Chapter 87: Chapter 87: Restraint

Dean had made a lot of decisions in his life based on survival.

Most of them looked reasonable on paper. Most of them sounded mature when you explained them to an adult who wanted reassurance that you were fine.

This one did not.

Dean stood in Arion’s bedroom and stared at the bed like it was a diplomatic scandal waiting to happen.

It was obscene, of course. Alamina didn’t do drama, and yet their Crown Prince slept in something that looked like it could swallow three people and a civil war. Dark linens. Thick, expensive throws and pillows that looked aggressively supportive. The room smelled faintly of vetiver even when the man wasn’t in it, because the walls had probably absorbed him the way the palace absorbed everything else.

Boreas padded in behind Dean and immediately acted like this was his room too, circling once and then flopping near the foot of the bed with the satisfied confidence of a creature that had never once questioned whether it belonged somewhere.

Dean stared at him.

Boreas blinked back.

“Traitor,” Dean muttered.

Boreas yawned.

Dean exhaled through his nose and rubbed a hand over his face, trying to ignore the fact that his heart was still beating too fast, and not only because Arion had come back with blood on his soul and exhaustion in his bones.

Because Dean had suggested this.

’Sleep with me. Just to be together.’ His mind remembered with painful accuracy as he sat on the large bed.

It had sounded practical in the garden. A solution. A containment plan. A way to keep Arion’s body from snapping while his mind was still pretending it could be in control.

In a bedroom, with the door closed and the air warmer and Arion’s scent sunk into every surface like a quiet claim?

It sounded like stupidity.

It sounded like Dean handing someone a weapon and hoping they’d choose to be kind.

And the thing was… Dean did trust Arion.

Not with the things that came out of his mouth. Arion’s mouth was a menace. It said things like ’You keep saying that like it’s a question,’ and ’the walls are loyal,’ and ’I wanted you close’ with the calm confidence of a man who had never once been corrected by shame or secondhand embarrassment.

Dean trusted him with his restraint.

That was the difference.

That was the terrifying part.

The shower turned off.

Dean’s head snapped toward the bathroom door before he could stop himself, posture tightening on instinct like he was about to be attacked by tenderness.

The door opened, and Arion stepped out with damp hair and a towel slung around his shoulders like he’d forgotten he was the Crown Prince and not just… a man.

He looked worse, drained of life.

Dean noticed a slight sluggishness in his movements, indicating that the body was still running on command while the mind was attempting to shut down.

Dean’s chest tightened again.

“You washed,” Dean said, because he needed something to say that wasn’t ’I hate that you scare me.’

Arion’s gaze flicked up. The gold was duller around the edges, but it was still sharp enough to pin Dean in place.

“You told me to,” Arion said, voice rough.

Dean could have been reasonable.

He could have pointed at the armchair and announced he’d be sitting there like a responsible adult who understood boundaries and consequences. He could have offered the foot of the bed as a compromise, close enough to keep Arion’s instincts under control but far enough away that Dean’s brain wouldn’t spend the entire night calculating risk.

Good thing Dean didn’t like being safe, apparently.

Because Arion shifted again, heavy and boneless in the way that only exhausted dominants do when they stop fighting their own bodies, and his head landed in Dean’s lap like it belonged there. Like Dean was a piece of furniture he trusted. Like the world could burn outside the door, and Arion would still choose that contact as his first shelter.

Dean froze, breath caught between his teeth.

Boreas climbed onto the bed with the casual entitlement of a creature who had never been denied anything in his life and promptly draped himself across Dean’s thighs, warm and dense, as if to physically prevent Dean from making sensible decisions.

Dean stared down at Arion.

Arion’s lashes fluttered once.

Then his breath evened.

Dean’s stomach dropped.

“No,” Dean whispered, incredulous. “No, you do not just…”

Arion, in response, fell asleep harder.

Dean sat there for a long moment, rigid and offended, with a crown prince unconscious in his lap and a pheromone dog acting like a weighted blanket.

He swallowed.

His hand hovered over Arion’s hair, hesitated, then slid into it anyway, fingers combing back the damp strands.

Arion didn’t wake.

That should have been reassuring.

It was, unfortunately, also terrifying.

Dean exhaled slowly through his nose, expressing a surrender that felt more like inevitability than weakness.

“Fine,” he muttered. “I get it. You’re dramatic.”

Boreas’s tail thumped once, like agreement.

Dean shifted carefully, bracing his hands under Arion’s shoulders. The movement was delicate and awkward – Arion was taller, heavier, and built like someone who could carry another man through snow and still look offended to call it effort. But right now he was dead weight, all muscle, exhaustion, and too much responsibility finally collapsing into sleep.

Dean managed to lift him an inch.

Arion’s arm slid, instinctive, around Dean’s waist as if his body refused to be separated even while unconscious.

Dean hissed softly. “You are not helping.”

Arion made a low sound that might have been a sigh.

Dean maneuvered him up, shifting his own knees under him for leverage, and Boreas watched the process with calm interest, head tilted like he was judging technique.

Dean got Arion sitting for half a second.

Arion’s head lolled forward.

Dean swore under his breath, caught him, and then hauled him back toward the pillows.

It was less ’elegant bedtime routine’ and more ’dragging an overpowered cat into a carrier.’

Once Arion’s back hit the mattress, his body sank like it had been waiting for permission.

Dean tugged the throw out of instinct, because he wasn’t a monster, and because the room was too warm and Arion still looked too cold from the inside.

Arion didn’t stir.

Dean’s hand was still on the blanket, smoothing out a nonexistent wrinkle, when the air moved. He’d been so focused on the task of moving Arion, on the absurdity of it all, that he’d let his guard down. A fatal mistake.

One moment, he was leaning over the sleeping prince, a gesture of caretaking. The next moment, Arion’s hands lunged from under the blanket, grabbing him with inhuman speed. They didn’t grab his arms or his shoulders. They shot out and wrapped around Dean’s ribs, their fingers digging in with bruising force before dragging him down.

Dean yelped, a short, sharp sound of sheer surprise, as his balance was completely destroyed. He fell forward, hands flying out to catch himself, but he was too slow. He landed hard on Arion’s chest, his face colliding with the curve of his neck and shoulder. The impact knocked the air out of his lungs.

For a second, Dean was too stunned to move. He was sprawled across Arion’s body, his own limbs tangled with the prince’s, the thick blankets trapping them together. Arion’s scent, now amplified by the heat of the shower and the close quarters, flooded his senses – vetiver, steel, and the faint, electric tang of lingering backlash. It was overwhelming.

Then, he felt it. Arion wasn’t just holding him. He was clinging. His arms were locked around Dean’s torso, a cage of muscle and bone, and his face was pressed into Dean’s hair, his breath coming in harsh, uneven pants against Dean’s scalp. He wasn’t awake. His eyes remained closed, his face slack with deep, unthinking relaxation from sleep, but his body was acting on pure, primal instinct.

“Arion,” Dean gasped, trying to push himself up. “Arion, wake up.”

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