By the time they reached the Crown Prince’s and Crown Consort’s palace, Dean had remembered that official life was not only inconvenient but also extremely well lit.
That felt personal.
The car rolled through the inner gates just before evening, passing beneath pale stone arches carved with the old crest of Alamina. Guards stood at attention along the entrance path, their uniforms immaculate, their eyes forward, and their faces disciplined into a neutrality that made Dean suspicious right away.
Dean stepped out of the car wearing the travel collar, Arion’s sweater under a fitted coat, and the expression of a man prepared to start a war with anyone who mentioned Ylico, rest, or the fact that he had been absent from structured society for several days.
Beside him, Arion looked entirely composed.
That was deeply offensive, considering Dean knew for a fact that his husband was also tired, still sore, and one badly timed staircase away from private suffering.
"You look too normal," Dean muttered.
Arion glanced at him. "I am the crown prince."
Dean gave him a look.
Arion’s mouth almost moved.
The chief steward of their palace bowed at the entrance, along with two senior attendants and a line of staff who had clearly prepared for the formal return of the newly married crown couple with flowers, polished floors, and the kind of respectful silence that made Dean want to turn around and go back to the jet.
"Your Highness. Your Grace. Welcome home."
Home.
Dean looked up before he could stop himself.
The palace was smaller than the main royal residence, but only because Alamina had a terrible definition of small. White stone, long windows, deep blue banners, balconies facing the eastern gardens, and an inner courtyard where water ran quietly over black marble.
Arion’s hand brushed Dean’s lower back.
Dean breathed.
"Thank you," Arion said to the steward. "We will go directly to the east briefing room."
The steward did not blink, but Dean felt the atmosphere change.
Official duties had not waited in the capital like polite guests. They had broken into the house, sat in the best chairs, and begun judging the curtains.
Dean sighed. "We are not even pretending to unpack first?"
Arion leaned close enough that only Dean could hear him. "If we unpack first, Otto will come here."
Dean’s expression flattened.
"Briefing room," he said immediately.
Arion’s eyes warmed.
They changed before entering.
Not fully. There was no time for ceremony, and Dean suspected Otto had deliberately chosen speed over protocol to avoid giving anyone the chance to build political theater around the issue.
Still, the sweater disappeared.
Dean stood in front of the mirror twenty minutes later in dark formal trousers, a pale shirt, and a long fitted coat embroidered lightly at the cuffs in silver and blue. The travel collar remained at his throat because Arion had suggested changing it and Dean had said no before thinking too much about why.
Arion had not smiled.
That had been wise of him.
He had only placed the matching tiepin on his own dark jacket, the stone catching the light in quiet answer to Dean’s collar.
Dean stared at the reflection.
The man in the mirror looked tired.
Pale.
A little too sharp around the eyes.
But he also looked like the Crown Consort of Alamina.
That was deeply inconvenient.
Arion came to stand behind him.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Arion reached past him and adjusted one edge of Dean’s collar, though it did not need adjusting.
Dean watched him in the mirror. "You are doing that for yourself."
"Yes."
"At least you admit it now."
"I am learning honesty in marriage."
Dean tried not to smile and failed almost immediately.
Then the weight returned.
Sebastian.
Nero.
The temple.
The archive crawled through secure channels into the hands of men who would decide what could be trusted and what might destroy lives if mishandled.
Arion’s hands stilled at his shoulders.
"We will protect his choice," he said.
Dean met his eyes in the mirror.
"I know."
The east briefing room had no windows.
Dean understood why the moment they entered.
The table was already active, the central projection muted to a cold blue glow. Layers of documents, memory transcripts, temple seals, old border reports, and Saha intelligence summaries floated in sections above the surface. Several had been marked with Hendrik’s pale gold annotations. Others bore Otto’s black approval code.
Otto stood at the head of the table.
He looked like an emperor now.
Not Dean’s father-in-law.
Not the man who had watched Arion and Dean marry with quiet pride.
Broad-shouldered, severe, with an expression calm enough to frighten anyone who mistook calm for patience.
Hendrik stood beside him, one hand resting on the table, his face drawn with exhaustion. He looked as if he had not slept properly since Ylico, which immediately promoted him further in Dean’s private ranking of acceptable royal acquaintances.
"Welcome back," Otto said.
"That feels generous."
Otto’s mouth moved faintly. "It is not meant to be."
"Good. I would hate to misread the room."
Hendrik glanced at him, and despite the exhaustion stamped into the lines around his eyes, there was a small flicker of amusement there.
Dean decided to count that as a moral victory.
Arion pulled out Dean’s chair himself.
Dean sat because his body still believed standing was an aggressive suggestion and because this was not the kind of room where one could dramatically collapse onto a couch and accuse the state of cruelty.
Unfortunately.
Arion took the seat at his right. Otto remained standing. Hendrik did too, which Dean assumed was either military habit or the result of spending too many decades responsible for the sealed perimeter, the infected beast containment lines, and every report that made normal people decide sleeping was overrated.
Hendrik was Otto’s cousin in the broad, old-royal-family sense, which meant enough blood to be impossible to remove from state matters and not enough blood to make holidays less tense. He was also old enough to have been beside Otto before the crown had settled fully on his head and important enough that half the capital lowered their voices when his name came up.
Dean had never disliked him.
He had only found him calm in a way that made Dean suspect he had personally seen several disasters and decided emotional expression was inefficient.
Now, looking at the projection above the table and the pale gold marks Hendrik had placed across the files, Dean understood why.
"Ilara’s transfer came in six sealed sections," Hendrik said, touching two fingers to the table.
The projection shifted.
Layers separated, each one marked by date, source, and reliability assessment.
Temple archive.
High Matron’s testimony.
Custodian lineage records.
Timeline fragments.
Beast breach correlation maps.
Dean stared at the last one.
"Are we sure that there is a dominant omega other than Father Lucas that is a siren type?"
Otto straightened and crossed his arms over his chest. "There aren’t any new siren types, but there are different types of omegas that can get visions. They are even more rare than those like Lucas."
"The reports are scattered with visions," Dean continued, eyes fixed on the projection, "most of them with news about calamities. Beasts taking over Roslew, our entire system of defense collapsing, dominant alphas falling, which I do not see how..." His mouth tightened. "Unless the beasts develop a gene that infects dominants too."
Otto did not move. Hendrik did not reach for another file. Arion, beside Dean, went very still in a way that made Dean immediately regret speaking and immediately glad he had.
Hendrik’s gaze sharpened.
"That," he said, "is one of the questions we have not answered."