Arion stared.
For once - glorious, astonishing once - he looked genuinely shocked.
Dean looked up at him, breathing slightly harder now from adrenaline and fury and relief and the sheer private thrill of having interrupted inevitability with his own two hands.
"What?" Dean said, because if the universe had handed him this exact moment, he was absolutely going to enjoy it. "Did you think I couldn't?"
Arion's eyes dropped to the open collar in Dean's hand, then rose again to his face.
"It would be impossible unless—"
"Unless I can override your pheromones?" Dean asked, smiling now, bright and sharp and much too pleased with himself. "Yes. That is one of my abilities."
He lifted the collar between them and, after just enough pause to make it count, presented it back to Arion.
"Now," he said, with all the grace of a man reclaiming the structure of his own life, "can we do this properly?"
