Chapter 30: Chapter 30: Red flags and arson

Dean frowned slightly. Sebastian’s eyes sharpened, attention fully locked now.

Lucas continued, “It means my pheromones interact with bonding, memory, and imprinting in ways that are… unusual.” His gaze flicked briefly to Trevor, then back to his sons. “In extreme circumstances, if the soul is broken enough, if the mind is desperate enough, there is a phenomenon.”

Dean’s stomach tightened.

Lucas’s tone stayed flat, controlled.

“Rewind,” he said. “Not time travel or magic tricks. More like… a forced reset. A rebirth. The body returns to an earlier point because the soul rejects the outcome so violently it claws back to where it thinks it can change it.”

Dean stared at him. “That’s… real?”

Lucas gave him a look that said: ’Obviously it’s real, why do you think we’re having this conversation?’

“Yes,” Lucas said. “It’s real. And it’s rare. And it’s not something anyone should want.”

Sebastian’s voice came quieter than usual. “So that’s why… two lives.”

“Three with this one,” Lucas corrected, and the sigh that followed was so tired it bordered on theatrical. “Two rewinds. This is the third life.”

Dean’s mouth opened. Closed. He looked like he wanted to ask ten questions at once and was afraid of which one would come out.

Sebastian’s gaze didn’t leave Lucas. “You’ve got documentation?”

Lucas nodded once. “There is material on it. Sealed reports, restricted medical notes, and historical analyses that pretend they’re about ’dynastic anomalies’ when they’re actually about survival mechanisms no one wants to admit exist.”

Trevor’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t interrupt. He knew where this was going.

“One of the former emperors of Palatine,” Lucas continued, “Yerofei, had the same profile.”

Dean blinked. “Wait. An emperor?”

“Yes,” Lucas said, deadpan. “Because of course it had to be an emperor.”

Sebastian leaned forward slightly. “And?”

Lucas’s mouth tightened. “He lived five lives that we know of. At least.”

The room went quiet in the specific way it did when a number was too large to feel real.

Dean stared. “Five.”

Lucas nodded again. “Five.”

Trevor let out a slow breath through his nose, like he’d always hated that name but hated it more when spoken out loud.

Dean’s voice came carefully. “So… he just kept… resetting?”

“Not ’just,’” Lucas replied, a hint of irritation surfacing. “It’s not a hobby. It’s not a cheat code. It requires a breakpoint. Catastrophe. A mind and body pushed past what they can accept.”

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. “Which means someone could force it.”

Lucas’s gaze sharpened. “Someone could try.”

Trevor’s voice went flat. “And they would burn everything around them doing it.”

Lucas nodded. “Yes.”

Dean swallowed hard. “So the Empire knows this exists.”

“The Empire has always known,” Lucas said. “It just prefers pretending knowledge is the same as control.”

Trevor shifted closer, hand settling at the back of the couch again, steadying without smothering. Lucas leaned into it like he didn’t even realize he was doing it.

Dean’s hands curled around the armrest. “Why didn’t you tell us sooner?”

Lucas looked at him for a long moment, and the answer was painfully simple.

“Because you were children,” Lucas said. “And because the moment you know, you start thinking about how to prevent it. How to stop it. How to save me.” His voice stayed calm, but something in his eyes tightened. “And I didn’t want my sons growing up with a contingency plan for their father.”

Sebastian’s expression softened, the humor fully gone now. “We’d have made one anyway.”

Lucas’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. “Yes. Apparently you already did. You just did it by breaking into my library.”

Dean huffed a small, shaky laugh, then sobered again. “And Arion wanted you to tell us because…”

“Because it isn’t something every omega can do,” Lucas said, the humor draining out of him. “It’s tied to a specific pheromonal profile. Dominant omegas like me. Siren-class.

Rare enough that the archives pretend we’re folklore until we become inconvenient.”

Sebastian’s gaze sharpened. Trevor’s expression stayed hard.

“He thinks you could have inherited it,” Lucas continued, looking at Dean. “And in his own arrogant way, he wants it clarified. He believes that if the right people know what it is, it can’t be used as a shadow weapon against you.”

Dean frowned. “That’s… almost reasonable.”

“It’s well intended,” Trevor said, and the fact that he admitted it at all told Dean how serious this was. “He cares. In his way.”

Lucas nodded once, reluctantly. “He does.”

Trevor’s jaw tightened. “The problem is that his way looks a lot like your uncle Dax’s way.”

Sebastian grinned. “Of course you are a magnet to red flags.”

Dean shot him a look. “Says the man who treats danger like a hobby.”

Sebastian lifted his hands in surrender. “I treat danger like cardio. It’s good for circulation.”

Trevor didn’t look amused. “Focus.”

Sebastian’s grin didn’t fade. “I am focused. My focus is that Dean apparently has a type: men who would commit arson for him and call it romance.”

Dean scoffed, immediately and offended. “He’s not my type.”

Lucas’s brows lifted with slow, deadly amusement. Trevor’s eyes narrowed in the exact way that meant he was about to enjoy this.

Sebastian leaned forward, delighted. “Oh? Please. Enlighten us.”

Dean waved a hand like he was brushing away something ridiculous. “This was a political engagement. That’s it. A strategic alliance. I agreed because it protects the family, it stabilizes things, it…”

“It makes paperwork happy,” Sebastian offered.

Dean glared. “Yes. It makes paperwork happy.”

Lucas’s mouth twitched. “Dean.”

Dean kept going, because if he stopped, they’d pounce. “Arion is not my type. He’s… intense. He’s controlling. He’s dramatic in a way that makes me want to throw him into a lake and tell him to self-regulate.”

Trevor’s expression didn’t soften, but his eyes did in that dangerously fond way of his.

“And,” Dean added, voice hardening, “I’m not falling for him. I’m falling for the deal.”

Sebastian’s eyebrows climbed. Lucas’s gaze stayed firm.

Trevor spoke, very calmly. “Dean.”

Dean met his eyes. “What?”

Trevor’s mouth twitched. “You’re falling for the face.”

Dean choked. “I am not…”

Lucas cut in, tone mild and lethal. “You are.”

Dean stared at them like they’d committed a crime.

Sebastian grinned. “You’re in denial, and it’s adorable.”

Dean’s ears went faintly pink. “You’re all insane.”

Trevor leaned back slightly, the picture of composed authority, which somehow made it worse. “We’re observant.”

Dean muttered, “He has a stupid face.”

Lucas’s smile widened. “There it is.”

Dean threw up his hands. “It’s not romantic. It’s… aesthetic.”

Sebastian laughed. “Dean. That’s romance for people who hate feelings.”

Trevor’s gaze stayed on him, protective and unyielding. “Intent matters,” he said, pulling it back to seriousness before Dean could combust. “Arion means well. He cares about you. That part is obvious.”

Dean didn’t deny it. He just looked away.

“But,” Trevor continued, “his instinct will always be to remove obstacles by force or any way possible. He will burn anyone who makes you suffer, and if he decides someone in this family is part of that suffering, he’ll justify it.”

Dean’s jaw set. “He wouldn’t touch you.”

Trevor’s eyebrow raised. “He already pushed Lucas.”

Dean flinched at that, because it was true, and because it was the exact line Dean had drawn the night before.

Lucas’s voice stayed controlled. “He doesn’t have to intend harm to cause it.”

Sebastian leaned back with a sigh, humor thinning into something real. “So the intent is good. The execution is… arson.”

Lucas’s mouth twitched. “Yes.”

Trevor’s voice went steady. “Which is why we set rules now, while everyone is calm, instead of after he decides someone looked at you wrong.”

Dean looked down at his hands, then back up. “Okay.”

Lucas’s gaze softened a fraction. “Good.”

Sebastian pointed at him. “Look at you. Growing up. Terrifying.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Shut up.”

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