Chapter 27: Choice

Chapter 27: Chapter 27: Choice

Trevor leaned back into the chair and said nothing for long enough that Sebastian began to regret telling him.

Rain continued against the tall windows, softer now than it had been earlier, the northern gardens beyond the glass blurred beneath mist. The fire had burned lower while they talked, leaving the office warm enough that Sebastian had pushed the sleeves of his black knit shirt farther up his forearms without noticing.

Trevor stared toward the fireplace.

Sebastian knew better than to interrupt him.

His father was not shocked easily. At nearly sixty, Trevor had accumulated enough wars, political disasters, family catastrophes, and deeply questionable decisions of his own that very little could genuinely unsettle him.

Apparently three years of his eldest son dreaming about dying beside Nero had managed it.

Eventually Trevor looked back at him.

"I won’t tell anyone."

Sebastian’s shoulders loosened before he could stop them.

"Thank you."

Trevor noticed that too.

"The dreams specifically?"

"Yes." Sebastian glanced down at his hands. "Dean and Arion know about the original prophecy. Nobody knows about what started happening afterward."

"Not Claude?"

"No."

"Lucas?"

"You just promised."

"I’m confirming the scale of your terrible judgment."

Sebastian gave him a tired look. "Nobody."

Trevor nodded slowly.

That answer seemed to trouble him more than Sebastian expected, but he did not challenge the promise he had made.

Instead, he rested one ankle over his opposite knee.

"I have one question."

"That usually means several."

"One for now."

Sebastian gestured for him to continue.

Trevor studied him for another moment before asking, "Did you choose Nero?"

Sebastian frowned.

"In the dreams," Trevor clarified. "Those lives, timelines, memories, whatever they are. Were you actually with him because you chose him?"

Sebastian’s expression became guarded.

"I told you I was his mate."

"That wasn’t my question."

"Being someone’s mate generally implies a certain degree of participation."

"Not with an enigma."

That landed harder than Trevor intended.

Sebastian’s eyes cooled.

Trevor lifted a hand immediately. "I’m not accusing Nero of forcing you. I’m asking because it matters."

"How?"

"Because you’re using the ending to make decisions about the beginning."

Sebastian went quiet.

Trevor leaned forward, forearms resting across his thighs.

"You remember Nero dying. You remember yourself changed. You remember being bonded to him. But do you remember choosing him?"

Sebastian looked toward the windows.

Fragments moved unpleasantly at the edge of his memory.

Nero laughing somewhere bright.

A hand around Sebastian’s waist as though it had belonged there for years.

A ring.

A bedroom he had never entered and somehow knew intimately.

Purple eyes looking at him with something far softer than obsession.

Then blood.

Always eventually blood.

"I don’t know," Sebastian admitted.

Trevor’s gaze sharpened. "You don’t know, or you don’t want to answer?"

"I genuinely don’t know."

Some of the dreams began too late. Others arrived as pieces without context. Sebastian knew affection had existed in them because he could feel its absence when Nero died, a hollowing grief too complete to belong to a bond built only from obligation.

But knowing he had loved Nero somewhere was not the same as knowing how he had arrived there.

"I remember being with him," Sebastian said. "I remember being his mate. Sometimes I remember being happy."

Trevor remained very still.

Sebastian immediately regretted including that last part.

His father’s expression softened.

"Don’t."

"I didn’t say anything."

"You were thinking something sympathetic."

"I’m your father. Occasionally it happens."

Sebastian looked away.

Trevor let him.

"But you don’t remember whether you chose him before the change," Trevor said eventually.

"No."

"Then you need to consider that refusing him now may not be protecting either of you."

Sebastian’s attention snapped back.

Trevor continued before he could object.

"I’m not telling you to mate Nero. I’m not even telling you to trust him. Gods know the boy makes that unnecessarily difficult."

"Boy?"

"He is twenty-five. I’m allowed."

Sebastian almost scoffed.

Trevor’s expression remained serious.

"If these are timelines, you don’t know which decision leads where. Maybe accepting him causes what you saw. Maybe rejecting him does. Maybe neither choice matters because the actual cause has nothing to do with your relationship."

"That is exactly why I chose the option that keeps him away from me."

"And that might be the wrong one."

Sebastian’s jaw tightened.

Trevor held his gaze.

"You’re stubborn enough to march directly into disaster simply because the alternative resembles surrender."

"I learned from excellent people."

"I know. That is why I recognize it."

For several seconds neither spoke.

Then Trevor reached across the desk and woke Melanie’s tablet.

Trevor scrolled through the article.

"This is a separate problem."

Sebastian’s mouth flattened. "I’m aware."

"No, I don’t think you are."

"That is becoming a popular opinion today."

Trevor turned the tablet slightly toward him.

"If your berserk status becomes public, the romance gossip stops being the important part."

Sebastian said nothing.

A dominant alpha in the final stages of pheromonal collapse was not merely ill.

He was dangerous.

Trevor knew that as intimately as Sebastian did.

"When a dominant alpha goes berserk," Trevor said, "he doesn’t quietly collapse in a locked bedroom."

"I know."

"Depending on strength and ability, he can kill people across an enormous radius before his body finally gives out. You are not an average dominant alpha."

"I know that too."

"You’re a Fitzgeralt heir, a senior military commander, and strong enough that half the emergency protocol exists specifically because nobody wants to discover how far your pheromones reach once control is gone."

Sebastian’s face tightened.

Trevor tapped the tablet.

"If this article gets close enough to the truth, people will panic."

"They already will once Claude files the official report."

"Inside government channels, yes. That is manageable. Publicly?" Trevor shook his head. "People will begin asking whether you should be isolated. Whether you should be removed from the north. Whether military containment is sufficient. They’ll ask why anyone is allowing you to remain within populated territory when an enigma capable of stabilizing you exists."

Sebastian looked at the photograph.

"Nero."

"Yes."

Trevor set the tablet down.

"And that is where this stops being entirely your choice."

Sebastian’s eyes hardened. "Careful."

"I said entirely."

Trevor’s voice stayed level.

"You choose whether you want Nero as a mate. You choose whether you ever forgive him for whatever happened at that wedding. You choose whether you trust him enough to stand within ten meters of him without wanting to commit murder."

"Generous."

"But if Saha formally offers medical stabilization while you have confirmed final-stage berserk markers, you take it."

Sebastian stared at him.

Trevor did not look away.

"There is no version where Palatine rejects a safe intervention because you dislike the man providing it."

"So I become Nero’s patient."

"If that is what prevents you from killing half an estate before dying, yes."

The words were ugly.

That was why Trevor used them.

Sebastian’s expression went cold.

"You think Dax would offer."

Trevor gave him a look.

"I know Dax."

That was different.

Trevor had known the Sahan king for decades, long enough that Dax considered him a brother rather than an ally. He knew how Dax protected his family and how quickly affection became policy when someone Dax loved was involved.

"If Nero can stabilize you safely," Trevor continued, "and Dax is told your current condition, Saha will offer. Whether officially through the crown or privately first through me, I don’t know. But they will."

"And Nero will enjoy every second of it."

"Probably."

Sebastian sighed and leaned back.

Trevor almost smiled.

"That doesn’t make the stabilization less real."

"No. It only makes it unbearable."

"You’ll survive."

Sebastian looked at him.

"Possibly the first encouraging thing you’ve said all morning."