Chapter 523: New Things

Theodore discovered his own hands on the fourth day home.

At least, that was what Dean decided had happened when he walked into the nursery and found Arion standing beside the cot with the solemn concentration of someone witnessing a major scientific discovery.

Dean stopped in the doorway, one hand resting against the lingering tenderness low across his abdomen.

"What happened?"

Arion looked at him.

"He grabbed his other hand."

Dean waited.

"That’s it?"

"He did it deliberately."

Their son lay beneath a light cream blanket, awake and perfectly comfortable, with both tiny fists currently pressed together near his chest as though he had personally invented the concept.

Dean approached.

Theodore’s eyes were gold today, slightly unfocused but considerably more alert than they had been in the medical wing, and his dark hair stood up along one side from sleeping against Arion’s shirt after the morning feeding.

One hand separated from the other.

Theodore stared vaguely toward it.

Then his fingers opened.

Dean immediately leaned closer.

"Oh."

Arion gave him a look.

Dean ignored it.

Theo slowly brought the hand toward his face, missed his mouth completely, struck himself lightly on the nose, and blinked in apparent confusion.

Dean covered his mouth.

Arion’s shoulders moved with a quiet laugh.

Their son tried again.

This time two fingers reached his lips.

Theodore sucked on them.

Dean stared.

"That is absurdly cute."

"I know."

Neither moved for the next several minutes.

Apparently, after months of infected beasts, international conspiracies, hidden laboratories, and Arion developing abilities no medical textbook had anticipated, watching a premature infant discover that his fingers could be placed inside his mouth was enough to occupy both crown prince and consort completely.

Dean considered that an improvement.

A substantial one.

Arion had barely mentioned the forest since Theodore came home.

Hendrik still sent reports, Victor continued monitoring the transformed wildlife, and the joint investigation into Claudia’s archives had expanded into several secured research teams, but Arion no longer opened those files the moment he woke or disappeared into his study after dinner because he had thought of another question nobody could answer.

There was always something else requiring his attention now.

A bottle.

A diaper.

Theo making a strange sound that turned out to be entirely normal.

Theo sleeping too quietly, which resulted in Arion checking his breathing despite three separate monitors confirming that he was perfectly fine.

Theo sneezing.

Theo stretching.

Theo producing a yawn so enormous for his tiny face that both parents stopped talking halfway through a conversation to watch.

It was ridiculous.

Dean loved every second of it.

Two evenings later, Arion was lying diagonally across their bed with Theodore resting against his chest, one broad hand covering almost the entire length of the baby’s back while he reviewed the feeding schedule on his tablet.

Dean sat beside him with another tablet balanced on his thighs.

Not the feeding schedule.

Research.

Arion glanced over.

Dean tilted the screen away.

"Mind your business."

"You are reading Victor’s reports."

"I am reading."

"Victor’s reports."

Dean looked at him.

"You have developed an unhealthy ability to recognize documents from the formatting."

"He uses the same template for everything."

"That sounds like a personal problem."

Arion narrowed his eyes but returned his attention to Theodore when their son shifted beneath his hand.

Dean continued reading.

He had spent several nights going through the recovered material from Claudia’s Palace, Arion’s childhood medical records, Victor’s current observations, and every comparative study the specialists had prepared since Theodore’s black eyes first appeared.

Not because he thought something was wrong.

Because Arion did.

Perhaps not constantly anymore, but Dean knew his husband too well to mistake silence for resolution.

The guilt was still there.

It surfaced whenever Theo’s eyes opened black after sleep, whenever his developing pheromone profile changed in response to Arion’s presence, or whenever Victor requested another noninvasive scan because some reading looked interesting enough to justify further observation.

Arion never said much.

He simply became quieter.

Dean intended to make that increasingly difficult.

The records supported him.

Theodore showed no markers of active corruption.

His developing pheromones were immature but stable, and the eye changes did not coincide with distress, elevated output, or any measurable deterioration.

More importantly, Victor’s comparison between Arion’s childhood samples and current readings suggested that whatever had integrated into Arion’s dominant development had stopped behaving like an infection long ago.

It was biology now.

Unusual biology.

Annoying biology.

Potentially hereditary biology.

But not evidence that Theodore had been born sick.

Dean saved another section.

Arion looked toward him again.

"You’re making notes."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"For future ammunition."

"That is not reassuring."

"It isn’t supposed to be."

Theo made a small sound against Arion’s chest.

Both of them looked down immediately.

Theodore raised his head.

Barely.

His neck trembled with the effort, his face lifting perhaps two centimeters from Arion’s shirt before dropping back down.

Arion froze.

Dean stared.

Then Theo did it again.

This time he managed to turn his head slightly before collapsing against his father with a soft grunt.

Dean’s tablet was forgotten.

"Did he just—"

"Yes."

"He lifted his head."

"For a second."

They stared at their son.

Theo seemed completely exhausted by his accomplishment.

His eyes closed.

Dean started laughing.

Arion smiled down at him with such open pride that Dean’s chest tightened.

"He’s ridiculously small," Dean murmured, "and somehow every time he does something normal, we behave as though he discovered nuclear fusion."

"He was premature."

"I know."

"That makes it more impressive."

Dean smiled.

There was no point arguing.

Later, after Theodore had been fed and settled into the cot beside their bed, Dean returned to the research.

Arion was changing into sleep clothes in the dressing room when Dean found the comparison he had been looking for.

He read it twice.

Then once more.

By the time Arion returned in loose black trousers and a thin dark shirt, Dean had highlighted several paragraphs.

"Come here."

Arion looked suspicious.

Dean patted the mattress.

"This is not optional."

Arion sat beside him.

Dean handed him the tablet.

The report was Victor’s latest summary, stripped of speculation and reduced to measurable findings.

Arion read silently.

Dean watched his face.

"No active corrupted agents," Dean said. "No pathological changes. No sign that being around you increases anything abnormal, and the fluctuations in Theo’s pheromonal readings are within the same developmental range when he is with me, you, or neither of us."

Arion continued reading.

Dean leaned against his shoulder.

"Victor also thinks the inherited traits are probably integrated at the genetic or gland-development level rather than transmissible exposure."

"Probably."

"Yes, probably, because scientists become offended when asked to say anything with certainty."

Arion’s mouth twitched.

Dean continued before he could retreat into another hypothetical disaster.

"He is healthy."

"I know."

"And you are not hurting him."

Arion was quiet.

Dean reached across and took the tablet away before his husband could reread the same paragraph until it became meaningless.

"If something changes, we deal with it. Until then, you are going to enjoy your son discovering fingers and occasionally defeating gravity for two seconds at a time."

Arion looked toward the cot.

Theodore was asleep with one hand beside his face.

His eyes were closed.

His breathing was soft and even.

Arion exhaled.

Then he leaned over and kissed Dean’s temple.

"That sounds manageable."

"It should. I deliberately simplified it for you."

Arion laughed quietly.

Dean smiled and rested his head against his shoulder.