Chapter 123: Chapter 123: Old friends

Nero looked, at first glance, like the palace’s idea of trouble made beautiful and given diplomatic immunity.

That same long white-blonde hair fell straight past his shoulders, smooth enough to look unreal in the morning light, parted carelessly as if Nero had never in his life hurried for anyone. His eyes were violet – bright, saturated, and far too calm for someone who had once been banned from three wings as a child for ’inventing games that encouraged structural damage.’

But the part that hit Dean wasn’t the hair, or the eyes, or even the smile that always looked like it had teeth behind it.

It was the height.

Dean considered Arion to be tall, over seven feet tall, in the same way that certain storms were ’a bit of rain,’ and Dean had already gotten used to the humiliation of looking up at him every day.

Nero, however…

Nero had grown.

Not in the vague, expected way teenagers did. Not ’Oh, he’s taller now.’ Not ’he filled out.’

Nero was seven feet tall now too, sitting in Arion’s breakfast room like the furniture had been designed around him. The sight of it landed in Dean’s brain with the same delayed impact as a punch: belated, rude, and completely unavoidable.

Because the last time Dean had seen Nero up close, Nero had been tall, yes, but not this. Not the type of tall that causes a room to recalibrate itself. Not tall enough to make a chair appear insulting. Dean’s memory of him suddenly felt inaccurate, as if the palace had updated the file while Dean was not looking.

Dean stopped just inside the threshold before he could help himself.

For half a second, he simply stared.

Then his mouth opened and the truth fell out without permission.

“What the hell happened to you?”

Nero’s grin widened immediately, delighted by Dean’s lack of restraint. “Good morning to you too.”

Dean’s eyes narrowed. “You weren’t this tall.”

“I was,” Nero said cheerfully.

“You absolutely were not.”

Nero leaned back with lazy confidence, long legs angled like he’d been born in a world that made space for him. Even seated, his shoulders were broad enough that the tailored layers hid more muscle than they revealed – built like someone who trained hard but dressed like someone who didn’t feel the need to advertise it.

“I grew,” Nero said, as if this were the simplest explanation on earth. “It’s very common. You should try it.”

Dean stared at him with the flat, exhausted expression of a man who had already woken up to too much chaos and had no spare energy for jokes.

“I hate you,” Dean said, which was also a greeting, in their language.

Nero’s smile softened into something almost fond. “No, you don’t.”

Dean did not hesitate.

He raised his hand.

And gave Nero a very clear middle finger.

The gesture was controlled, delivered with the quiet professionalism of a man signing a document.

Nero’s grin widened like he’d just been handed a gift.

“Oh,” Nero said warmly. “So you do remember our traditions.”

Dean lowered his hand as if nothing had happened and walked to the table with the same calm he brought to meetings where people threatened wars over seating arrangements.

He pulled out the chair opposite Nero and sat.

Nero watched him sit the way a cat watches a glass near the edge of a table – pure intention, bright amusement, and no fucking conscience.

Arion stood by the window with his coffee, still as a statue, looking like he’d decided to tolerate this conversation purely as an exercise in self-control.

Nero leaned his chin into his hand, violet eyes gleaming. “You look… better.”

Dean’s face didn’t change. “You look like an offense against architecture.”

Nero laughed, delighted. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me this week.”

Dean reached for the coffee without asking, because this was Arion’s suite and Dean’s life now apparently involved casual domestic trespassing. He took a sip and let the bitterness give him something to hold onto.

“We didn’t talk in one year, Nero,” Dean shot back.

Nero’s gaze slid over him again, slow and invasive in the way only old friends were allowed to be, as if he were cataloguing changes Dean hadn’t consented to be noticed.

“True,” Nero said, unbothered. “And yet here you are, still greeting me with hostility. Consistency is a virtue.”

Dean’s expression barely moved. “I’m greeting you with accuracy.”

Nero smiled like that was praise. “Gods, I missed you.”

Arion didn’t interrupt.

He stood by the window with his coffee, posture controlled, eyes angled toward the frosted garden outside as if he were calmly appreciating the winter light instead of doing the internal math of a dominant alpha who could feel a match humming in the air like a wire.

His jaw was set, the muscles along his cheek tightened once, then stayed firm, and the hand holding his cup didn’t shift even when the porcelain warmed under it.

Arion listened.

Arion watched without looking.

And every instinct in him kept circling the same conclusion like a predator testing the edge of a fence.

Someone lied.

Every report said Dean and Nero were incompatible.

Every physician’s note had been tidy about it, clinical and absolute: exposure would cause distress, prolonged proximity would lead to irritability, mating would be catastrophic, and their pheromones would burn each other out.

Arion read those sentences in his head with the same calm he read battle reports.

Then he looked at Dean and Nero across his breakfast room and felt the lie like grit between his teeth.

Dean wasn’t distressed.

Dean was… stable.

Annoyed, yes, because Dean was always annoyed when he was alive, but not distressed. Not recoiling. Not bristling, as incompatible scents caused the body to reject a presence. Nero was not driving him crazy either. Nero tormented him in the same way that old friends did: with precision, affection disguised as cruelty, and a familiarity that did not set Dean on fire.

Arion’s instincts didn’t misread biology.

If anything, they read it too well.

Which meant someone had deliberately written those files the way governments liked their problems: solved on paper, buried in ink, never questioned again.

Arion didn’t move quickly. He didn’t interrupt. He didn’t flare his pheromones and announce ownership like a man without control.

This was Alamina.

Here, control was expected. Here, dominance was allowed only when it wore manners like armor.

Arion had been raised on that discipline until it lived in his bones.

So he did what he always did when he was jealous.

He became quieter.

He walked to the table with his coffee cup in hand and set it down among the porcelain carefully – a soft sound, precise placement, a small domestic gesture that still carried authority because everything Arion did carried authority.

His hand lingered a beat on the cup.

The inside of his palm faced up, briefly.

The bite mark showed.

Faint, but obvious: a crescent of reddish bruising on the pad of his thumb and across the soft skin of his palm, like a signature pressed into him. Not deep enough to have broken skin. Deep enough that any adult who understood territory would recognize it immediately.

Nero’s violet eyes dropped first.

He saw it instantly.

And his smile changed – it became bright and entertaining, as if he’d just been given the answer to a question he hadn’t asked out loud.

Dean noticed a half-second later.

His fingers tightened around his cup.

His face stayed composed, because Dean’s pride was a weapon he wielded even against himself, but a flush crept up the side of his throat anyway, betraying him in the only place he couldn’t control.

Arion watched that flush appear and felt something possessive tighten behind his ribs.

The quiet, merciless certainty that Dean was his could choke the entire palace.

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