Chapter 29: Chapter 29: Damage Control

By noon, Arion was gone. He vanished into his schedule the way men like him did: one moment present, the next swallowed by drivers, security, encrypted calls, briefings, and the meetings that he was never allowed to skip. The east wing suite remained pristine behind him, as if it had never held a crown prince at all, only the faint impression of someone too restless to truly sleep.

Dean had watched him leave from the hallway.

Arion hadn’t said much. Just a low, clipped, “I’ll be occupied,” as if occupation was a choice and not an entire life. He’d brushed his fingers, briefly, against Dean’s wrist before stepping away and putting on the version of himself the world could survive.

Now, the Fitzgeralt sitting room held the aftermath.

Dean sat on the edge of an armchair, nineteen in three weeks and already too used to being in rooms where adults spoke like the floor might be wired. His posture was casual on the surface, but his instincts were awake, reading the tension the way a body reads weather.

Trevor stood near the window with his arms crossed, one shoulder leaning against the frame, expression set in that familiar combination of patient and murderous. He looked like he had ten other things he should be doing and resented the fact that parenting young adults had inconveniently decided to be one of them today.

Sebastian lounged on the sofa like he owned it, long legs crossed at the ankle, phone in his hand, looking entirely too pleased with himself for someone who had just been summoned like a criminal returning to the scene.

Lucas stood, not sitting at all, because sitting implied comfort, and Lucas Fitzgeralt was currently a man powered entirely by controlled fury and coffee.

“Let me make sure I have this correct,” Lucas said calmly, which was always the most dangerous preface. “You,” he looked at Dean, “found my journal.”

Dean opened his mouth. Closed it. Tried again. “It wasn’t—”

“And you,” Lucas continued, shifting his gaze to Sebastian, “thought it was appropriate to – what? – treat the old library like a scavenger hunt?”

Sebastian didn’t flinch. “We were bored.”

Trevor made a low sound that might have been a laugh. It didn’t help.

Lucas’s eyes narrowed. “You were bored in a damn palace.”

Sebastian lifted one shoulder. “It’s not a palace. It’s a territory manor with generational trauma and excellent woodwork.”

Dean dropped his head back against the chair like he wanted the upholstery to swallow him whole.

Trevor, entirely unhelpful, murmured, “He’s not wrong.”

Lucas’s gaze snapped to him. “Do not validate him.”

Trevor’s mouth twitched. “I’m not validating. I’m observing.”

Lucas stared at Sebastian again. “Continue.”

Sebastian, blessedly, did not. He held up both hands in a placating gesture that did not match the smugness in his eyes. “We didn’t spread it around. We didn’t gossip. We didn’t tell the staff. We just… found it.”

Lucas’s voice remained calm. “And read it.”

Dean winced. “Dad—”

Lucas didn’t look at him. “How much?”

Dean and Sebastian exchanged a quick glance that contained an entire conversation: ’Say less.’

’We’re dead either way.’

’He’ll know if we lie.’

“Enough,” Dean admitted, and then, because Dean had apparently chosen violence against his own survival, he added, carefully but completely, “We know it’s a journal you wrote for Father and Uncle Dax. That you didn’t want to remember, but you did – so you could put it somewhere and stop carrying it in your head.”

The air in the room changed.

Trevor’s posture went still, the amusement draining out of him like someone had pulled a plug. Sebastian stopped looking pleased with himself and started looking… wary, like he’d remembered the thing they’d found wasn’t a secret stash but a deep wound.

Dean swallowed and kept going anyway, because the truth was already on the table, and it wasn’t going to politely crawl back into the drawer.

“We didn’t want to disturb that,” Dean said quietly. “We didn’t. We know about Count Velloran, Misty.” His gaze flicked to Lucas’s face and then away again. “And… the others. Benedict too.”

Lucas finally looked at him.

Not angry, but worse. So still it made Dean’s skin prickle.

Trevor’s jaw tightened, and Dean saw something in him that wasn’t just protective but a contained fury that only surfaced when memory pressed hard enough to bruise.

Sebastian shifted on the sofa, the smirk fully gone now. “Dean,” he said under his breath, not a warning exactly, more like an instinctive plea to slow down.

Dean didn’t. Whatever survival instinct usually told him when to stop talking had apparently taken the morning off.

“We stopped,” Dean added quickly, voice rough. “We read enough to understand it wasn’t just a story, but we stopped the moment we realized it was your decision – when, or if – you ever wanted to share it with us. Call it curiosity if you want.” He swallowed, then forced the rest out anyway. “But it made us… more understanding. Of both of you. Of the family. Of why you carry things the way you do.”

His gaze flicked to Trevor, then to Lucas.

“And it made sense,” Dean continued softly, “why you never liked Grandpa Caelan, even when you tolerated him for us.”

Lucas stared at him for a long moment.

Dean couldn’t tell what he was seeing behind his father’s eyes – anger, grief, pride, or the sharp urge to lock both of his sons in a soundproof room until they learned the meaning of privacy. It was all there, tangled together, and Lucas looked genuinely tired of having to choose what he was allowed to feel first.

“You know,” Lucas said at last, his voice mild in a way that meant he was one sentence away from becoming terrifying, “I can’t decide whether I should be furious or… impressed.”

Sebastian’s mouth twitched. “You can be both.”

Trevor made a low sound that might have been agreement or a warning to shut up.

Lucas dragged a hand down his face like a man trying to wipe off the entire concept of fatherhood, then crossed the room and sat on the couch with exaggerated heaviness, like he was resigning from existence.

He exhaled, long and dramatic.

Dean blinked. “Are you—”

“I am fine,” Lucas said instantly, without even looking at him. “I’m just… exasperated by my children right now.”

Trevor’s mouth twitched again, painfully close to a smile. He didn’t allow it. He shifted his stance by the window, still a wall of controlled fury and protection, but the tension had changed shape.

Lucas leaned back, staring at the ceiling for a second as if asking the universe why his sons were intelligent.

Then he looked at Dean. At Sebastian. At Trevor.

And his voice went simpler.

“Alright,” Lucas said. “Here is the part you’re circling.”

The room went still.

Lucas didn’t draw it out. He didn’t romanticize it. If anything, he sounded mildly annoyed that the truth required words.

“My pheromone profile,” he said, “is classified as siren.”

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