Chapter 168: Chapter 168: Later

“You never mentioned that.”

Dean’s mouth curved, but it lost some of its brightness around the edges. “No.”

“Why?”

The question came cleanly. No accusation in it. Just direct interest, which somehow made it harder to answer.

Dean looked away first, fingers still resting at the collar. “It’s… not something I or my family talks about. Like you don’t talk about your abilities and Nero and Sebastian about theirs.”

“Fair.” Arion said, tilting his head, one of his hands rising and catching Dean’s fingers from the collar. He brought them to his mouth and kissed them. “But promise me one thing.”

“If you talk about the marriage again in less than two months, I swear…”

“No,” Arion chuckled. “Despite my lacunes, I’m not impatient, but I want to see you fighting when… you are less compromised.”

He looked down at his still-recovering mate, and that alone took some of the easy brightness out of Dean’s face.

Because there it was again – that impossible combination Arion kept inflicting on him. Possessive enough to fasten pearls around his throat with a pheromone lock. Controlled enough to step back and say not yet when it finally mattered.

Dean’s fingers remained in Arion’s hand for one suspended second longer than necessary.

Then Dean narrowed his eyes. “That was dangerously close to sounding thoughtful.”

Arion’s mouth moved faintly. “It was.”

“No,” Dean said. “You don’t get to become emotionally functional in the same evening you’ve already been monarchy at me.”

“That sounds selective.”

“It is selective. I need standards.”

Arion kissed the back of Dean’s fingers again, lighter this time, then let his hand fall. “Good.”

—

Two weeks later

Nero looked entirely too comfortable for a man who had no academic business being inside the Imperial University of Alamina at nine in the morning.

That alone made Dean want to commit visible crimes.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Dean asked, glaring at him with enough passion to qualify as an elective course.

“Nice collar,” Nero said instead, eyes flicking once to Dean’s throat, where the pearls sat just above the open line of his shirt with infuriating elegance.

Behind Dean, Sylvia let out a low groan of pure civilian despair.

“Oh, good,” she said. “Fantastic. I knew this day was going too smoothly.”

Dean did not look away from Nero. “That was not an answer.”

“No,” Nero agreed. “It was an observation.”

“That,” Dean informed him, “is why your generation should not be trusted with power.”

Nero’s mouth moved faintly. “I’m younger than you by less than a year.”

Dean’s mouth moved in slow outrage. “That is factually irrelevant. You are generationally younger.”

Nero glanced at him. “That sounds invented.”

“It is observed.”

“By you.”

“Yes,” Dean said. “And I have standards.”

Sylvia, behind him, made another low sound of despair that was dangerously close to laughter. “This is already unbearable, and we haven’t even reached coffee.”

Dean still hadn’t looked away from Nero. “You’re giving a guest lecture on our first day.”

“Yes.”

“In my building.”

“Yes.”

“Within visible range of my schedule.”

Nero’s mouth twitched. “Likely.”

Dean pointed at him. “Do not look amused. I’m still deciding whether to class this as stalking, political sabotage, or a hostile architectural coincidence.”

Nero lifted one brow. “You’re very dramatic for someone who just threatened to classify my existence.”

“I’m consistent.”

“That,” Nero said, “is generous.”

Dean drew in a breath to continue the argument with the force it deserved.

Unfortunately, that was exactly when a man in a dark university coat materialized from the left with the expression of someone who had been informed ten minutes ago that his quiet administrative morning had become a royal liability.

He was somewhere in his thirties, neat-haired, thin-rimmed glasses, tablet in hand, posture caught in the tragic middle ground between professional confidence and private panic. He stopped three polite steps away from them and performed the sort of respectful incline reserved for people the university very much hoped not to offend.

“Your Highness,” he said to Nero first, then visibly recalculated when his eyes flicked, despite excellent training, toward Dean’s collar and then to Dean himself. “My lord. Lady Sylvia.”

Dean turned slowly.

The man froze by a degree.

Behind Dean, Sylvia muttered, “Oh, this poor bastard.”

Dean looked the man up and down with the weary authority of someone who had already been publicly inconvenienced by monarchy before lunch. “Yes?”

The poor representative straightened further, as if posture alone might save him. “I’m Dr. Marrec Voss, Deputy Coordinator for External Academic Affairs. I was sent to guide…” He hesitated.

Dean watched him with bright, dangerous interest.

Voss made the mistake of continuing honestly. “To guide the Crown Prince of Saha and-” another disastrous flick of the eyes to the pearls at Dean’s throat – “the Crown Prince’s fiancée and mate through the relevant schedule points, reception transitions, and guest routing.”

There was a beat of silence.

Then Dean turned his head very slowly toward Nero.

Nero, infuriatingly, looked completely calm.

Sylvia made a strangled sound into one hand.

Dean stared at Nero with the hollow fury of a man betrayed by timing, information systems, and possibly fire itself.

“The Crown Prince,” he repeated.

Nero said nothing.

Dean’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you included on the list?”

Nero shrugged with the ease of a guilty man that no one could punish. “I thought you would be distracted by the fact that everyone knows you and Arion are mates now.”

“That,” Dean shot back, “is not even a surprise.”

“No,” Nero agreed, with the kind of calm that made violence feel academically defensible. “But it was useful cover.”

Dean stared at him for one long second, then looked back at Dr. Voss, who had the increasingly strained expression of a man realizing that he had not been sent to escort dignitaries so much as dropped into a moving administrative emergency with a tablet.

“Fine,” Dean said at last, with the brittle dignity of someone choosing civilization against his better instincts. “Guide us, then. Since apparently my first morning here has already been converted into a state inconvenience.”

Voss, to his credit, recovered quickly. “Of course, my lord.”

Sylvia exhaled beside them. “He says things like that now,” she muttered. “My lord. We’re all pretending this is normal.”

“It is normal,” Dean said, already walking.

“It is not.”

“It is now.”

Voss stepped ahead just enough to lead without seeming to herd them. “The Imperial University is divided into five primary colleges,” he began, guiding them across the broad central court, where pale stone and dark glass gave the place that particular imperial habit of looking both ancient and expensive at the same time. “But the structure most relevant to your circumstances is less academic and more procedural.”

Dean’s mouth curved. “Excellent. My favorite kind of education. Institutional panic.”

Voss gave the faintest, bravest smile. “In part, yes.”

They crossed beneath an arched passageway linking the main administrative block to one of the older wings. Students moved around them in steady currents, some pretending not to stare, some failing rather badly, some looking once at Dean’s collar and then suddenly remembering urgent business elsewhere.

Voss continued, settling into the explanation now that there was something safer to discuss than royal titles. “Dominant alphas and dominant omegas do not usually follow the same general lecture structure during the early years. Some advanced modules overlap, but the standard instructional blocks are separated.”

Dean glanced at him. “Because people are animals.”

“In official language, we describe it somewhat differently,” Voss said. “But yes.”

Sylvia let out a quiet sound that might have been a laugh.

“It is not only distraction,” Voss went on. “The separation exists because there were incidents in the past – some historical, some recent enough that the current administration still uses them as training cases. Coercive scent pressure. Aggression in enclosed settings. Territorial responses. And in one especially notorious case, an alpha attempted to mark an omega during an assessment period.”

Dean’s steps slowed.

Sylvia swore under her breath.

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