Taming the Wild Beast of Alamina

Dean had not won the fight.

By the end, he had stopped trying.

He knew he could have forced himself through another round out of spite and pride alone, but Arion would have ended it the moment Dean crossed from exhausted into actually hurting himself, which removed most of the satisfaction from doing something stupid.

The holiday season, meanwhile, had been a contained disaster for Dean’s nerves and a grand success for everyone else.

The palace was full.

Lucas and Trevor had arrived several days before the main celebrations, and Dean had been forced to confront the deeply uncomfortable realization that he actually wanted his parents around more often.

Age was apparently making him sentimental.

He had always known family was important. He had simply spent years pretending Lucas’s habit of hugging him whenever they met was unbearable and Trevor’s silent tendency to check whether Dean had eaten was excessive.

Now Dean no longer even protested properly when Lucas caught his face between both hands and kissed his forehead.

He still complained.

There were standards.

But he did not pull away.

"You missed me," Lucas announced after doing exactly that in the middle of one of the private winter salons.

"I saw you three months ago."

"You missed me for three months."

Dean looked toward Trevor for assistance.

Trevor was pouring tea like the traitor he was.

Arion sat beside Dean on the long sofa, one arm resting comfortably behind him while he listened to Otto discussing something with Trevor near the fireplace.

The gathering was technically private.

Which meant only immediate family, several relatives, two royal advisers who had somehow become permanent fixtures during the holidays, and enough staff moving through the adjoining rooms that Dean suspected privacy had become an aspirational concept.

Lucas sat opposite him and narrowed his eyes.

"What?"

"You look different."

Dean immediately looked down at himself. "I am wearing cream."

"No."

"My hair?"

"No."

Dean became suspicious. "Do not say mature."

Lucas smiled, green eyes sparkling with mischief.

Dean pointed at him. "I will leave."

"You cannot. Dinner is in twenty minutes."

"I can eat upstairs."

"You will not."

Dean hated how confidently everyone had begun predicting his behavior.

He reached for his wine instead.

That was when Lady Merova, one of Minerva’s older cousins, looked between Dean and Arion and committed the first offense of the evening.

"So," she said pleasantly, "when are we finally getting an heir?"

Dean stopped with the glass halfway to his mouth.

There it was.

He had known it was coming.

Three years of marriage had apparently exhausted society’s willingness to admire the wedding photographs and speculate about whether Dean had properly adjusted to imperial life.

Now Arion was thirty.

Dean was married to the crown prince.

Therefore, according to half the empire, something should already have been growing inside him.

Dean took a slow drink.

Arion answered first.

"When there is one."

Lady Merova laughed. "That is very diplomatic."

"It was intended to be."

Dean glanced at him.

Arion had not changed position, but the hand resting behind Dean had moved slightly closer to the back of his neck in warning for everyone around them.

Merova, unfortunately, had survived Minerva’s family for more than sixty years and therefore possessed little instinct for self-preservation.

"I only ask because people are beginning to wonder. Three years is quite a long time, and Arion is already thirty."

Dean set down his glass.

Lucas’s expression cooled.

Trevor and Otto suddenly found the conversation much more interesting.

Dean smiled.

"Are they?"

Merova hesitated.

That smile had apparently communicated something.

"Only naturally," she said. "There is considerable interest in the succession."

"Of course."

Dean crossed one leg over the other.

"The succession is remarkably secure. Otto is emperor, Arion is crown prince, and I believe the imperial family contains enough relatives that Alamina will survive if I fail to become pregnant before dessert."

Someone coughed.

Lucas looked delighted.

Merova recovered quickly. "Nobody is suggesting urgency to that degree."

"Good. I would hate to disappoint the dining room."

Arion’s thumb brushed once against Dean’s nape in amusement.

Dean knew him too well.

Merova tried again, more carefully. "It is simply customary for the imperial couple to consider these matters."

"We have considered them."

That stopped her.

Dean had not actually meant to reveal anything.

Mostly because there was very little to reveal.

They had discussed children.

More than once.

Quietly, privately, usually when there was no political emergency waiting outside their bedroom door.

Dean wanted them but not right now. Perhaps not even soon.

But the idea no longer frightened him in the abstract way it once had. He could picture a child with Arion’s eyes being carried through these rooms. He could picture Lucas becoming intolerable. Trevor pretending he was not buying half the nursery. Minerva ignoring every parental boundary placed before her.

He could even picture Arion holding something impossibly small against his chest and becoming completely unreasonable about its safety.

That part required no imagination at all.

But wanting a child eventually was not the same as accepting that the empire had acquired a schedule for Dean’s reproductive organs.

Arion finally spoke.

"Our family planning is private."

His tone remained perfectly calm, and that made it considerably more final.

Merova nodded. "Of course."

Conversation moved elsewhere for approximately four minutes.

Then Lucas leaned across the space between the sofas and whispered far too loudly, "Do you actually want children?"

Dean stared at him.

"Lucas."

"What? Arion said family planning is private. I am family."

"You are proving why privacy requires additional restrictions."

Lucas ignored that. "Well?"

Dean looked toward Trevor.

"You married him."

Trevor took a sip of tea. "I was young."

Lucas gasped.

Dean laughed before he could stop himself, and the tension dissolved.

Later, after dinner, Dean found himself standing beside one of the tall windows overlooking the illuminated palace gardens while Lucas had gone to interrogate the dessert table and Trevor was discussing military procurement with Otto.

Arion came up behind him.

Dean did not turn.

"You scared Merova."

"She survived."

"She will tell everyone you threatened the nobility over my uterus."

"I said six words."

"You have an oppressive presence."

"So I am told."

Dean leaned back into him.

Arion wrapped an arm around his waist.

For a while, they watched people crossing the garden paths below beneath strings of winter lights.

"They are going to keep asking," Dean said.

"Yes."

"You are thirty now."

"I noticed."

"Ancient."

Arion tightened his arm.

Dean smiled.

Arion kissed his temple but refused to engage more with Dean’s temperament that night.

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