Chapter 216: Chapter 216: Greedy

Dean let out a laugh, his purple eyes warm and shining with tears he did not want to let spill. “Let me go see my parents before I make yet another bad decision for my back.”

Arion did not let go immediately. Instead, he lifted Dean’s hand and pressed a brief, firm kiss to the knuckles just above the new weight of the platinum. The gesture was uncharacteristically tender, and Dean, already compromised by sore muscles, poor judgment, and an engagement ring that felt far too right on his hand, had the deeply inconvenient thought that perhaps the soreness was not that bad after all.

“Go,” Arion said, his voice dropping to that low, resonant frequency Dean felt in his marrow. “Before I decide your parents can wait another day.”

Dean stared at him for one long, incredulous second.

There it was again.

The pattern.

His own decisions, most of them reckless in hindsight and catastrophically sincere underneath, colliding with Arion’s timing in ways that always made resistance feel both honorable and profoundly stupid.

Mostly romantic suffering inflicted by Arion.

And, which was the true insult, it was still not enough to stop Dean from immediately considering whether another terrible decision would really count as terrible if he enjoyed it.

Dean exhaled through his nose, laughter still caught somewhere in his chest. “That,” he said, “was not a helpful thing to say to a man already working under structural disadvantage.”

Arion’s mouth curved faintly. “I noticed.”

“Of course you noticed.” Dean pulled his hand back at last, though without any real force, and flexed his fingers once as if that might somehow lessen the reality of the ring sitting there with maddening, perfect weight. “You keep noticing things that should have remained private.”

“You’re not very good at private.”

Dean narrowed his eyes, though there was no heat in it now. “Arion… you are my private now.”

Arion fell silent as Dean’s words reached a part of him that he had previously wondered if existed.

Dean felt it at once, and unlike other times, he did not want to snatch the words back.

They had been true before he said them. Saying them aloud had only made the truth harder to ignore.

So the sentence remained between them, stripped clean of banter and left standing on its own.

Arion’s golden gaze held his.

The low amusement from earlier was gone. So was the easy provocation. What remained in his face was quieter, deeper, and infinitely worse for Dean’s continued ability to act normal.

“You say things like that,” Arion said, his voice lower now, stripped of everything but truth, “and then act surprised when I stop listening to your plans to leave.”

Dean’s breath caught on a laugh that did not quite become one. “That,” he said softly, “is understandable.”

Arion pulled him in without hurry, as if there were no world in which Dean would resist and no need to force what was already his by choice. Dean went easily, one hand catching against Arion’s side, his cheek settling against the broad warmth of his chest as if that position had long since stopped being unfamiliar.

The alpha lowered his head until his breath brushed Dean’s ear.

“Then,” Arion murmured, “would it be understandable to expect a ring from my fiancé as well?”

Dean laughed for real then, low and helpless against him, because of course Arion would do this; of course he would take a moment already unsteady and make it worse in the most precise, impossible way.

He tought for a moment that maybe it was the perfect moment to tell Arion that he loved him, but it was too fast.

Dean leaned back just enough to look up at him, his eyes still bright. “You are unbelievably greedy.”

Arion’s hands stayed warm and steady at his waist. “I’m asking for symmetry.”

“You’re asking for jewelry while I’m still emotionally concussed from yours.”

“That sounds like a yes with administrative resistance.”

Dean’s mouth twitched. “That sounds like you know me too well.”

“I do.”

That answer, clean and unembellished, hit harder than it had any right to.

Dean looked at him for a moment, then let his hand, the one with the new ring, settle flat against Arion’s chest.

“You already have the official one,” Dean said. “The one our countries wanted. The one duty put on your hand.”

Arion did not look away. “I know.”

Dean’s fingers curled slightly in the fabric over Arion’s heart. “This would be different.”

“Yes,” Arion said. “That’s the point.”

Dean let out a quiet breath.

That was exactly it, and they both knew it.

The official engagement belonged to treaties, expectations, diplomacy, and the machinery of two crowns. It mattered. It was real. But this – this ring, this moment, this question asked with no witnesses and no politics standing between them – belonged only to the two of them.

Dean tilted his head slightly, studying him with the kind of warmth he usually hid under sarcasm. “You do realize I’ll make you wait now.”

Arion’s brow shifted. “For revenge?”

“For balance,” Dean corrected. “And because I deserve the pleasure of choosing something worthy of how insufferable you are.”

A quiet laugh escaped Arion, and Dean felt absurdly pleased by it.

“That,” Arion said, “sounds dangerously affectionate.”

“I’m wearing your ring,” Dean replied. “The performance is ruined.”

Arion’s hands tightened just slightly at his waist, not trapping, just holding. “Then I’ll expect one.”

Dean smiled, small and real and still a little wrecked around the edges. “You’ll get one.”

Arion’s expression changed at that, not dramatically, but enough for Dean to see the weight of it settle.

Dean rose onto his toes just enough to kiss him once, brief and deliberate, and when he pulled back, his forehead rested against Arion’s for half a breath.

“Now let me go see my parents,” he murmured, “before Lucas notices this ring, starts interrogating me, and I end up making three more bad decisions before lunch out of spite.”

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