Chapter 244: Chapter 244: I hate this family.

"You refused because?"

Frederik gave him a flat look. "Because nothing important changes if he leaves a hidden mark on me."

Gregoris did not immediately answer.

Which, from him, usually meant the matter had become interesting enough to be handled carefully.

Frederik, already irritated by his own thoughts, continued before his father could say something too accurate. "He wanted to do it from the moment he had his first heat."

Gregoris’s silver eyes rested on him without visible surprise. "Yes."

That, more than anything, was annoying.

Frederik looked at him flatly. "You say that like it was obvious."

"It was."

Frederik exhaled quietly through his nose and folded his arms tighter. The office remained dim around them, dark displays and pale ether lines making the command wing look less like administration and more like a controlled threat in architectural form. Gregoris, leaning only slightly against the desk, looked exactly at home in it.

Frederik looked toward the glass again. "It wasn’t impulse. That’s the problem."

Gregoris waited.

Frederik continued, because apparently he had lost the ability to keep his thoughts inside his own head the moment he walked into his father’s office. "If it were only a possessive mood, only Cecil being angry after the Academy and wanting something immediate, I could dismiss it more easily. But he has wanted it for years. Since his first heat. Since he first understood what it would mean."

Gregoris inclined his head once. "Yes."

Again with the yes.

Frederik’s jaw tightened. "You’re being infuriating."

"I’m being accurate."

"That’s worse."

Gregoris ignored that. "And you know the difference."

Frederik said nothing.

Because yes, he did.

An alpha could be marked only if he wanted it. Really wanted it. Otherwise, the bite remained what any other bite would be. The mark itself was not merely anatomy but consent at the level of instinct and body both. The flesh answered differently when the alpha wanted the one biting him to leave something that stayed.

Cecil knew that.

Which was why it mattered.

Which was also why Frederik had taken the request seriously enough to say no carefully instead of laughing it off or dismissing it as a princely mood.

Gregoris watched him think and said, in that same maddeningly level tone, "So your answer was not because the mark is meaningless."

"No," Frederik said at once.

The mark was not meaningless.

For Cecil it was the opposite. It was important precisely because he was absurdly, inconveniently, relentlessly in love. Cecil had always done everything that mattered to him in a specific, dangerous way: completely, without shame, and with the belief that the world should change to fit it.

Gregoris, because apparently fatherhood had not cured him of precision, said, "The prince is obsessed with you."

Frederik closed his eyes for half a second.

Not because he disagreed.

Because hearing it phrased that plainly by Gregoris was terrible for his dignity.

When he opened them again, Gregoris still looked unmoved.

"Obsessed is an ugly word," Frederik said.

"It is also the correct one."

"That’s not better."

"It is not intended to be."

Frederik rubbed once at his jaw and looked away. "I know what it means to him."

Gregoris’s gaze sharpened slightly. "And?"

Frederik let out a breath. "And I still said no because nothing important changes."

That landed and stayed there.

Gregoris did not rescue him from it.

He simply waited.

Frederik, already deep enough into honesty to hate himself for continuing, went on. "The relationship remains the same. If he marks me in some hidden place tomorrow, I am still his. If he doesn’t, I am still his. He is still mine either way."

Gregoris said, "That is your perspective."

Frederik’s eyes flicked back to him. "It’s the practical one."

"Are you sure you are my son?" Gregoris asked with a low chuckle.

The sound was so rare that, under other circumstances, Frederik might have considered it a medical event.

Instead, he groaned with all the theatrical inheritance Rafael had ever successfully inflicted on his bloodline and let himself fall into one of the chairs opposite the desk with the dignity of a man surrendering to temporary collapse rather than defeat.

"Yes, I am," he said, staring at the ceiling for one accusing second before looking back at his father. "And it gets harder because I want to mark Cecil too, but the man is unhinged, and the moment I do, he will want children. And I’m not stepping into that at this age."

Gregoris was silent. Silent in the very specific way that meant he had received a useful piece of information and was now deciding which angle of it to cut first.

Frederik saw that expression and pointed at him from the chair. "No."

"No, what?"

"No doing that thing where you say one sentence and ruin the entire structure of my argument."

"That is vague."

"That is deliberate."

Gregoris’s mouth moved once at the corner, not quite another chuckle, but close enough to be offensive. "You think the mark would accelerate him."

Frederik gave him a flat look. "I will give you anything you want if you can prove me wrong."

Gregoris laughed outright because unfortunately for timing and age, Frederik was right.

The sound was low, brief, and rare enough that, in any other setting, Frederik might have considered documenting it as evidence of a palace anomaly.

Instead, he sat there looking betrayed.

"That is not the reaction of a father trying to reassure his son."

"No," Gregoris said, still carrying the remnants of amusement in his voice. "It is the reaction of a father whose son has, for once, assessed the prince with perfect accuracy."

"That is deeply unhelpful."

"It is still true."

Frederik leaned farther back into the chair and stared at the ceiling with the expression of a man discovering that family honesty should probably be regulated by law. "I hate this household."

"No," Gregoris said. "You hate being correct in inconvenient directions."

"That also deserves regulation."

Gregoris let the moment settle, then added with calm precision, "If the prince got the mark he wanted, he would not become reckless. But yes... he would become more settled in the idea of what comes next."

Frederik dropped his gaze back to him. "Exactly."

Gregoris inclined his head once. "That does not mean he would drag you there by force."

Frederik scrubbed a hand once down his face. "I know he wouldn’t become irrational in the practical sense. He’s Cecil, not a disaster in ceremonial clothes. But emotionally?" He let out a short breath. "Emotionally he would treat it as confirmation."

Gregoris watched him in silence for a beat, then said, "Yes."

Frederik stared. "You agree too fast. It’s unnerving."

"It’s because you’re right."

The office remained steeped in its dark ether glow, the command displays humming softly around them, Ilyan’s partial ruin still waiting at the edges of the desk like a problem briefly demoted by a more personal one. Gregoris looked entirely at ease in both categories of difficulty, which was infuriating and, Frederik suspected, one of the reasons Rafael remained both in love and chronically dramatic.

Frederik folded his arms. "The problem is that once Cecil feels something has taken shape, he starts making room for the future around it."

Gregoris lifted a brow slightly. "And?"

"And I don’t trust that process at this age."

Gregoris considered that. "Understandable, given his parents."

"Can’t anything big and ceremonial happen to distract him?" Frederik pleaded with the gods.

"Like Arik marring?" Gregoris chuckled.

Frederik only glared.

"Natalie asked Noah to marry her," Gregoris said, and dropped the bomb with the same tone he might have used to report a minor supply irregularity.