Chapter 73: Chapter 73: The route to his wing

Arion’s hold shifted – firmer, as if Dean’s suspicion was a physical thing he could brace against. “You were lost,” he repeated, and the faint emphasis on ’were’ felt like a correction.

Dean narrowed his eyes. “Answer the question.”

Arion gave him a brief, irritatingly calm look. “My wing,” he said. “It’s closer than yours.”

Dean stared. “Your wing.”

“Yes.”

Dean opened his mouth to object out of principle, but Arion’s voice slid in first, smooth and controlled, like a blade being set carefully on a table.

“What were you doing outside at this hour?” Arion asked. “You should be asleep.”

Dean scoffed. “Nice try.”

Arion’s expression didn’t change.

Dean pointed at him with one hand, which was difficult because the angle was awkward and Arion had him pinned like a problem he’d decided to solve. “You don’t get to dodge my question by interrogating me.”

“I’m not interrogating you,” Arion said, tone infuriatingly neutral. “I’m asking.”

“And I’m asking,” Dean shot back, “why you were outside at four in the morning with a dog big enough to legally qualify as a siege weapon?”

Boreas padded beside them, tail wagging, clearly pleased he was being discussed.

Arion exhaled through his nose, a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh but carried the same quiet amusement. “Because I wake up at this hour.”

Dean blinked. “By choice?”

Arion’s gaze slid to him again, and this time there was something almost dry in it. “Dominant alphas don’t require as much sleep.”

Dean’s brows lifted. “That’s the most ’I’m fine, actually’ sentence I’ve ever heard.”

“I’m fine,” Arion said calmly.

Dean stared harder. “How much?”

Arion hesitated a fraction, then answered like he didn’t see why it mattered. “Two hours.”

Dean’s mouth parted. Then closed. Then opened again, because his brain was trying to process that as a fact and failing.

“Two,” Dean repeated. “As in… you sleep for two hours a night?”

Arion nodded once, as if confirming the weather. “Most nights.”

Dean made a sharp sound that was halfway between disbelief and offense on Arion’s behalf. “That’s not sleep. That’s a nap you take on the way to committing war crimes.”

Arion’s mouth twitched. “I don’t commit war crimes.”

Dean’s eyes narrowed. “You commit them politely.”

Arion didn’t deny it quickly enough to make that convincing.

Dean took a breath, forced himself back to the real issue, because if he didn’t, he’d end up arguing about ethics with a man who ran on two hours of sleep and pure imperial spite.

“So,” Dean said, voice tightening again, “you’re taking me to your wing because it’s closer. Why? You could’ve just… carried me back to my suite.”

Arion’s gaze held forward, but his pheromones brushed the air in a way Dean was starting to recognize, the calm he used when he didn’t want Dean to spiral.

“Your clothes are damp,” Arion said. “And you’re still cold.”

Dean frowned. “I’m not…”

“Dean,” Arion cut in, quiet but absolute.

Dean stopped. Something about that tone made his arguments die in his throat before he could weaponize them into sarcasm.

Arion continued like he hadn’t noticed he’d just flattened Dean with one word. “My wing is closer. You can change there. Warm up. Then I’ll take you back.”

Dean’s jaw tightened, but it wasn’t anger. Not fully. It was that complicated irritation of being cared for in a way that didn’t ask permission first, because the person doing it had decided permission wasn’t the priority.

Dean glanced down at Boreas, desperate for a safer target.

The dog looked back with bright eyes and a pleased, panting grin, as if he’d successfully herded Dean into the correct part of the palace.

Dean muttered, “This is a conspiracy.”

Arion’s voice stayed even. “It’s a solution.”

Dean scoffed. “You say that like I’m a broken appliance.”

Arion finally looked at him properly, golden eye unwavering, expression calm and intent in a way that made Dean’s stomach flip traitorously.

“No,” Arion said. “I say it like you’re mine, and you keep forgetting to act like you want to stay alive.”

Dean’s breath hitched once and forced his voice to work again. “I didn’t forget.”

Arion’s grip tightened by a fraction, like he’d heard the lie and didn’t accept it. “Then tell me,” he said, tone quiet, “what you were doing wandering the palace at four in the morning?”

Dean stared at him for a beat, then huffed. “Because Seb called, they discovered what you told me about Caelan on the jet, and I wanted to keep my mind occupied before I spiraled, wondering why I could resurrect Caelan only to make him suffer myself.”

“Oh, he suffered. I didn’t let him die quickly.”

Dean’s head snapped up so fast he almost hit Arion’s chin.

“What?”

Arion kept walking and looking forward like he’d just commented on the temperature.

Dean stared at the line of his jaw, offended by the calm. “Arion.”

A beat.

Arion exhaled, and Dean felt it more than he heard it, the shift of someone deciding whether honesty would cost more than silence.

“It’s cruel,” he admitted. “When I use that method to kill someone, it feels like drowning while you’re still breathing. Like being held under, pulled up for air, then held under again.” His gaze flicked to Dean, brief and sharp. “Constantly.”

Dean went very still in Arion’s arms, all the earlier sarcasm evaporating as his brain tried to build a picture and recoiled from it.

“Like being waterboarded,” Dean said quietly, because the word came from somewhere in his memory and fit too well.

Arion’s jaw tightened. “Yes.”

The corridor lights slid over them in slow intervals. The palace was waking in distant layers – faint movement somewhere far off, the building’s quiet hum of life – but the space immediately around them felt sealed.

Dean swallowed. “You did that… from far away?”

Arion nodded once. “I rarely use it,” he said. “Distance makes it cleaner. Less… messy.” A pause, then, almost reluctantly, “Most people deserve a quick death.”

Dean’s eyes narrowed. “And Caelan didn’t.”

Arion’s voice didn’t change, but his restraint shifted to make room for a truth he didn’t usually bother offering.

“No,” he repeated, and then added, quieter, “Someone who tries to sell his own isn’t granted mercy.”

Dean held his gaze, but there was no shock left in him now. Nothing like what people expected from a grandson hearing his grandfather had been killed. He had the same reaction on the jet, but Arion assumed it was just the initial shock.

But for Dean, Caelan had been a shadow for so long that Dean’s body had learned to live with it the way you live with bad weather – by watching the sky constantly.

Arion kept walking, Boreas padding alongside like a loyal storm.

“Caelan didn’t do it because he had no choice,” Arion continued, blunt in that Alaminian way that didn’t dress ugly things in pretty language. “He didn’t do it the way your ancestors did when the world was burning and survival demanded compromises that still tasted like sin.”

Dean’s mouth twisted.

“He didn’t do it to serve a greater good,” Arion said. “He did it because he wanted more leverage. More control. More power.”

Dean exhaled slowly. The sound was almost… relieved.

“Good,” he said, and the word came out clean.

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