Chapter 76: Chapter 76: Closer

“Don’t tempt me,” Arion murmured against Dean’s ear, and the words were so soft they barely disturbed the air.

Dean’s spine went rigid on instinct, then immediately betrayed him by relaxing again, because his body had apparently decided Arion’s lap was a legally designated safe zone.

“That’s… not what I’m doing,” Dean mumbled, voice rough with sleep he refused to admit he needed.

Arion didn’t answer with words. He answered by tightening his arm around Dean’s waist just enough to make it clear the conversation was over and the priority was still the same: Dean, warm, alive, and not shivering on winter stone like an idiot.

Boreas huffed, satisfied, and settled more firmly across Dean’s chest like a living blanket with opinions.

“Traitor,” Dean whispered at him.

Boreas blinked slowly, unrepentant.

Arion shifted slightly, adjusting Dean’s robe so it stayed closed, then guided him toward the adjoining bath with the same calm inevitability he applied to everything else. Dean protested once, out of habit. It wasn’t convincing. A hot shower happened anyway because Arion was unstoppable and Dean was tired in a way that finally reached the bone.

After, Arion fed him something warm – broth and bread, simple and annoyingly effective – while Dean sat on the sofa in the robe like a disgruntled prince in exile. Dean complained about the taste solely because his dignity required it. Arion ignored him solely because he was correct.

By the time the palace lights had shifted into that pre-dawn dimness and the corridors outside were quiet again, Dean’s eyelids had started losing fights mid-sentence.

He didn’t remember deciding to lie down.

He just… drifted.

One moment he was insisting he was fine. Next, his cheek was pressed against Arion’s thigh, his body half-curled across the length of the sofa, and his hand was still tangled in Boreas’s fur like he’d been afraid the dog might vanish if he let go.

Arion sat with a tablet balanced in one hand, scrolling through reports with the other, posture loose enough to be human and controlled enough to still be a crown prince. The room around him was lit by a single lamp and the pale spill of dawn through heavy curtains. Beyond the walls, the palace existed – vast, ornate, awake in its own quiet way – but in here, it had been reduced to a small circle of warmth and breathing.

Dean slept in Arion’s lap.

Properly slept, too. Not the tense kind where you woke up every time the building creaked. His face had gone slack, lashes resting against his cheeks, mouth slightly parted. The stubborn lines in his brow had eased out like someone had finally let him put down the weight he kept pretending wasn’t heavy.

Boreas was sprawled across Dean’s chest, head tucked under Dean’s chin, one paw slung possessively over Dean’s ribs like he’d decided this was his person now and anyone who argued would be bitten for sport.

Arion’s mouth twitched as he read.

Border updates. Security rotations. Parliament notes that required answers. A report from the southern outposts. Another from the interior council. Names, numbers, maps, logistics – an entire country’s weight laid out in neat lines that pretended it could be controlled by ink.

He was used to it.

What he wasn’t used to was the warmth of Dean’s body across his legs, the slow rhythm of Dean’s breathing, and the faint scent of Dean’s skin under the robe – clean from the shower, still threaded with Arion’s pheromones because Arion had been careless on purpose.

Arion scrolled with his thumb, eyes sharp on the text, and still found himself pausing every few minutes to look down.

Dean didn’t stir.

Good.

Arion adjusted the throw blanket over Dean’s shoulders anyway, because even asleep Dean had the habit of kicking warmth away like it was an insult. He tucked it back with the gentleness he’d never use in public.

Boreas cracked one eye open at the movement, assessed Arion, and then closed it again, satisfied that the hierarchy remained intact.

Arion went back to the report.

A message notification blinked at the top of the tablet – an aide updating him on the schedule for the day. Meetings. Briefings. A lunch that had been planned carefully around Dean, like Dean was something fragile.

Arion’s jaw tightened at the thought, not because he disagreed with protecting Dean, but because he disliked the implication.

Dean wasn’t fragile.

Dean was just exhausted.

And angry.

And nineteen.

And carrying the aftermath of a man who had tried to turn him into leverage.

Arion’s gaze dropped again, uninvited.

Dean’s hand had slipped higher in Boreas’s fur in his sleep, fingers curling reflexively like he needed proof something solid was still there. His other hand was tucked against Arion’s hip, palm warm through the fabric of Arion’s sweater, as if Dean’s body had decided that proximity was the only reasonable response to a world that kept trying to get its hands on him.

Arion’s throat moved.

He should have put Dean in the guest bed. He should have been disciplined. He should have cared about appearances.

Instead, he stayed where he was, the tablet angled so the lamp wouldn’t glare, reading quietly while the rest of the palace remained unaware that the crown prince had become a couch for an undergrad with sharp teeth and a terrible sleep schedule.

Dean shifted, barely. A soft sound left him – something between a sigh and a complaint – and then he settled again, face pressing more firmly into Arion’s thigh like he was trying to burrow into warmth.

Arion didn’t move.

He just let his pheromones ease out, thin as silk, a calm he could control down to the breath.

Boreas’s tail thumped once, slow and content, like an agreement.

The door opened, and Minerva stepped in with the quiet confidence of someone who belonged to the palace more than the palace belonged to itself. She rarely knocked. Not because she lacked manners, but because she had long ago accepted the simple truth that Arion treated sleep like a rumor.

She held a slim folder in one hand and a pen in the other, dressed in a dark robe that looked elegant even in the wrong light, with hair pinned back loosely. Her eyes flicked once across the room—lamp, tablet, the sofa… and then landed on Dean.

Dean was asleep in Arion’s lap.

Boreas was sprawled across Dean’s chest like a furry barricade.

Minerva stopped.

Just for a beat.

Then her mouth curved slowly, the way it did when she’d found something amusing and was about to be absolutely unbearable about it.

Arion didn’t look up right away, but his posture changed by a fraction.

“Minerva,” he said, quietly.

“I see,” Minerva replied, equally quiet, like they were in a chapel and not in the Crown Prince’s sitting room, where he was actively being used as furniture.

She took two steps in, careful not to let the door click too loudly behind her. Her gaze stayed on Dean’s sleeping face with something that looked annoyingly warm.

Then she looked at Arion.

And the teasing settled in her eyes immediately.

“I came to ask you to sign something,” she said, lifting the folder a little. “And to check if Dean found his rooms comfortable.”

Her eyes dipped, pointedly, to Dean’s head on Arion’s thigh.

Then back up.

“I see he did.”

Arion’s expression didn’t change much. It rarely did in front of anyone who wasn’t Dean. But his golden eye narrowed slightly, the way it did when someone poked at something he considered his.

“He couldn’t sleep,” Arion said, as if that explained everything and also as if it was none of her business.

Minerva’s smile widened. “And the solution was to bring him into your wing,” she murmured. “Into your lap.”

Arion’s tone stayed flat. “It was closer.”

“Mm.” Minerva stepped closer, lowering her voice even more, because she wasn’t cruel. She was only interested. “And the couch was closer than his bed?”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep