Dean's fingers, still hooked in Arion's collar, went rigid. The word hung between them, fragile and damning. 'Too.'
"Too?" Dean repeated, his voice barely a whisper, the minty sharpness of his pheromones momentarily forgotten in the face of that single, damning syllable.
Arion's eyes remained closed, his forehead still pressed against Dean's. The admission seemed to have cost him the last of his strength, and he leaned more of his weight into Dean's space. "The third one," he said, his voice raspy, stripped of all its princely authority. "It was stronger than the evaluation."
He paused, and Dean could feel the shudder that ran through Arion's body, a deep, bone-rattling tremor that had nothing to do with the cold. "When Roric's emitter overloaded… the psychic backlash from the tower burst was… significant. I contained it. Mostly."
