing him pushed into the second option in his own house." He exhaled. "And I regretted bringing you here. I should've sent you to the palace."
The shift in the room was immediate.
Not pheromones this time, but a possessive instinct snapping awake as if someone had threatened to take food from a starving man.
Arion's eyes darkened. "You would have sent me away."
Dean didn't flinch. "Yes."
Arion took a step forward before he caught himself, like his body moved faster than his reason. "You wouldn't have been with me."
Dean's eyebrows lifted. "There it is."
Arion went still, jaw tightening, the control returning so fast it looked practiced. But the crack had shown.
Dean crossed his arms. "Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"That," Dean said, nodding at him. "That spoiled, possessive thing where you act like the world is allowed to orbit you because you're stressed. You don't get to punish my decisions with your mood."
Arion's mouth opened, then shut again, the argument clearly lined up and swallowed at the last second.
Dean stepped closer, stopping within reach on purpose, because he refused to let Arion's intensity decide the distance between them.
"We can keep going," Dean said, voice even. "Engagement. Marriage. Whatever timeline you're trying to bulldoze us into. I'm not scared of committing."
Arion's gaze snapped to him immediate, and hungry for the permission.
Dean didn't give him the satisfaction of stopping there.
"But not if you touch my family," Dean finished. "Not my father. Not Trevor. Not Windstone. Not anyone in this house. Not with threats, not with leverage, not with your secrets, not with your 'I know more than you think' games. You do that again, and you will learn what my father is like when he stops being polite."
Arion's voice came out lower. "I wasn't threatening him."
"You were provoking him," Dean corrected. "On purpose, for control or whatever tempo you want to set the pace to." He tilted his head. "And if you think I won't connect those dots just because you look pretty doing it, you're going to have a hard time with me."
For a beat, Arion just stared at him, as if recalibrating, as if he had expected softness and found steel.
Dean's tone didn't change, but the words landed harder.
"And if you're going to test boundaries," he added, "you should know something before you get any ideas."
Arion's eyes narrowed.
Dean's expression stayed calm, almost casual, which somehow made it worse.
"I can walk," Dean said. "Any time. I can leave, and if I wanted to be spiteful, I could let another dominant alpha mark me just to make a point. You'd deserve it."
The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on.
Arion's control dissolved into something dangerously close to panic, sharp and immediate, like a man watching a door slam while he was still on the wrong side of it.
"You wouldn't," he said, and it wasn't confidence or his usual arrogance this time but visceral need.
Dean's gaze held, unblinking. "Try me."
Arion's hands curled at his sides, then forced themselves to relax. He took a slow breath, like people take when they are about to say something they hate saying.
"I will not touch your family," Arion said, each word measured.
Dean waited.
Arion's throat moved, the next part clearly costing him more than the first.
"I was wrong," he added quietly. "About how I handled Lucas."
Dean's chest eased a fraction, not because it fixed anything, but because it proved Arion could, when pushed, choose restraint over instinct. And he could apologize and accept responsibility for his mistakes.
"Good," Dean said. "Because I'm not negotiating my life with you like it's a treaty."
Arion's gaze softened at the edges, still intense, but less threatening.
"What are you negotiating, then?" he asked.
Dean hesitated, just for a heartbeat, as if he hated the honesty that came next.
"Us," he said simply. "Without collateral damage."
Arion stared at him like Dean had handed him something fragile and holy in the same breath.
Then, as if reminding himself he had been ordered, Dean pointed at the bed.
"Now," he said. "Sit. Lie down. Rest. I'm not doing emotional hostage negotiations with a half-recovered apex alpha."
A faint, strained curve touched Arion's mouth. "Orders again?"
Dean's eyes narrowed. "Don't push it."
Arion obeyed anyway, sitting on the edge of the bed with the reluctant grace of a man who had never been told what to do by someone he actually cared about, and had decided, for that one person, he could endure it.
Dean moved closer and, without thinking too hard about it, reached out and adjusted the blanket at Arion's knees like it was the most normal thing in the world.
Arion's gaze followed the motion with that same dangerous devotion, but this time he didn't weaponize it.
He just let himself have it.
"Dean," he said quietly, voice rougher than before, "don't say things like that unless you mean them."
Dean paused, hand still on the blanket.
"Mean what?" he asked, though they both knew.
Arion swallowed, eyes fixed on him. "That you could let someone else…"
Dean's hand stilled. His voice, when it came, was calm and unyielding.
"Then don't give me a reason," he said.
And in the quiet that followed, with the door shut and the world held outside by linen curtains and old-money walls, Arion finally, finally, let his shoulders drop, just a fraction, like a man allowing himself to believe he might be allowed to stay without breaking everything on the way there.