Chapter 129: Chapter 129: The Engagement Gala

Dean woke up with the kind of dread usually reserved for exams and public humiliation.

He lay motionless for a moment, staring at the ceiling and listening to distant footsteps, a soft closing door somewhere down the corridor, and the low murmur of employees beginning the day. The light beyond the curtains was already bright, winter sun caught on glass.

And then his brain, traitor that it was, supplied the reminder:

Engagement gala.

With the entire country eager to watch Arion announce something Dean had technically agreed to while emotionally compromised by a dominant alpha with golden eyes and a scar on his cheek.

Dean exhaled slowly and rolled out of bed like a man going to war.

Arion wasn’t in the bedroom.

Which was both a relief and an insult.

Dean could smell him, though – vetiver threaded into the air like a freshener with possessiveness issues. Like Arion had been awake long enough to make the suite his and then left it behind with the casual certainty of a man who expected Dean to still be his.

Dean grabbed his robe and escaped into the bathroom like it was an emergency evacuation route.

The door shut.

The quiet inside felt safer immediately.

Dean leaned both hands on the sink and stared at himself in the mirror.

Blonde hair, slightly darker than Nero’s – more honey than white, more ’sun through a window’ than ’moonlight.’ It never looked as pristine as Nero’s did, because Dean didn’t have Nero’s patience for vanity. He had the kind of face that read as sharp rather than pretty, with lean lines, a stubborn mouth, and cheekbones that made him look perpetually unimpressed. His eyes were purple too, yes, but deeper – less bright amethyst and more dusk, as if the color had been diluted with shadow.

In theory, people liked to say he and Nero looked similar.

In practice, no one who’d seen them side by side could mistake them.

Nero was built like a myth.

Dean was built like… well, an omega.

Smaller. Leaner. Dean had the type of body that didn’t make a sound until it moved – until a hand snapped out quickly, a bite landed, or someone realized Dean had never been fragile, only quiet.

He looked fine.

Too fine, honestly. Like sleep hadn’t been stolen from him by anxiety and the memory of a university schedule that wanted him to fight beasts and manage pheromone mutations like it was a normal Tuesday.

Dean stared at his own mouth for a second too long, because his mouth was apparently where bad decisions started now.

He turned on the water and splashed his face hard enough to qualify as self-correction.

“Okay,” Dean muttered to his reflection. “We are going to be normal today.”

His reflection did not look convinced.

He brushed his teeth with grim determination, showered quickly, and dressed quickly in the outfit prepared for him – formal black, clean lines, and tailoring that made him look like he belonged beside a crown prince in public, even if his nervous system protested.

When he was done, he stood in front of the bathroom door with his hand on the handle.

Stalling.

Because Arion was outside.

Arion was seven foot three.

Arion was twenty-five – mature in the way that men mature after carrying responsibility since adolescence.

And Dean, unfortunately, had seen enough of Arion’s body to know exactly how unfair it was.

Muscular arms that looked easy until they lifted you like you weighed nothing. A broad chest that made shirts sit differently, fabric pulling across with power. Hands that were large and entirely too capable of turning touch into a command. That build existed because Arion trained, fought, and had the body of someone capable of dealing with the worst day of his life and then going on to rule a country.

Dean was not ready to be near that naked.

Which was a ridiculous sentence to think at seven in the morning in an imperial suite, but Dean’s life had stopped being reasonable the moment Arion had decided ’quiet possessiveness’ was a valid love language.

Dean’s mind was treacherous at best, because the instant it latched onto the word ’naked,’ it supplied the memory he had been trying – very professionally – to delete.

Arion’s hands and mouth were patient and far too gentle for how dangerous he was.

“Great,” Dean said, realizing that now he was also having a boner. “Fantastic. Truly. Love this for me.”

He stared at the mirror like it might offer legal counsel.

It did not.

Dean dragged a hand down his face, then stood very still, willing his body to remember that today involved cameras and nobles and the kind of formal lighting that made people look like they were being audited.

“Engagement gala,” he muttered. “Public. Clothes. Hands to yourself.”

His body did not care.

His mind didn’t care.

“C’mon Dean. Get dressed and start the day.” He told himself only for his body to betray him a moment later and slickly slide his wet legs from the shower.

“Fuck.” He reached for his phone from the sink and opened the calendar.

His heat was close.

The thought landed like a cold hand around his spine.

Dean stared at the calendar on his phone with the kind of horror usually reserved for unexpected legal documents. The prediction window glowed at him with neat, clinical text – timelines, symptom markers, and suggested suppressants if necessary.

Dean’s mouth went dry.

Not today.

Not today of all days.

Of course it was today.

He swallowed and tried to breathe through it like it was just another inconvenience – like his body hadn’t chosen this exact morning, this exact engagement gala, or this exact public spotlight to start sliding toward a biological event that would make the entire palace smell him from three corridors away.

He set the phone down slowly.

He stared at his reflection again.

Purple eyes. Flushed cheeks. A little too much color in his throat. His pupils were slightly wider than they should have been, and Dean hated that he could see the beginning of it in his own face like a warning sign.

He pressed his palms to the sink and leaned forward.

“Okay,” he whispered, his voice tight. “No. We are not doing this.”

His body, as always, did not care about his plans.

A shiver ran through him, and Dean gritted his teeth hard enough to make his jaw ache.

He needed a suppressant.

He needed cold water.

He needed ten minutes to stop being a person and become a professional adult again.

He turned the tap on cold and ran his wrists under it until the chill bit into his skin.

It helped.

Barely.

He grabbed his towel, dried his hands, and tried to move like everything was normal, like he wasn’t suddenly aware of every scent in the room and the fact that Arion’s vetiver lingered in the air like a promise and a threat.

Dean reached for his cologne out of habit, then froze.

Cologne was not the move if you were trying to conceal anything pheromone-related. That was how you turned ’subtle’ into ’announced.’

Dean set it down and instead grabbed the deodorant, like that was going to solve a genetic hierarchy crisis.

He exhaled slowly.

Then, as if the universe wanted to make sure he didn’t regain control too quickly…

A knock came at the bathroom door.

Two taps.

Then Arion’s voice, low and even through the wood.

“Dean?”

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