Dean returned to his suite the way men returned to crime scenes: cautiously, irritated, and with the distinct sense that if he looked too closely at anything, it would start talking.
The corridor outside his door was still too clean. The guards nodded like nothing had happened, like Dean hadn't recently turned the building's ventilation into a desperate prayer and Arion into a feral monument at his feet. Someone - probably one of Seven's men - had even replaced the scent-neutralizer canister by the panel.
Dean keyed in his code and stepped inside.
His suite smelled like him again - clean linen, bitter coffee, the faint sterilized bite of electronics - and not like vetiver. Not like a crown prince's satisfaction settling into fabric. Not like the memory of being dragged into Arion's gravity and repeatedly deciding to stay.
He shut the door and leaned his forehead against it for half a second, breathing like a man who had just survived himself.
Then he remembered.
Sebastian.
