Chapter 221: Chapter 221: Cruel

Andrea’s eyes flashed.

Dean did not feel proud of it but did not feel guilty either.

Andrea had aimed at Sylvia first because Sylvia stood next to Dean and therefore seemed easy enough to cut. That was the sort of behavior Dean recognized very well from courtrooms, ballrooms, and families with too much pedigree and too little courage. Hurt people frequently chose the nearest softer target and called it refinement.

Sylvia was not soft, but she was Dean’s.

And Dean had been raised by Lucas.

There were instincts one did not outgrow.

Andrea took one slow step closer, stopping just before the distance could become improper. “You think I dislike you because your pheromones are compatible with his.”

“I think you dislike me because my existence made yours inconvenient.”

Andrea’s smile thinned. “That is closer.”

Dean inclined his head. “Then we are making progress.”

“Do not patronize me.”

“Then stop being stupid,” Dean said at last.

The words landed hard enough that Sylvia’s head turned toward him.

Not because Dean could not be sharp. Dean was often sharp. Dean had been born into Palatine elegance, raised between Lucas’s devastating precision and Trevor’s quiet, immovable severity. He knew how to cut without raising his voice.

But this was Dean finally losing patience with the entire exquisite performance of wounded dignity in front of him.

Andrea went very still.

The corridor around them seemed to hold its breath.

Dean’s purple eyes remained cold. “If Arion really wanted to mark you, you know well enough that would have happened years ago.”

Andrea’s face did not change.

That was how Dean knew the strike had hit deep.

“There is nothing you can do anymore,” Dean continued, quieter now, but no gentler. “Arion marked me. And for the record, I was not easy to get to Alamina, regardless of what you think you know from watching the polished version of events.”

Sylvia’s amusement had vanished completely.

Andrea’s gaze was fixed on Dean as if the rest of the hallway had disappeared.

Dean took a step closer, not enough to threaten, but enough to make it impossible to hide the truth.

“And do not ruin what you could have with the alpha you are most compatible with because you’re angry that the future you were trained for was taken away,” Dean said. “Thomas is a good man.”

For the first time, Andrea’s composure cracked in a visible way.

His eyes flashed, not merely with fury now, but with something closer to pain. A clean, immediate wound beneath all that expensive restraint.

“Do not speak about Thomas,” Andrea said.

Dean’s brows lifted slightly. “Why? Because he does not deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as your resentment?”

Andrea’s mouth tightened. “You know nothing about him.”

“I know enough.”

“No,” Andrea said, his voice sharpening. “You know what people told you.”

Dean’s expression did not move. “And you know what people told you about me.”

That silenced him.

Sylvia looked between them, very still now, as if even she understood that the conversation had left gossip behind and stepped into a more dangerous room.

Andrea inhaled once, slowly, through his nose.

“You think compatibility solves everything,” Andrea said. “How convenient, coming from the person standing here with Arion’s mark under his collar and Arion’s ring on his hand.”

Dean’s fingers curled once at his side.

Andrea noticed.

“Does it feel noble?” Andrea asked, his voice softer and crueler now. “Telling me to accept the man chosen for me because the match is biologically sound?”

Dean’s eyes narrowed. “No.”

“Then what does it feel like?”

“Like I’m talking with a very spoiled child searching for a toy to destroy because his parents said no.”

The silence that followed was immediate and brutal.

Even Sylvia went still.

Andrea’s face changed by almost nothing, which was how Dean knew the words had struck exactly where he had aimed them. A flash of heat moved through the red-haired omega’s eyes, sharp enough to burn through the polish, but the rest of him remained perfectly composed.

“Careful,” Andrea said, his voice trembling with anger.

Dean’s mouth did not move. “I am being careful.”

“No.” Andrea’s voice lowered. “You are being cruel.”

Dean held his gaze and laughed. “And? What are you going to do? Are you going to attack the fiancée of your crown prince? Are you going to cry? I didn’t show up to your engagement gala dressed in a wedding dress. That was low,” Dean said spitefully. “If I weren’t entering heat that day, the night would have ended very differently. I’m not a kind man to my enemies, Andrea. Choose what you want to be to me.”

The corridor died.

There was no other word for it.

Every fragile pretense of academic indifference collapsed at once into a silence so clean and horrified that Dean could hear the faint mechanical hum behind the old wall sconces and the distant shuffle of papers from inside the examination hall.

Sylvia’s face changed into that side of her that matched Dean at his worst. She could smile and be bubbly, but God forbid someone hurt those she cared about.

Andrea did not move.

For one long, frozen second, he appeared less like a furious omega and more like a statue carved at the precise moment before impact.

Then color rose under the fine skin over his cheekbones, rage flashing through his beautiful blue eyes.

Dean saw it come and did not step back.

Perhaps he should have. Perhaps a better man would have regretted the words the moment they left his mouth, would have noticed the wound beneath Andrea’s arrogance, and chosen restraint, kindness, strategy, anything but the blunt satisfaction of putting his hand directly on the bruise and pressing.

But Dean had never been kind to people who came too close to what was his.

And Arion was his.

Not politically. Not merely by ring, by mark, by treaty, by ceremony, by the neat phrases people used when they were trying to turn desire into something that could be filed, announced, and inherited.

Arion was his in the irrational, dangerous, quietly absolute way Dean was still learning to survive.

Andrea had stood in front of him and tried to turn that into public leverage.

So Dean let him see the consequence.

Andrea’s voice, when it came, was almost gentle.

“You think,” he said, “that I dressed for you?”

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