Chapter 185: Chapter 185: Summons

A few days later, Dean learned that being the mate of a crown prince did not, in fact, improve the emotional effect of certain messages.

It only gave them better stationery.

He was halfway through reading the curriculum for university, in one of the quieter libraries of the palace – halfway, meaning he had read twelve pages of dense policy commentary, insulted three footnotes internally, and decided that one particular dead advisor should be banned from commas on moral grounds – when one of the palace assistants approached with the careful posture of someone entering dangerous territory on official business.

“My lord,” the assistant said, “His Highness asked if you could come to his office.”

Dean looked up slowly.

The assistant, to his credit, did not flinch.

Dean locked his tablet and set it on the table. “Did he really ask if I could, or did he just send you to bring me there?”

The assistant hesitated.

That was answer enough.

Dean leaned back in his chair. “Interesting.”

“My lord,” the assistant said carefully, “His Highness said he would appreciate your presence.”

Dean stared at him for a second. “That is the sort of sentence people use when they want to sound polite about an order.”

The assistant, to his eternal credit, kept his face composed. “Yes, my lord.”

Dean nodded once, as if this confirmed a theory he was not pleased to have confirmed. Then he stood, slid the tablet under one arm, changed his mind, set it back down on the table, and closed the curriculum with the solemn air of a man abandoning scholarship because monarchy had once again made itself a scheduling problem.

“That,” he said, mostly to himself, “is never a good tone.”

The assistant said nothing.

Dean stepped out of the library with all the caution of someone who knew very well that Arion rarely summoned him anywhere, let alone to the office, and that any invitation delivered through palace staff instead of Arion’s own mouth had an unpleasant chance of being either administrative, emotional, or both.

Which, in Dean’s opinion, was the worst category.

The walk through the palace did not improve his mood.

If anything, it worsened it. The administrative side of the residence was too polished, too quiet, too efficient in the particular modern way that made power feel more dangerous, not less. Glass walls that turned opaque when needed. Soft lights built into dark stone. Doors with hidden electronic locks. Staff glided past with tablets and secure earpieces, like the empire ran on caffeine, encryption, and the willingness of overqualified people to call panic by cleaner names.

Dean distrusted all of it instinctively.

By the time he reached the corridor leading to Arion’s office, he had already developed three theories, all of them bad.

The first was that Arion had changed something in his schedule again.

The second was that Nero had either escaped the hospital or done something hospital-adjacent, and now the fallout had somehow become Dean’s problem.

The third was that this was about the ban.

That one made him suspicious in a way he found hard to define.

Because Arion had been serious.

And Dean had, very deliberately, not told Nero that.

That had seemed like the sort of information likely to generate either smugness or escalation, and Dean had enough of both in his life already.

When Dean approached the office doors, one of the guards glanced at the internal panel, received silent confirmation, and opened them for him at once.

Traitorous architecture.

Dean stepped inside.

Arion’s office was exactly what it should have been and therefore profoundly irritating. Modern, spacious, expensive without trying too hard. Floor-to-ceiling windows over the palace grounds. A wall of screens currently muted to maps and reports. Shelves with actual books, because of course Arion was the sort of man who still kept physical copies of war theory and state law close at hand. A long conference table to one side. The main desk ahead, like the center of every bad decision in the Empire.

And behind it sat Arion.

Office Arion, which was somehow the most dangerous version of all. Dark trousers, white shirt, sleeves rolled once, tie missing, collar open. A man who had already spent the day being obeyed and was still not done.

He looked up when Dean entered.

And there it was again: that small, unmistakable easing in his expression, as if Dean’s arrival had corrected something.

That alone raised Dean’s suspicions.

The doors sealed quietly behind him.

Dean remained exactly where he was and folded his arms. “I’m here under protest.”

Arion leaned back a fraction in his chair. “I expected that.”

“That is because you know what summoning me to your office sounds like.”

“I asked.”

Dean lifted one brow. “Through staff, while my phone is perfectly working.”

Arion did not deny that.

Which was, in Dean’s opinion, already suspicious enough to qualify as a warning label.

He remained exactly where he was, arms folded, every line of him making it clear that if Arion intended to rely on authority, Dean would become personally offensive out of principle.

He survived Trevor in an office, Lucas in his, and Dax when one of his fights with Nero turned worse than Arion had seen before. Dean was wise enough not to talk about it. Dax only made fun of them, but if Arion found out, he would ban him from ever meeting Nero again.

“You ignored the question,” Dean said.

“Yes.”

“That was not permission to continue doing it.”

“No,” Arion said. “It was prioritization.”

Dean stared. “That is a terrible word in this room.”

Arion rose from behind the desk.

Dean’s shoulders went a fraction tighter at once, because he wouldn’t be derailed by Arion’s aura and, gods, by how good he actually smelled. “If this is about the ban again—”

“It isn’t.”

“If you changed my courses—”

“I didn’t.”

“If you moved my schedule without asking—”

Arion crossed around the desk and cut through the rest of it with a single, low sentence.

“I need your help.”

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