Taming the Wild Beast of Alamina

Chapter 364: Chapter 364: Time

One and a half years later, time had done what time always did when no one was watching closely enough.

It had made impossible things routine.

Dean had settled into his role as Crown Prince Consort of Alamina with the same dangerous elegance with which he had once handled university disputes, family negotiations, and Arion’s terrifying courtship. The difference was that now there were more seals, more ministries, more people waiting outside his office with folders, and significantly fewer chances to pretend he was not important.

He had acquired a secretary.

Then another.

Then, after the third diplomatic reception nearly ended with Dean personally correcting a minister’s schedule in red ink, Arion quietly approved a full team.

Dean had called that excessive.

His new chief secretary, a frighteningly competent woman with silver glasses and the emotional range of a locked archive, had looked him in the eye and said, "Your Grace, you answer messages at three in the morning, and they are not nice, polite, or diplomatic. You need containment for the good of everyone around you."

Dean had stared at her.

Then hired two more assistants.

Meanwhile, Sylvia had returned to university with the relief that comes from knowing she had narrowly avoided becoming a political document herself. She studied, drank too much coffee, paid visits to Dean when his staff allowed it, and spent her jobless days with the shameless calm of someone who had discovered that unemployment could be a spa treatment if the occasional royal crisis was ignored.

She also continued her relationship with Thomas Lancaster.

That, too, had become routine.

A wonderful routine.

A routine that had taught Sylvia many things about dominant alphas, military schedules, and the difference between a man who looked like a boulder in public and a man who absolutely did not behave like a boulder behind closed doors.

Thomas was calm in halls, intimidating in meetings, and almost offensively controlled everywhere that had witnesses.

In bed, the boulder disappeared.

Sylvia had discovered this with scientific shock, personal delight, and a level of dedication that made her briefly consider whether she had misjudged geology as a concept.

Dean had unfortunately noticed her expression the morning after one of those discoveries and had refused to let the matter die for six months.

Sylvia had retaliated by teaching Boreas that smoked meat came in seasonal varieties.

Boreas, loyal to food before state, accepted the development with courtesy.

He still went to see Sylvia when she came to the palace, sat in front of her with solemn expectation, and treated her bag as a sacred object. Arion pretended not to know.

Dean knew.

Dean suffered.

Boreas prospered.

Somewhere beneath all that domestic absurdity, the world had continued being dangerous.

Arion had taken over the temple visions with such quiet thoroughness that priests quickly realized that divine language did not protect files from royal warrants. The original reports were secured. The surviving visionaries were interviewed without temple interpretation overlaid on their words. The missing links were identified, catalogued, and cross-checked against Sahan intelligence.

Unfortunately for everyone’s pride, the temple had not lied.

Ilara had been deeply offended by the accusation, naturally.

She had stood in one of Otto’s sealed rooms, arms crossed, robes immaculate, and informed Arion that being doubted by crown security was insulting, inconvenient, and frankly expected after the way she had delivered news about death, timelines, and secondary-gender shifts like someone throwing knives into a nursery.

Then she had sighed and called it payment.

Dean had liked her a little more after that.

The visions remained incomplete, but they were warning-level intelligence, not law.

Multiple visionaries had seen Sebastian change. Multiple had seen Nero beside him. Several had seen Roslew fall beneath infection pressure. Two had seen Sebastian as a siren-type dominant omega, close enough to Lucas’s pattern that even the most skeptical analysts had stopped calling it symbolic.

No one liked that.

Sebastian liked it least of all.

He returned to Palatine, continued to work, refused private temple contact, and left Nero without an opening.

If Nero noticed, he said nothing.

Which meant he noticed everything.

Research moved faster than politics, for once. Alaminian and Sahan laboratories, under heavy security and heavier arguments, had managed to reproduce a partial version of Dean’s neutralizing pheromone signature. The artificial range covered barely half of Dean’s natural meter, and the stability dropped sharply under battlefield heat.

Still, it worked enough to change projections.

Enough to let mixed units train closer to infected zones without destroying dominant alphas through overexposure. Enough to rotate more soldiers into support positions. Enough to give Hendrik one full day without looking like he wanted to personally strangle science for being slow.

Dean had cried when he saw the first successful field report.

Then he denied it.

Everyone let him.

Andreas, somehow, had managed to remain alive.

That was mostly because he was in Draxil, peacefully married to his wife, and because Otto had declared, with complete seriousness, that killing him before he mated would be politically inefficient.

From what Dean had heard, Andreas and his wife still had not mated.

No one was surprised.

Their marriage appeared stable, polite, cautious, and deeply committed to moving at the pace of ancient stone erosion.

Otto still wanted him dead.

Arion did too, though with more polish.

They were simply waiting until the mating happened, because a mated dominant alpha remained stable even after the omega died. It was cruel to the alpha, of course, but neither Otto nor Arion had ever been known for political kindness.

Dean had learned not to ask whether that was a threat, a plan, or merely a file waiting for the right date.

Minerva, who had been present when the matter came up once over breakfast, had only stirred her tea and said, "Efficient."

Dean had stared at her.

Arion had kissed his temple and told him not to think about Draxil before coffee.

Now, two weeks before Dean’s birthday, the palace had become intolerable.

Three reception halls were being prepared. Musicians argued with protocol officers. Guest lists multiplied like fungus after rain. Four departments behaved as if Dean’s birthday were a continental referendum on taste, loyalty, and floral symbolism.

The birthday itself mattered less than what it represented.

His first major celebration after a year and a half as Crown Prince Consort. The first large gathering since the temple investigation had gone quiet. The first event where Alamina, Saha, Rohan, Palatine, Draxil, and a dozen other watching powers would stand under one roof and pretend they had come for cake.

Dean hated it.

He was also planning it flawlessly.

That annoyed him most.

Arion, the traitor, was in Saha for a meeting with Nero, because Dax had begun granting formal power to his heir, and Nero’s transition from beautiful royal menace to beautiful royal menace with actual authority apparently required witnesses, signatures, and several emergency contingencies.

Dean respected the necessity.

He still resented the absence.

Especially because Arion had kissed him goodbye in the private airport like leaving was a personal insult, wrapped Dean’s collar chain once around his fingers, murmured that he would return before Dean had time to miss him too badly, and then left with the audacity of a man who expected forgiveness because he looked good in black.

Dean had not forgiven him.

He had merely kissed him back.

There was a difference.

Now he sat in his office beneath a mountain of party proposals, a half-finished speech, and a message from Sylvia that read:

Boreas and I believe the smoked duck canapé option is spiritually superior.

A second message arrived.

Also, Tom says Rohan’s delegation confirms arrival three days early. Do not panic.

Then a third.

Actually, panic a little. It keeps you pretty.

Dean closed his eyes.

His chief secretary entered with another folder. "Your Grace, the Sahan attendance confirmation arrived."

Dean opened his eyes. "Nero?"

"Yes."

A pause.

Dean narrowed his eyes. "What?"

"Prince Nero added a handwritten note."

Dean took the card.

It read:

I promise to behave at your birthday.

Underneath, in a different hand, Chris had written:

He is lying.

Dean stared at it.

Then, despite the work, the party, the visions, and every danger still waiting beneath the polished surface of their lives, he laughed.