Caught by the Mad Alpha King-Chapter 485: Paired wrong

A few months later, Nero found himself in one of the private entertainment rooms reserved for young royals, staring at a giant television while a racing game he had not chosen informed him for the third time that he had crashed into the same barrier.

Dean, stretched across the other end of the sofa like a man personally wronged by leadership conferences, did not even laugh.

That was how tired they both were.

The summit for young future leaders had ended two hours earlier, which meant they had already survived handshakes, moderated discussions, performative optimism, a collaborative policy exercise in which three heirs had nearly come to blows over water security, and a closing reception full of adults smiling too hard at teenagers in tailored clothes. The entire thing had been designed, according to the official program, to encourage diplomacy, innovation, and mutual understanding among the next generation of power.

In practice, it had mostly encouraged caffeine dependence and fresh contempt.

Dean had arrived in Nero’s wing by right of long familiarity and collapsed onto the sofa without so much as asking permission. Nero had objected on principle, then handed him a second controller five minutes later because there were some kinds of exhaustion that only required shared silence, a large screen, and a game stupid enough not to require strategic thought.

Now the room was dim except for the blue-white light of the television and the softer glow of recessed panels hidden in the wall molding. The place had been designed for comfort with the kind of expensive restraint that made Sahan interiors so irritatingly effective - deep sofas, polished dark wood, a low table still holding the remains of an abandoned snack tray, and windows turned black with evening beyond the glass.

Dean was sixteen and looked it in the way only boys with too much bloodline and too much self-awareness ever did: all long limbs, sharp mouth, expensive boredom, and eyes that missed absolutely nothing when they chose to pay attention. Right now he was slouched into the cushions with one ankle hooked over the opposite knee, tie gone, jacket abandoned on the armrest, and his hair just untidy enough to suggest he had given up performing nobility for the night.

Nero probably looked no better.

At fifteen, he had grown into his height just enough to become dangerous with it, and the last months had not softened anything. If anything, the first rut had sharpened him in ways he still resented - more control in some places, less illusion in others. The family continued to hide the truth of what he was from the wider world, which meant that outside the palace, outside the very tight ring of people trusted with the real version of him, the official story remained simpler and far more politically digestible: Dax’s eldest had manifested as a dominant alpha.

That alone had been enough to set half the aristocracy on fire in private.

Dean crashed his car into Nero’s on purpose, sending both digital vehicles spinning uselessly across the screen.

Neither of them reacted.

A beat passed.

Then Nero said, without looking at him, "I think I have a crush on someone."

Dean’s car drove straight off the road.

That, Nero thought, was gratifying.

Dean slowly turned his head. "Well."

Nero kept his eyes on the screen. "That sounded too interested."

"It is exactly as interested as the sentence deserves."

Nero steered lazily through a tunnel and clipped another wall. "I’m regretting this already."

"Too late." Dean shifted slightly on the sofa, interest fully awake now despite the exhaustion hanging off both of them. "Who?"

"No."

"You opened with ’I think I have a crush on someone’ and expected what, exactly? Spiritual support?"

"Yes."

"That was your first mistake."

Nero huffed something that was almost a laugh and not remotely amused. On the screen, the game announced that he was now somehow in twelfth place. He felt that was unfairly symbolic.

Dean watched him for another moment, then said, more thoughtfully, "You said think."

"I did."

"So it’s not settled."

"It’s settled enough to be irritating."

Dean considered that. "Do you like them because they’re interesting, inconvenient, beautiful, or all three?"

Nero finally glanced at him. "You say that like those are the only categories."

"For you? Mostly."

That was rude.

Also probably true.

Nero looked back at the screen. "I’m not telling you who."

Dean sighed as if burdened by incompetent allies. "Fine. Then tell me whether I know them."

A pause.

That was answer enough.

Dean sat up a little. "Oh, that’s awful."

"Thank you."

"No, I mean genuinely awful. That narrows the field to people I have opinions about."

"You have opinions about everyone."

"Yes," Dean said. "But some are more tragic than others."

Nero let the game continue running while his car drifted aimlessly into another wall. He was too tired to defend himself properly and too full of his own thoughts to pretend indifference longer than necessary.

"It’s not tragic," he said.

Dean gave him a long look. "Then why do you look like you’ve been handed an administrative curse."

"Because," Nero said, "the timing is rude."

Dean’s brows lifted. "Is this because of the high aristocracy talking like they’re already planning your future children?"

That made Nero go still for a fraction too long.

Dean noticed, of course.

"Oh," he said, much too softly for someone so inherently aggravating. "It is."

Nero leaned back further into the sofa and shut his eyes for a second. "They’re getting worse."

Worse was an understatement.

Since his public presentation as a dominant alpha, the whispers had not exactly hidden themselves. Families recalculated. Invitations adjusted. Dinners became more strategic. Mothers looked at him too carefully. Fathers became polite in the hungry way. Every gathering acquired undercurrents. Every appearance produced some new quiet assessment of who might be suitable, useful, close enough in age, close enough in rank, or close enough in bloodline to imagine.

And Dean...

Dean, by virtue of breeding, politics, and that particularly irritating intersection of beauty and lineage that made noble houses lose their minds, had become attached to those conversations with alarming frequency. More than that, there was a separate line of gossip around him now too, one that had grown steadily uglier as he approached the age where his own secondary future would stop being speculation and become fact.

High odds of dominant omega, they said.

High compatibility, they said.

An excellent political balance, they said.

Nero hated all of them.

Dean looked at him carefully. "They’re pairing us."

Nero’s mouth flattened. "Yes."

Dean was quiet for a moment.

On the television, both of their cars sat motionless at the edge of the track while the race continued without them.

Finally Dean said, "That explains why Lady Attara looked at me this morning like I was already halfway to a wedding portrait."

Nero almost smiled at that. "I noticed."

"I hate being looked at by women old enough to have opinions about my reproductive destiny."

"That is a very specific complaint."

"It is a very specific problem."

Nero dropped the controller onto his lap and looked at the blank opposite wall for a moment, gathering the irritation into something clean enough to say aloud.

"I don’t like it," he said.