Chapter 494: Pattern

Victor arrived a little over half an hour after Dean sent the message.

By then dinner had been abandoned in favor of the recording from the restricted zone, paused on the tablet between them while Dean sat in the corner of the sofa with one hand resting over his stomach.

Arion’s eyes were their normal dark gold, his pheromones carried familiar vetiver, and there was not a trace of the black channels that had mapped his glands in the forest.

Which only made the image on the screen worse.

Victor entered wearing dark trousers and a charcoal coat, set his medical case beside an armchair, and looked at both of them with considerable irritation.

"You two have been sitting on relevant information for four years."

Dean raised his brows.

"That sounds deliberate. It wasn’t."

Victor picked up the tablet and enlarged Arion’s face.

"I was told these eyes are not new."

Dean looked at the bright yellow irises and narrow pupils.

"No."

Arion turned toward him.

Dean sighed.

"The first time I remember seeing them was when you marked me."

Arion went still.

Four years earlier.

Their second engagement ceremony in Alamina, before the marriage, when Arion’s rut had been triggered by Dean’s heat, hot enough that restraint had become increasingly theoretical by the time he finally marked Dean.

Victor sat down.

"Describe it."

"His eyes changed exactly like that. The gold became much brighter, and his pupils narrowed until they looked almost like slits."

"And you noticed other physical changes?"

"His teeth."

Victor’s attention sharpened.

"The canines?"

"All of them."

Dean remembered that clearly. Dominant alphas developing enlarged canines during a marking response had been covered in every secondary-gender biology course he had taken.

Arion had gone considerably beyond the textbooks.

"They looked predatory," Dean said. "Sharper than they should have been. At the time I knew the canines were normal, but the rest obviously weren’t."

Victor glanced at Arion.

"How did you feel?"

"Fine."

Dean snorted.

Victor looked between them.

"Define fine."

Arion considered it.

"Extremely stimulated. Instinctive. Possessive. My senses were sharper than usual, but my cognition was clear."

"You were also completely unhinged."

Arion gave Dean a flat look.

"That is not a medical description."

"It is an accurate one."

Victor raised a hand before they could continue.

"And after that night?"

Dean’s amusement faded.

"That is the part I initially didn’t put together."

He took the tablet and studied the frozen image again.

"The eyes happened again."

Arion frowned.

Dean looked at him.

"You know they did."

Recognition came gradually. His suppressed ruts. Not ordinary ones.

Arion’s normal cycles could intensify his eyes, sharpen his features, and make his pheromones considerably heavier, but the truly unnatural changes appeared when he had delayed a rut too long, usually because of work, security problems, or some political crisis he had decided mattered more than his own biology.

Dean had seen those slit pupils several times.

Enough that eventually he had stopped considering them unusual.

Victor leaned forward.

"How frequently?"

"During the really intense suppressed ruts? Almost every time."

Arion’s brows drew together.

"You never said anything."

"Because after the first few times I assumed it was normal for you."

Dean gestured toward him.

"You’re a sigma. Half the things your body does are poorly documented because there are barely any reliable cases to compare against. Your abilities change with your hormonal state, your pheromone concentration becomes ridiculous during rut, and you already have physiological responses that ordinary dominant alphas don’t."

That had been the simplest explanation.

Arion was Arion.

Strange biology came with him.

Dean had never imagined that something he was seeing during high-intensity ruts might trace back to an infection Arion survived at eight.

Victor looked at Arion.

"Were those always suppressed cycles?"

"The strongest ones, yes."

"And the eye changes were most pronounced after prolonged suppression?"

Arion nodded slowly.

"That would fit."

Dean added, "His teeth changed more too."

Victor’s pen stopped.

"Repeatedly?"

"Yes. Not always as dramatically as the night he marked me, but enough that I noticed."

"What about his pheromones?"

Dean hesitated.

That memory was less visual and considerably harder to separate from everything else happening during a rut.

"They changed."

Arion looked at him.

"How?"

"The vetiver became heavier, but sometimes it almost disappeared underneath something else."

Victor’s expression sharpened.

"Describe it."

Dean frowned while trying to isolate a scent he had encountered years ago without ever believing he needed to remember it clinically.

"Bitter. Warmer. There was something almost metallic about it."

Arion went very still.

Dean looked toward him.

"It wasn’t exactly what came through the recording from the forest, but it was close enough that now I’m wondering why I didn’t recognize it immediately."

"Because you associated it with rut," Victor said.

"Yes."

"And because it consistently resolved afterward."

Dean nodded.

That was precisely why it had never frightened him.

Arion would enter a high-intensity rut after too much suppression, his eyes would change, his pheromones would become strange, sometimes his teeth would sharpen far beyond anything Dean considered standard, and then the cycle would end.

Arion would wake looking like himself.

Victor turned toward Arion.

"Any cognitive slowing during those episodes?"

"No."

"Quite the opposite," Dean said. "He became extremely focused."

Arion gave him another look.

Dean ignored it.

"He wasn’t confused. He knew exactly what he wanted and had very little interest in anything outside it."

Victor tapped the image from the forest.

"Today was different."

"Very," Arion said. "Today my thoughts became slow. My body stopped responding properly. That has never happened in rut."

That distinction seemed to satisfy Victor rather than concern him.

He began making notes.

"So we have at least two layers."

Dean shifted slightly, adjusting the cushion behind his back.

"The old one and whatever Snake Island did?"

"Potentially."

Victor brought up Arion’s childhood records alongside the forest footage.

"The eyes, altered dentition, and secondary pheromone tone predate Veyra by years. More importantly, they recur specifically when his dominant physiology is pushed into an extreme state."

Arion looked at the old records.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning Veyra did not create this part."

Victor tapped the screen.

"You were infected at eight. They induced manifestation to save you. If some component of that corruption integrated into the dominant system rather than disappearing, extreme pheromonal activation may have been exposing it intermittently ever since."

Dean looked at Arion.

"And because it happened every time you badly suppressed a rut, I thought it was just what you did."

"Apparently."

Dean narrowed his eyes.

"Do not make that sound like my failure."

"I wasn’t."

"You were thinking it."

Victor ignored both of them.

"The black gland pathways are new. The cognitive slowing is new. The beasts recognizing and obeying you is certainly new."

That removed the remaining humor.

Dean’s hand settled protectively over his stomach.

"So Snake Island changed something."

"Most likely."

Victor looked at Arion.

"But it may not have given you something foreign. It may have activated something your body has carried since childhood."

Arion clearly disliked that possibility.

Dean understood why.

A new infection could theoretically be removed.

Something that had developed alongside Arion for more than twenty years was another problem entirely.

Victor closed the forest recording.

"I want every documented high-intensity rut you have had since adolescence, especially suppressed ones."

Arion stared at him.

"There will be a lot."

"Good."

Victor opened a new file.

"For once, having repeated the same questionable decision for years may actually be medically useful."

Dean looked at Arion.

"I have been telling you to stop suppressing your ruts."

Arion sighed.

"This is going to become unbearable, isn’t it?"

Dean smiled.

"I’m pregnant. It already is."