"I wasn't going to," Arion replied, his eyes never leaving the treeline. It was a clear lie, spoken in the calm, steady voice of a man who was completely at ease lying on the battlefield.
"Your pheromones spiked with pride," Dean pointed out, compressing three more pebbles into dense, jagged little bullets that hovered just above his palm. "It was loud and frankly unprofessional."
"I will issue a formal apology to the command structure later. Stand ready."
The change in Arion's tone was complete. The teasing prince disappeared, and in his place appeared the battle-hardened commander who had been bleeding in this dirt for the past eighteen years.
The pheromone wall at the edge of the drainage cut flickered with a shimmering distortion. It was a small drop in pressure, a momentary thinning caused by the damp ground and the heavy rot in the air, but the corrupted beasts could feel it.
