Caught by the Mad Alpha King Chapter 486: Not a natural fit

"I don’t like it," he said.

Dean’s tone stayed light, but not careless. "The rumor?"

"That. And the assumption under it."

"That you’d just accept being handed a person because the bloodlines line up."

Nero turned his head slightly. "Among other things."

Dean let out a slow breath. "Well. That’s reassuring, at least."

Nero frowned. "Reassuring?"

"Yes. I’d hate to find out I’m being unwillingly courted by a monarchy."

That nearly pulled a real laugh out of him.

"Unwillingly."

Dean’s mouth twitched. "I enjoy attention on my own terms."

"Of course you do."

"I’m a delight."

"You’re a problem."

"Those overlap."

Nero let that sit between them for a second. Then, because if he was already miserable, he might as well finish the thought properly, he said, "You also deserve better than being treated like a strategic answer."

Dean went quiet again.

This ti it felt different.

He looked down at his controller, thumbs resting idly over the buttons, then at the television, then finally back at Nero.

"That," he said, "was unexpectedly decent of you."

Nero looked offended on instinct. "Don’t make it ugly."

"I promise I’m not," Dean said, raising a hand in mock surrender. "It is touching, truly, but I’ll be weaponized in the end like anyone with money and rank in their family. So. What do you want to do?"

Nero did not answer imdiately. He stared at the screen while his car drifted uselessly into another barrier, then said, with the kind of calm that ant the thought had been sitting in him for longer than he liked. "Act like our pheromones are not compatible. I can change mine as I want, and when they analyze it clinically, they’ll get a report on that."

Dean was quiet for one beat.

Then he turned his head. "You can do that now."

Nero kept his eyes on the screen. "Enough."

The training after his rut had not been optional. Neither had the specialists, the exercises, the clinical monitoring, or the private lessons in restraint so precise they had made his skin crawl. At first it had all felt like punishnt wearing a dical coat. Later it had beco sothing else: muscle mory, pressure managent, scent control, and learning how to control what left his body before it shaped the room around him.

He was good at it now.

Too good, perhaps, for soone fifteen and not yet fully settled into the full nightmare of what he would beco later.

Dean studied him for another second, then leaned back into the sofa. "That is an insane sentence."

"Yes."

"And deeply useful."

"Yes."

"And you’re asking to help ruin a dynastic fantasy."

Nero finally looked at him. "I assud that would appeal to you."

Dean’s smile was slow and bright in exactly the wrong way. "You know so well. That’s worrying."

Nero rolled his eyes and restarted the race. "So."

"So," Dean echoed, considering. "We fail chemistry."

"We fail compatibility," Nero corrected.

"That too. Publicly?"

"No. Just enough."

Dean nodded once, already following. "Quietly disappointing results. Subtle enough not to beco a scandal. Clear enough to cool the mothers."

"And their accountants," Nero said.

Dean made a thoughtful sound. "Those are often the sa people."

That was true enough to be offensive.

For a while after that, the room slipped back into the easier rhythm of controllers clicking and both of them pretending that their conversation had not just shifted from private irritation to active counterstrategy. But the thing about plans between boys raised like this was that once spoken aloud, they began forming structure almost imdiately.

Dean’s aunt hosted a musicale two weeks later.

That, on paper, had nothing to do with bloodlines, heir speculation, or reproductive futures. It was an intimate evening of young patrons, a string quartet flown in from elsewhere, spring flowers, soft lighting, and desserts too delicate to be eaten without offending sobody’s grandmother. On paper.

In reality, half the room contained won who had opinions about Dean’s future, and the other half contained n who pretended not to while quietly doing the sa math.

Nero attended because an absence would have been interpreted.

Dean attended because it was his aunt’s house, and therefore he had no choice without starting a family cold war too early in the quarter.

Nero, who had by then developed unnervingly fine control over the upper layer of his pheromones, turned the edge of himself cooler around Dean. Not hostile. Not enough to raise alarms. Simply wrong in the right places. Enough that the old won closest to them frowned once, almost unconsciously, as if the room had presented a color combination they disliked on instinct.

Dean, for his part, was artful in a different register. He did not recoil, because recoil could be romanticized into tension by people who had too much money and too little internal life. He simply failed to settle. Every ti Nero drew near, Dean’s body language remained subtly tense.

Three conversations later, the first noblewoman looked confused.

By dessert, two duchesses had privately concluded that sothing felt off.

By the next morning, soone had used the phrase ’not a natural fit’ in a sitting room three districts away, and the phrase spread with exactly the speed both boys had hoped.

Then ca the clinical half because neither of their parents were fouls.

That part required more precision.

A month later, under entirely respectable circumstances and with enough official discretion to make the whole thing sound routine, one of the private physicians associated with future court pairing assessnts produced a sealed report. It was dry, technical, almost insultingly calm.

Secondary resonance: unstable.

Long-term pair adaptation: low confidence.

Dominance interaction: atypical.

Recomndation: no active encouragent of dynastic pairing absent later reassessnt.

It was, in Nero’s opinion, a beautiful docunt.

It was, in Dean’s opinion, even better because no one could accuse either of them of sabotage without first admitting how eagerly they had wanted to treat two teenagers like a strategic rger.

The high aristocracy did not abandon the topic at once, of course. Houses like that rarely surrendered a profitable idea quickly. But the certainty around them thinned. The smugness softened.

Dean found himself subjected to fewer asuring glances from won who looked at him like a future wedding engraving. Nero noticed that a certain type of hopeful conversation stopped abruptly whenever the sealed report was ntioned near the wrong people.

So the plan worked.

Which was, unfortunately, when things beca more complicated.

Because the distance they had manufactured in public left them, in private, with the strange intimacy of co-conspirators.

They t at two other functions after that, then once in a corridor, then in a side garden after a luncheon neither of them had wanted to attend. Each ti the room around them insisted on one story while the truth ran quietly underneath it.

In public, they were politically cooled. In private, they had beco easier with one another in ways Nero did not entirely trust.

Dean was the first to ntion it.

They were in a glass corridor off the sumr conservatory, late enough that the palace had gone mostly quiet around the reception rooms, the lights throwing long reflections across the floor. Nero had his hands in his pockets. Dean had stolen a pastry from sowhere and was eating it with the offense of a man too elegant to do it honestly.

"We are," Dean said, "alarmingly good at this."

Nero glanced at him. "Lying?"

"Strategy," Dean corrected. "You say lying like it lacks prestige."

"It does if you get caught."

Dean humd. "Fair."

He took another bite, then looked at Nero sideways. "I think Lady Serrin believes I’m secretly ant for a duke from the western provinces now."

Nero’s mouth twitched. "My condolences."

"She has terrible taste in n."

"She does," Nero agreed.