"Oh," Dean said slowly, setting his mug down like it had suddenly become heavier. "So that's why you said 'timelines' earlier."
The air in the room snapped tight.
Trevor's gaze flicked to Dean. Lucas's eyes sharpened in a way Dean had learned to respect. Arion went perfectly still, as if he'd just realized Dean had been listening more closely than anyone expected.
Lucas spoke first, his voice calm, dangerous underneath. "What did you just say?"
Dean blinked at him. "That you two are arguing because of my father's past two lives," he replied, like it was obvious, like he wasn't casually detonating a family secret at breakfast.
Silence.
Trevor looked like he was deciding whether to laugh or drag Dean out of the room by his collar. Arion's expression betrayed the faintest flicker of surprise, quick, contained, and gone.
Lucas's stare didn't move. "How," he asked quietly, "do you know that?"
Dean's mouth twisted. "Uh. Accidentally."
Lucas didn't blink.
Dean sighed. "Okay. Not entirely accidentally."
Trevor leaned back, eyes narrowing. "Dean."
Dean lifted a hand. "It's fine. I didn't tell anyone. We didn't tell anyone."
Lucas's gaze stayed locked. "Dean."
Dean swallowed. "Me and Sebastian. We found out."
Lucas's fingers tightened around his cup. "How."
Dean glanced at Trevor, then Lucas again, like he could already feel the headache forming. "There was a journal. In the old library. At the territory manor. You know, the one nobody uses because it smells like dust and intimidation."
Lucas's expression went dangerously blank. "A journal."
Dean nodded. "We were bored. We were exploring. Sebastian dared me to open the locked cabinet."
Trevor made a sound that could have been a laugh or a prayer.
Dean pushed on. "It was tucked behind a false panel. And before you ask… yes, it was absolutely dramatic. It had that whole 'do not read' vibe."
Lucas stared at him.
Dean added quickly, "We didn't go looking for it because we suspected anything. We just… found it. And then we read enough to realize it was… you. But not you-you. You-you with the same handwriting and the same angry little habits and the same way you underline things when you're trying not to panic."
Trevor's brows lifted.
Dean shrugged helplessly. "It was pretty clear."
Lucas's voice was very, very calm. "How much?"
Dean winced. "Enough."
Lucas inhaled like a man preparing to commit violence.
Dean rushed in before he could. "We didn't bring it up because we didn't want to make things weird. And we were not about to corner you with it like it's a trivia question. We just… filed it away."
Arion's gaze stayed on Dean, unreadable now, like he was reassessing a map.
"And," Dean added, because apparently he had chosen death today, "Grandpa Caelan confirmed."
Lucas froze.
Trevor's head turned slowly. "Caelan confirmed?"
Dean nodded. "I asked him. Not directly, because I'm not suicidal, but… I hinted. And he looked me dead in the eyes and said, 'Yes, your father is annoyingly hard to kill, isn't he?'"
Trevor choked on his coffee.
Arion barked a laugh, sharp and involuntary, like the last scrap of self-control had simply fallen off the table and rolled away.
Trevor coughed hard enough to tear up, one hand over his mouth, the other braced on the table. "-Gods-"
Lucas didn't so much as blink at Arion's laughter. He turned his head slowly toward Trevor, his expression pleasant in the way a storm can be pleasant right before it makes landfall.
"Call Sebastian home," Lucas said.
Dean's eyes widened. "Dad—"
"Now," Lucas added, still pleasant.
Trevor cleared his throat, wiped at his mouth with a napkin, and shot Dean a look that said, 'You did this to yourself.' Then he reached for his phone with all the calm of a man who had survived too many household disasters to panic at this one.
Dean leaned forward. "Why are we calling Sebastian? I'm right here. I'm the one who…"
Lucas's gaze slid to him. "I know."
Dean stopped talking.
The table went quiet again, the kind of quiet that made the staff in the next room suddenly develop urgent tasks elsewhere.
Trevor's phone lit up. He tapped a contact and put it to his ear.
"Sebastian," he said, voice calm, "where are you?"
A muffled reply came through the speaker.
Trevor's eyes flicked to Lucas. "He's in the capital. He says he's busy."
Lucas's smile did not change. "Tell him to become un-busy."
Dean put his head in his hands. "I'm going to die."
Arion, still amused, leaned back in his chair like he'd found the first truly entertaining thing in Palatine.
Lucas's eyes cut toward him. "You find this funny."
Arion had the guts to smile. "Only the part where Caelan confirmed it."
Lucas's pleasant expression sharpened. "I am going to kill Caelan."
"In a respectful way?" Dean muttered, his voice muffled behind his hands.
"In a family way," Lucas agreed, still perfectly calm. "Painfully."
Trevor spoke into the phone again, more pointed this time. "Sebastian, your father wants you here. Immediately."
Whatever Sebastian said made Trevor's brows lift.
Trevor glanced at Dean, then Lucas. "He says… 'tell Dad it was your idea to hide it in a library.'"
Lucas's smile became genuinely dangerous.
Dean groaned. "He's dead. He's actually dead."
Arion's laughter faded, replaced by a watchful stillness as he observed Lucas the way one might observe an apex predator shifting from 'annoyed' to 'planning.'
Lucas turned back to Dean, and for a moment the danger softened into something that looked almost like fondness - irritated, proud, exhausted fondness.
"You," Lucas said, "are grounded."
Dean blinked. "I'm an adu-"
Lucas lifted a finger. "Don't."
Dean shut his mouth again because he valued his life.
Trevor lowered the phone slightly, still on the call. "He's on his way," he said, then added, dry as sand, "and he's laughing."
"Good," Lucas replied. "Let him laugh. It will make the execution more satisfying."
Dean made a strangled sound. "Dad!"
Lucas finally set his coffee down and leaned back, folding his arms. The calm remained, but it was the calm of a man who had just filed several new problems into a mental folder labeled 'later, with consequences.'
Then, as if remembering there was a fourth person at the table, Lucas's eyes flicked to Arion.
"And you," Lucas said softly, "do not get to use this."
Arion's amusement vanished. He inclined his head once, controlled. "I won't."
Trevor's gaze stayed hard on Arion. "That wasn't a suggestion."
Arion didn't argue. "I understand."
Dean lifted his head, looking between them like he was watching three knives slowly decide whether to stay on the table or get used.
"So," Dean said carefully, "can we maybe, just maybe, go back to the original subject? Where the problem was that Arion is an asshole, and not that my entire family has been living inside a historical thriller?"
Lucas's eyes didn't leave him. "No."
Dean sighed. "Of course not."
And in the quiet that followed, Arion's gaze drifted back to Dean, calm, almost unsettling in its devotion.
Not amused now.
Just very, very awake.