Taming the Wild Beast of Alamina

Chapter 175: Chapter 175: Distance, Properly Managed [Win-Win]

”Yes.”

”For fuck’s sake,” Lucas let the curse out.

That, in the end, had been the point where the conversation lost any remaining pretense of elegance.

Because once Nero’s warning was spoken aloud, the room could no longer pretend it was discussing only heartbreak, poor judgment, and dynastic inconvenience.

Which was how, two days later, Trevor found out too.

Lucas insisted.

He did not phrase it as insistence, naturally. Lucas rarely needed to. He only looked at Sebastian over breakfast with the calmness of a man who had already decided what was right and wrong for the day. He said, ”You are telling Trevor as well.”

Sebastian, who had not yet finished his coffee and had hoped weakness might qualify as a temporary exemption, looked up from the table and said, ”No.”

Lucas buttered his toast with offensive composure. ”That is not how transparency within a household works.”

”That is absolutely how privacy works.”

Trevor, seated at the other end of the breakfast table with the air of a man who had already noticed the tension ten minutes ago and was now enjoying the slow administrative collapse of someone else’s peace, glanced up from his own coffee and asked, ”Should I leave, or is this one of those family mornings where my presence becomes useful in proportion to how unwanted it is?”

Lucas did not even turn his head. ”Sit.”

Trevor nodded once. ”Excellent. That usually means the day has promise.”

Sebastian closed his eyes briefly.

He should have known better.

By noon, Trevor knew everything.

Or at least everything that mattered.

Not every exact sentence from the earlier conversation with Lucas. Sebastian had no intention of reenacting his own humiliation for a second audience with dramatic fidelity. But enough. The confession. The rejection. The cruelty. Nero’s final warning. The political implications. The hidden enigma issue. The fact that what had begun as a private disaster had, through the combined efforts of rank, fear, biology, and appalling timing, become something much uglier than one failed conversation between two people.

Trevor listened carefully and quietly, which always made Sebastian suspicious of what would come next.

Trevor didn’t say anything for a long time after Sebastian finished. The office they were in, which was one of the smaller studies in the manor’s west administrative wing, started to feel more and more hostile in its neatness.

Then Trevor leaned back in his chair and said, ”You continue to live a much less quiet life than your face advertises.”

Sebastian gave him a flat look. ”That is your contribution?”

”No,” Trevor said. ”That was my opening insult. The contribution comes after.”

Lucas, seated nearer the window with a file open on his lap that he had not read for the last five minutes, did not bother concealing the faint satisfaction in his face at being proven correct for involving Trevor at all.

Sebastian hated both of them with exceptional purity.

Trevor folded one hand over the other. ”The first issue is obvious. You keep your distance.”

”That was already the conclusion,” Sebastian said.

”Yes,” Trevor replied. ”I’m saying it again because repetition improves obedience.”

Sebastian stared at him.

Trevor, as ever, remained entirely untroubled.

”The second issue,” he continued, ”is that guilt does not get to become access.” His gaze sharpened slightly. ”No private meetings. No unscheduled conversations. No attempts at emotional cleanup because you suddenly dislike being the villain in your own memory.”

Lucas nodded once without looking up from the unread file. ”Yes.”

Sebastian’s mouth flattened. ”You are both enjoying this too much.”

”No,” Lucas said.

Trevor’s answer came at the same time. ”A little.”

Lucas looked at him.

Trevor looked back. ”What? ”I like things to be clear.”

Lucas made a small, dismissive sound that somehow managed to contain both affection and criticism. Then he turned his attention back to Sebastian. ”The practical advantage is that this should not be difficult to maintain. You and the Saha Crown Prince do not exactly trip over each other in hallways without international scheduling involved.”

That, regrettably, was true.

Fitzgeralt Manor was enormous. Palatine and Saha were not neighboring suites in some overheated political hotel. Even when travel, summits, weddings, funerals, or state seasons drew the same families into orbit, they did not move casually around one another. People like Nero and Sebastian did not bump into each other by accident except in stories written by people with no understanding of security logistics or aristocratic architecture.

Real life was less romantic and far more manageable.

”It’s easy enough,” Sebastian said.

Trevor arched a brow. ”Easy enough emotionally or easy enough structurally?”

”Structurally.”

”Good,” Trevor said. ”I trust buildings more than I trust wounded young royals.”

Sebastian almost smiled.

Then his phone vibrated.

He glanced down on instinct, expecting some logistical update, a revised document request, or one of the increasingly offensive number of estate notifications Trevor considered normal to send to people already inside the same house.

Instead, it was Dean.

Sebastian frowned faintly and opened the message.

A selfie filled the screen immediately.

Dean, grinning with the bright, reckless energy of a man who had clearly decided that the first day of university required documentation for the sake of future mockery, had one arm stretched out toward the camera. Sylvia stood beside him, looking far more composed and, therefore, in Sebastian’s opinion, far more useful as evidence that someone in the frame still possessed survival instincts. Behind them rose the clean, polished architecture of Alamina’s university complex - glass, stone, money, security, and the kind of institutional grandeur monarchies preferred when trying to look modern without relinquishing their love of intimidation.

And in the background, impossible to miss once seen, was Nero.

A tall frame half-turned in profile, speaking to someone out of shot, one hand in his coat pocket, his posture so familiar that Sebastian recognized him before his mind had fully processed.

For one second Sebastian simply stared at the screen.

Trevor noticed first, of course.

His gaze sharpened by a fraction. ”What?”

Sebastian let out a quiet breath through his nose, somewhere between disbelief and offense. ”No university visits for me, then.”

Lucas looked up from his file at once. ”Why?”

Without a word, Sebastian held the phone out.

Trevor took it first, glanced at the image, and then looked at Sebastian over the top edge of the screen with a kind of dry inevitability that made the entire situation worse.

”Well,” Trevor said, ”that does rather answer the question of whether Alamina’s academic outreach includes local royal infestation.”

Lucas rose and crossed over, taking the phone from Trevor’s hand with none of the ceremony of a man who respected privacy when concern had already been justified. He studied the image for one brief, precise moment.

Then his brows rose.

”That,” Lucas said, ”is unfortunate.”

Sebastian leaned back in his chair. ”It is also deeply irritating.”

Lucas glanced at him. ”I imagine Dean did not notice before sending it.”

”No,” Sebastian said. ”If Dean had noticed, I would have received a second message entirely in capital letters by now.”

Trevor gave a faint hum of agreement. ”True. He does enjoy a panic text when sufficiently inspired.”