Chapter 163: Chapter 163: Censorship

Dean, naturally, smiled.

It was a terrible smile. Bright, lovely, effortless even. The kind of smile that had misled professors, diplomats, relatives, and at least one entire royal household into believing he was about to be reasonable.

Arion knew better.

He lifted his head from Dean’s shoulder, not releasing him yet, and looked at Dean properly. “What,” he asked, very calmly, “does that mean?”

Dean turned within the circle of his arms with the ease of someone who had been waiting for that question. His face was open with false innocence, beautiful enough to qualify as deception on a constitutional level. “It means,” he said, “that I have accepted your ruling with the grace and maturity for which I am universally admired.”

Arion watched him.

Dean held the expression for a beat longer, then let the smile deepen by just enough to become suspicious. “And,” he added, “that since you are so committed to reality, I think it’s only fair that you experience the practical consequences of that commitment.”

Arion’s gaze did not move from his face. “Dean.”

Dean laid a hand lightly over Arion’s chest as though this were a gentle, civil discussion between two stable people. “You insist that I return to university.”

“Yes.”

“You insist that I attend classes.”

“Yes.”

“You insist,” Dean continued, each word sweeter than the last, “that I walk among students, faculty, administrators, deadlines, exam schedules, and the general filth of institutional learning like a brave little public citizen.”

Arion’s eyes narrowed by a fraction. “Get to the point.”

Dean’s smile turned radiant.

“Gladly.”

He tilted his head, blonde hair catching the pale afternoon light from the window, and delivered it with almost cheerful precision.

“If I am to go back to university,” he said, “then naturally we will have to be separate during that time.”

Arion said nothing.

Dean, encouraged by the silence, continued with the serenity of an executioner reading a menu. “Not permanently, of course. I’m not unreasonable. But while classes are in session, and especially during exam periods, we will obviously need distance.”

The corridor seemed to grow quieter.

Below them, another car rolled out through the inner gate. Somewhere farther down the hall, footsteps passed and faded. Inside that pocket of silence, Arion only looked at him.

Dean smiled wider.

“You see,” he went on, “I am trying to preserve my education. If I am meant to engage with higher learning, I cannot very well do that while being continuously derailed by a seven-foot problem with golden eyes and no respect for moderation.”

Arion’s face remained unreadable, which was never a promising sign.

Dean lifted one shoulder in an elegant half-shrug. “So. No sex and I will move back to my wing.”

“No,” Arion said, and his pheromones filled the hallway.

Dean went very still.

Not because the answer surprised him. Arion refusing was not, in itself, remarkable. Arion refused many things with the calm confidence of a man born into command and physically large enough to make the word sound structural.

No, what made Dean still was the rest of it.

The pheromones hit the corridor in a low, controlled wave, not wild, not careless, but vast enough that the air itself seemed to change shape around them. Warmth pressed against his skin. The back of his neck lit up first, then his spine, then every last traitorous nerve in his body that had apparently decided now was the time to become emotionally invested in chemistry.

A moment earlier the hallway had been a hallway.

Now it felt like territory.

Dean inhaled once, sharply, and hated the effect that had on him.

Arion dragged Dean back right into his arms.

The prince’s face remained composed, almost infuriatingly so, but the gold of his eyes had gone darker at the edges, sharpened by something older than temper and far more dangerous than visible anger. The refusal was already in the air between them, in the pressure of his scent, in the absolute certainty of his stance.

“No,” Arion repeated.

Dean’s fingers twitched at his side. He held his ground on principle, though principle had become considerably harder to maintain while his mate was quietly turning an entire corridor into a demonstration of what dominance looked like when it had been polished by breeding, discipline, and a deeply personal sense of possession.

“That,” Dean said, with more dignity than the circumstances deserved, “was incredibly dramatic.”

Arion’s expression did not change. “You suggested moving back to your wing.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Dean stared at him. “I noticed that part.”

Arion bent, his breath brushing Dean’s ears. “Then hear the rest of it.”

Dean tilted his chin up because surrender was ugly and he had standards. “By all means.”

Arion looked down at him for one suspended second, and Dean became uncomfortably aware of how empty the corridor had become. The departing convoys below. The fading steps in the distance. The quiet. The private, dangerous quiet.

“You will go to university,” Arion said. “You will attend your classes. You will sit your exams. You will finish what you started.”

Dean’s pulse thudded once.

Arion continued, his voice even, the pheromones around them no longer spreading, but settling. “But you will not move out of my rooms. You will not ’return to your wing’ as if this bond were temporary or convenient or something you can place at a respectable distance because your schedule offended you.”

Dean opened his mouth.

Arion did not let him speak.

“And you certainly,” he said, with a sudden edge under the calm, “will not use the words ’no sex’ in the same breath as leaving me. You won’t use our life as mates to gain whatever sense of control you want.”

“Arion,” Dean sighed. “You literally left me like a chewed toy. I can’t go to public school with bruises and bite marks.”

“Then I will leave them where no one would see.” Arion said, like that, it was the most normal thing.

Dean stared at him.

Then he stared harder.

“You cannot possibly think that helps your case.”

Arion looked entirely unmoved. “It solves the stated problem.”

“That is not a solution. That is a scandal with scheduling.”

Arion opened his mouth.

Dean, already warming to his own outrage, cut in before he could say anything worse. “No, because let’s be very clear here – I am going back to university, yes, and it is not difficult for me to do that. I know how to exist in an academic environment without collapsing into decorative ruin.” He pointed at Arion’s chest. “What I do not know how to do is walk into public school looking like I lost a private war to the crown prince.”

Arion’s eyes narrowed by a fraction.

Dean kept going, because if he stopped, he might notice the way Arion was looking at him and lose the thread entirely. “And before you start with that face, yes, I said public school. Because the moment I step back through those gates, I am no longer your carefully guarded little domestic catastrophe. I am a student. An ordinary student. A brilliant one, obviously, but still—”

Arion kissed him.

One hand firm at Dean’s waist, the other sliding up to the back of his neck, mouth on his before Dean could finish turning indignation into a proper speech.

Dean went still in pure offense for exactly half a second.

Then his body, traitorous biological institution that it was, recognized Arion faster than his principles did.

When Arion pulled back, Dean blinked at him.

Then blinked again.

“That,” Dean said, his voice slightly thinner than he would have preferred, “was censorship.”

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