Chapter 85: Chapter 85: Late.

“I’m coming. NOW!”

Dean made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a choke. “Sylvia, you don’t even know where I am.”

“I don’t need to know,” Sylvia snapped. “I have spite, a favor pass from your fiancée, and a credit card. Tell Boreas I’m his aunt.”

“You’re not…”

“You’re emotionally his aunt,” she cut in. “Also, you’re avoiding the prince topic again. Suspicious.”

Dean rolled his eyes, but the motion died halfway because Boreas had gone still in a way that made the leash feel suddenly real in his hand.

Boreas’s ears angled forward. His weight shifted, and he planted his paws as if he had decided the ground was his. His tail didn’t wag. His head lifted, and his gaze fixed down the path that cut between buried hedges and lamp-lit snow.

Dean’s pulse ticked up, reflexive.

“What…” he started, then stopped himself because he didn’t want to sound like prey on a phone call. “Hold on.”

“Dean?” Sylvia’s voice sharpened immediately. “What is that tone?”

“It’s the tone of your honorary nephew deciding to be a professional,” Dean muttered, eyes narrowing as he followed Boreas’s line of sight.

A figure moved through the pale light at the far end of the path, stepping out of shadow like it had been waiting there the whole time. At first Dean’s brain tried to make it a guard, a staff member, or anything harmless and scheduled.

Then the silhouette came closer, and the shape resolved, and Dean’s stomach went cold for a different reason.

Arion.

He was dressed in dark layers that looked like they belonged on someone who left the palace to do violent things and came back without applause. His hair was slightly disordered. There was a heaviness to his posture that Dean hadn’t seen on him before, subtle but present, like fatigue had finally found a crack in the armor.

Dean forgot to breathe for a second.

Boreas gave a low, satisfied huff, like the world had returned to its proper configuration. He tugged the leash once, not hard, just enough to remind Dean that standing still in winter was not a plan.

Sylvia was still talking.

“-and if he tries to intimidate you, put him on speaker. I’ll humble him. I’ve humbled worse men with less hair.”

Dean didn’t look away from Arion. “Sylvia. I’ll call you later.”

“Dean…” Sylvia tried but got cut off.

He ended the call immediately and pocketed the phone like he was hiding evidence.

Dean’s hand was still on the phone in his pocket, the metal cold against his fingers. He straightened his spine in a reflexive act of defiance against Arion’s sudden, heavy presence. The words were already sharp and ready to come out of his mouth.

’You’re late,’ he’d say. ’You said two hours. It’s been five.’

It was a petty, small thing to focus on, but it was the only solid piece of ground he had in a world that suddenly felt tilting.

He opened his mouth to say it.

Arion closed the distance between them with the same unnerving look Dean had seen the month before in Palatine. The same look the prince had when the backlash was circling him.

His eyes, fixed on Dean, were burning with a light that was both fierce and utterly hollow. Before Dean could get the first syllable past his lips, Arion was on him.

A hand, cold and firm, closed around the back of Dean’s neck. Arion’s other hand moved with the same intention, his fingers tangling in Dean’s hair, tilting his head back. And then Arion kissed him.

It tasted of cold air, of something metallic and sharp, and underneath it all, the faint, clean scent of Arion that Dean knew, now strained through a filter of exhaustion and something else… something wild and ozone-tinged, like the air after a lightning strike.

Arion’s mouth was demanding, almost bruising, a desperate, searching pressure that drained Dean’s lungs and took the words out of his mind.

The complaint about being late and the carefully constructed wall of irritation – it all vanished in the face of this raw, unadulterated need.

Boreas, sensing the shift, pressed his warm body against Dean’s leg, a low, rumbling whine vibrating in his chest.

When Arion finally pulled back, it was only by an inch. He rested his forehead against Dean’s, his breath coming in harsh, uneven clouds that mingled with Dean’s in the frigid air. His eyes were squeezed shut.

Dean’s hand cupped Arion’s jaw before he could think himself out of it.

The skin under his palm was colder than it should’ve been, not from the winter – Arion was always warm, always radiating that contained heat of a dominant alpha – but from exhaustion that had sunk deeper than muscles. Like the cold had found a way under the armor.

Dean swallowed. His throat felt too tight for the words he wanted.

“You… are you in a backlash again?” he asked, trying to make it sound like a clinical question instead of panic.

Arion huffed a weak laugh, breath ghosting against Dean’s mouth. “Would you kiss me again if I say yes?”

Dean’s eyes narrowed.

Then, very deliberately, he hooked his fingers into the front of Arion’s collar and yanked.

Arion’s body followed without resistance, with a surprise flicker across his face, as if his instincts had expected Dean to retreat rather than… this.

Dean pulled him down and kissed him.

His lips pressed in firmly, and the second Arion tried to take control out of habit, Dean’s omega pheromones slipped free, sharp and clean, minty lemonade cutting through the winter air like a blade through fog.

Arion made a low sound into the kiss, half warning, half hunger, and his own scent surged in response – vetiver, deep and dark, the grounded, green-bitter warmth that made Dean feel as if he’d stepped into a shadowed forest and decided to remain.

The two scents collided and tangled, mint over earth, bright over deep, and the air around them thickened in a way that made Boreas’ ears flick and tail thump in approval, as if he’d just witnessed the correct hierarchy being restored.

Arion’s hands moved to Dean’s waist. He let Dean set the pace, even when the instinct in him clearly screamed to do the opposite.

Dean kissed him again, slower this time, like he was testing the edges of Arion’s restraint on purpose.

When Dean finally broke away, he stayed close enough that their breaths still shared space.

Arion’s golden eyes were half-lidded, his expression caught between stunned and dangerously pleased. The fatigue was still there, but it had pulled back, pushed down by this bold omega.

Dean’s chest rose once, twice. He kept his fingers curled in Arion’s collar like he owned it.

“You’re three hours late,” Dean said softly, and the softness was the most threatening part.

Arion’s mouth twitched. “I noticed.”

Dean’s lips touched Arion’s again, barely a kiss, almost an insult. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Show up half-dead and act like I’m not allowed to care.”

Arion’s grip tightened at Dean’s waist, a fraction. His scent grew stronger, vetiver and steel, and his patience wore thin. “You’re letting your pheromones out in the garden,” he murmured, voice low. “That’s what we’re calling ’not allowed to care’ now?”

Dean’s eyes narrowed, mint sharp in the air. “Answer the question.”

Arion stared at him for a beat, as if he was testing Dean’s level of honesty at the moment.

Then he leaned in and pressed a kiss to Dean’s mouth, gentler than either of the last two, and it felt like surrender only because Arion didn’t do gentle unless he meant it.

“No,” Arion said against Dean’s lips. “Not backlash.”

Dean’s jaw tightened. “Then what?”

Arion exhaled, and for the first time since he appeared, something human slipped through his control.

“Work,” he said simply. His gaze flicked over Dean’s face like he was counting, then he closed his eyes like it hurt admitting it. “… Backlash… too.”

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