Chapter 264: Chapter 264: The First Escape (1)

Gregoris arrived home with the last of Donin still clinging to him in small, irritating ways.

The cold had settled into the seams of his coat. Ether dust from the southern base had dried in a fine pale trace along one sleeve. His shoulders carried the familiar weight of travel, command, and several days spent around people who were useful but tiring. Under normal circumstances, he would have wanted silence first. A closed door. Rafael. Perhaps a drink. Certainly no one dramatic.

Which was, naturally, why the house was not empty.

He stepped through the front hall of the family residence and immediately caught the distinct scent of another alpha layered against the quiet warmth of home, expensive wood, and the sea-clean diffuser Rafael liked in the west rooms when he was pretending not to be in a mood.

Gregoris paused for half a beat.

Then he saw Frederik.

The younger man was standing near the inner sitting room in a dark coat he had probably meant to leave in, though the fact that he was still there suggested Rafael had intercepted him at some point and either fed him, spoken to him for too long, or both. Frederik turned at the sound of the door, composed as ever, silver eyes steady, and posture straight.

And there, visible even from this distance, was the mark.

Fresh enough to still have presence. High enough to make the point.

Gregoris looked at it once.

Then at Frederik’s face.

"Congratulations," he said.

Frederik blinked.

Not because the word itself was shocking. More because Gregoris had delivered it with the same tone he might have used to confirm a successful weapons transfer.

Still, something in Frederik’s expression shifted, easing by a fraction.

"Thank you," he said.

Gregoris gave one short nod, already moving past him.

That should have been the end of the exchange.

It was not.

"Rafael is in the blue sitting room," Frederik said, with the calm of a man who had lived through enough of Rafael today to understand another victim when he saw one. "He has tea. And opinions."

Gregoris stopped.

Slowly, he turned his head just enough to look at Frederik again.

"On what?"

Frederik held his gaze with an admirable lack of fear. "Everything."

That was not useful, mostly because it was entirely believable.

Gregoris’s eyes narrowed slightly. "How long have you been here?"

Frederik seemed to consider whether honesty would improve the situation. Then, perhaps because this family had already become too intertwined for tact to save anyone, he answered, "Long enough to hear about flowers, seating, coastlines, discreet security options, and why apparently no one in this household is allowed to get engaged without generating work for him."

Gregoris closed his eyes briefly.

Of course.

Of course Rafael had escalated from delight into logistics. Of course he had turned his emotional response into spatial planning. Of course, the silence on Gregoris’s messages had not been wounded pride but concentration.

When he opened his eyes again, his exhaustion had changed shape.

"You should leave," he told Frederik.

Frederik’s mouth twitched. "That was the plan."

Gregoris looked at the mark once more, then at the younger man’s face, and because accuracy mattered even when he was tired, he added, "Cecil will be unbearable tonight."

Frederik’s expression remained perfectly level. "Yes."

"Rafael will be worse."

A pause.

Then, with dry honesty, Frederik said, "Yes."

Gregoris gave him one final nod and continued into the house, taking the familiar corridor toward the blue sitting room with the focused inevitability of a man approaching a tactical situation that had become domestic by accident.

By the time he reached the door, his mind had already made the decision.

Not the mountains. Damian could keep his irritating mountain theory.

Gregoris wanted warmth. Privacy. Space wide enough that sound dissolved before it became an obligation. He wanted Rafael in bed and sunlight and no one knocking unless they wished to die well-dressed. He wanted a coastline far enough from the capital that gossip arrived late and politely. He wanted the villa by the sea.

The first place they had ever gone together after the scandal.

A few days only. That had been the excuse then.

Long enough for the city to choke on itself in their absence. Long enough for the worst of the noise to burn out. Long enough for Rafael to stop pretending he was unaffected by public opinion and for Gregoris to stop imagining strangling men and Delphine at official dinners.

The villa had been absurdly expensive, offensively discreet, and wrapped in enough privacy wards that even ether traffic from passing boats couldn’t touch the inner rooms. Rafael had stood on the terrace in the evening light, the sea throwing silver back at the sky, and for the first time since the scandal broke, he had looked entirely at ease.

Gregoris had remembered that.

Apparently too well.

He entered the room.

Rafael was exactly where Frederik had said he would be: stretched across the long sofa in the blue sitting room, one leg folded beneath him, a porcelain cup balanced in one hand, afternoon light spilling across his profile in a way that made beauty feel like a hostile act. His hair was perfect. His clothes were not formal enough for court but still expensive enough to insult common sense. On the low table before him sat an open tablet, two handwritten pages, a tea service, and what looked suspiciously like a property catalogue.

He looked up.

For one glorious second, his expression was unreadable.

Then it changed into the kind of slow, elegant brightness Rafael reserved for moments when the world had finally provided him with fresh material and he fully intended to make someone suffer for it affectionately.

"Well," Rafael said. "Donin survived."

Gregoris looked at him, then at the papers on the table, then back again.

"You ignored my messages."

Rafael lifted the cup and took a delicate sip. "I was busy."

"I can see that."

"You can."

Gregoris stepped farther into the room and let the door close behind him with a soft seal. The air inside carried the scent of tea, polished wood, warm fabric, and Rafael’s pheromones resting low and expensive under it all, a familiar note Gregoris had been missing for longer than he cared to admit.

The irritation was still there.

It had simply lost the ability to matter more than the sight of him.

Rafael, of course, noticed that immediately.

His eyes sharpened.

"You look tired," he said.