Arion stood by the tall window of his suite, the city of Palatine spread beneath him like something already measured and understood. The tablet in his hand glowed softly, the seal of the Palatine Empire still visible at the top of the document.
Zyon Vesga remained a careful distance behind him.
Zyon had served the Alaminian crown since Arion's ascension as crown prince. He had overseen border conflicts, succession disputes, assassination attempts, and negotiations that had nearly tipped into war. He did not unsettle easily.
This, however, unsettled him.
"Your Highness," Zyon said cautiously, "the revision… it is a significant deviation from yesterday's framework."
Arion did not answer him. His golden eyes moved slowly across the text, line by line, absorbing every clause with unnerving calm.
Zyon swallowed.
"A month of negotiations," he continued carefully, "and now they request… distance. Delay. Restrictions. It is, frankly, a retreat from several strategic positions."
Arion's thumb paused against the screen. He looked calm, serene almost, if one ignored the pheromones that almost choked the room.
The prince was mad, and Zyon could feel it in his bones.
"Not a retreat," Arion said at last, his voice low and even. "A boundary."
Zyon's shoulders tightened. "They are asking for a two-year separation, limited contact, and no physical proximity to the omega. They are… effectively slowing everything to a crawl."
Zyon felt the pressure spike, thick and metallic, dominant pheromones rolling through the air like a storm front. Rage packed so tightly it became lethal by density alone.
"They are asking for distance," Zyon said carefully. "For delay. For restraint."
"They are taking him out of my reach," Arion replied, voice still even. "After agreeing he was to be within it."
His thumb tightened on the edge of the tablet, the metal casing giving a faint protest under the pressure.
For a month, negotiations had been a battlefield of patience and calculation. For a month, he had endured Council pressure, foreign scrutiny, and the constant low-grade instability that came with being an unpaired dominant alpha whose biology was built for war and whose instincts were screaming for an anchor.
And then there had been Dean. For the first time in years, his nervous system was truly silent.
Now Palatine had taken that away and called it diplomacy.
Zyon swallowed. "Your Highness… The Fitzgeralts are known for defensive maneuvering. This is likely meant as protection, not insult."
Arion finally turned from the window.
His golden eyes were cold now, stripped of earlier restraint, focused with the clarity of a man who had just identified an enemy tactic.
"Protection," he said softly, "does not require severing proximity. It requires boundaries. And they already had the upper hand because I gave it to them."
The tablet cracked in his hand, pieces falling onto the floor. "Make our team forward the original proposal. If they refuse to comply because of maturity when the omega is over eighteen, then hit them with the Alliance of Dominants Act."
Zyon's breath caught. "Your Highness… Invoking the Dominant Alliance Act would force a biological security review. Palatine will see it as an escalation."
Arion's jaw tightened, the muscle there jumping once before stilling. The crack in the tablet's casing spiderwebbed further under his grip before he finally let it fall completely, the sound sharp in the quiet room.
"Escalation is what they have already chosen," he said coldly. "They withdrew proximity after accepting it. They imposed a delay after the agreement. They are testing how much distance they can put between me and what stabilizes me."
His gaze lifted, gold, hard, and unblinking. "I will answer in the same language."
Zyon hesitated. "The Act frames dominant omegas as strategic stabilizers for high-risk dominant alphas. Palatine will argue that Dean's age makes long-term pairing medically unadvisable…"
"And I will counter that prolonged separation from a compatible dominant omega increases neurological degradation and berserk probability in unpaired dominant alphas," Arion cut in smoothly. "Which, in my case, is a matter of continental security."
The air went very still.
"You will not threaten them directly," Zyon said carefully.
Arion's lips curved in a humorless grin. "Of course not. Threats are crude. I will give them data. Risk assessments. Council precedent. Temple evaluations. And the quiet implication that keeping Dean Fitzgeralt away from me is not only personal, but it is strategically irresponsible."
Zyon closed his eyes briefly. "They will understand what you are doing."
"They already do," Arion replied. "The Fitzgeralts are not naïve. They know exactly what they're provoking."
He turned back to the window, the city of Palatine spread beneath him like a living map, every street and tower already measured, already categorized.
"They want distance," he said softly. "Dean can bare his teeth all he wishes. Palatine has been allowed many privileges. In the last fifty years alone, they sheltered two dominant omegas and arranged their bonds entirely on their own terms." His voice cooled. "Lucas. Christopher. They chose timing, proximity, and protection. The world adapted around them."
His gaze hardened.
"They seem to have forgotten that those freedoms existed because everyone else respected the rules that kept the balance intact. That no one challenged their choices. That no one forced precedent into law."
He turned slightly, golden eyes glinting.
"Now it is their turn to remember that they are not the only ones who live under those rules."
Zyon felt the temperature in the room drop.
"You mean to invoke shared-stability statutes," he said quietly.
Arion inclined his head. "Dominant alpha and dominant omega compatibility is not a private matter when continental security is involved. Lucas and Christopher were protected because their bonds stabilized their partners and, by extension, their nations."
He exhaled slowly.
"They will discover that they cannot use precedent only when it benefits them and discard it when it becomes inconvenient."
Zyon hesitated. "And Dean?"
For the first time, Arion's composure cracked just enough for something darker to show beneath.
"Dean is not a precedent," he said. "He is the future. And Palatine has just challenged the terms under which that future will be decided."