Chapter 114: Chapter 114: Normal husband

Rafael hated that hum with a passion usually reserved for noblemen who wrote anonymous letters and called it politics.

He turned, finally, because staring at Gregoris in a mirror was unfair. Mirrors gave Gregoris too much drama. In real life he was still dramatic, but at least Rafael could blink and pretend he wasn’t being hunted in his own wardrobe.

Gregoris’s gaze lingered on the high waist, the chain, the collar. Then it dipped, to the faint curve that only existed if you knew where to look.

He didn’t touch it.

He just looked at it like it was the most dangerous and precious thing in the Empire.

“Don’t,” Rafael warned automatically, because his body had learned the pattern: look, then touch, then kiss, then Rafael forgets how to breathe properly for five seconds and resents himself for it.

Gregoris stepped closer anyway, and instead of going for the bump, his fingers went to Rafael’s collar. He adjusted it with the ease of someone who’d buttoned uniforms on men who bled, someone who thought details were survival.

“You’re tense,” Gregoris said.

“I’m pregnant,” Rafael replied. “It’s my full-time job.”

Gregoris’s mouth quirked. “You’re brave.”

“I’m dressed for war,” Rafael corrected. “There’s a difference.”

A pause, then Gregoris leaned in and pressed his lips to Rafael’s temple – soft enough to be almost private, planned enough to still feel like ownership.

“I won’t let anyone hurt you,” he murmured.

Rafael’s throat tightened in that stupid, inconvenient way it sometimes did around tenderness.

He covered it with venom, like a professional. “If your mother tries, I’m biting her.”

Gregoris’s expression warmed, amused. “She’ll respect that.”

“That’s… not comforting.”

“She respects teeth.”

Rafael blinked at him. “Is your family really normal?”

Gregoris gave him a look that said: define normal.

Then he reached past Rafael to the closet wall, because of course the closet had a wall panel that opened like a vault, and retrieved a coat for Rafael. Black. Perfectly lined. Heavy enough to feel like armor without being dramatic.

Rafael stared. “You planned.”

“I plan everything.”

“I hate you.”

“No,” Gregoris corrected calmly, slipping the coat onto Rafael’s shoulders like he’d done it a thousand times, like Rafael belonged in his hands. “You love me.”

Rafael opened his mouth to argue, then remembered the earlier crime, sweetheart, and decided silence was safer than giving Gregoris another excuse to look smug.

Gregoris’s fingers brushed the back of Rafael’s neck, right under his hairline, a grounding touch. “Come.”

The word was quiet, but still landed like a command.

Rafael followed anyway, because he was a proud man with excellent survival instincts.

—

The car ride to Frasner Manor was smooth in the way expensive things were smooth: quiet engine, dark glass, the city outside reduced to a blur of headlights and distance. Gregoris sat beside him like a pillar, present in a way that made Rafael’s nervous system unclench without his permission.

Rafael tried to look out the window and pretend he wasn’t rehearsing lines like an actor facing opening night.

’Hello, Lady Frasner. I promise your son didn’t marry a feral court viper. I am a refined court viper.’

Gregoris’s hand found his, fingers lacing through with slow certainty.

“You’re thinking too much,” Gregoris said.

“I’m meeting your mother,” Rafael replied, like that explained everything. “A woman who raised you.”

Gregoris’s thumb stroked across Rafael’s knuckles once, slow and grounding. “My mother likes honesty.”

Rafael’s eyes slid to him, flat. “That’s a trap.”

“It isn’t,” Gregoris said, like he’d vetted the statement for explosives. Then, as if he realized logic wouldn’t soothe an omega who had already decided ’family dinner’ was a hostile environment, he added, almost casually, “You also met Crista – Damian’s mother. Believe me. Mine is… tame. Normal.”

Rafael stared.

Then he blinked, once, like his brain had to reboot.

“You’re comparing your mother to Damian’s mother,” Rafael said slowly, voice full of offended disbelief. “And presenting it as comfort.”

Gregoris’s expression didn’t change. “It is comfort.”

Rafael made a small, strangled sound and leaned his head back against the seat as if the car might absorb the crisis for him. “Crista smiles like she’s about to gift you a necklace and then start a civil war in the same breath.”

“She does,” Gregoris agreed, unbothered in the way only men who had lived through imperial women could be unbothered. “But she raised a man like Damian. That is my point.”

Rafael turned his head slowly, eyes narrowing. “Your point is that she successfully produced a monster.”

Gregoris’s thumb traced once over Rafael’s knuckles, patient. “A ruler,” he corrected, then sighed, as if he’d accepted Rafael would always call power what it was. “Listen to me. Neither my mother nor Crista is like Delphine.”

Rafael went still.

Gregoris’s tone stayed even, but his posture shifted, subtle and protective, the way it did when he was mentally placing himself between Rafael and something that didn’t deserve him. “You are safe.”

Rafael’s gaze held his. “You’re saying that like you know what I’m thinking.”

“I do,” Gregoris replied simply. “Your fear isn’t dinner. It’s… history.”

Rafael’s jaw tightened, his throat working once. He looked out the window for a heartbeat, at the dark blur of the road, at the lights passing like they had somewhere else to be.

Then he scoffed, because it was easier than admitting anything. “Fine. So your mother won’t smile and then ruin my life.”

Gregoris’s mouth quirked faintly. “She’ll smile and then ask you how did you got a man like me to settle down.”

Rafael turned slowly, brows knitting, and for a heartbeat the question leapt up in him like a reflex, an attempt to drag Gregoris into the realm of normal men, the kind you could explain at a dinner table without sounding like you’d joined a cult.

“What is wrong with you?” Rafael asked, sharp and almost accusatory, like if Gregoris answered correctly, if he sounded even a little embarrassed, Rafael could take that answer and hold it up as proof. See? He’s fine. He’s desirable. He’s the sort of man people marry on purpose.

And then his brain betrayed him with the inconvenient truth of their history.

Gregoris circled Rafael with patient cruelty, made him feel the walls closing in one careful choice at a time, until the world around Rafael was… quieter. Until certain people, Augustus included, were simply not there anymore, removed from Rafael’s orbit with the efficiency of a man cleaning a blade.

Rafael remembered how furious he’d been, how he’d tried to call it jealousy and have the audacity to be offended by it, only to realize Gregoris didn’t do jealousy like a normal person either. Gregoris did elimination.

And then there had been the mark – when Gregoris decided it was enough, when whatever game he’d been playing snapped into something heavier, something that stopped pretending Rafael was a distraction and started treating him like a fact. Like a decision Gregoris had made long before Rafael got a vote.

Rafael’s fingers tightened on Gregoris’s hand now, with controlled anger that came when he remembered the part that still made his pride itch.

The paperwork.

Rafael had been signing documents for work, bored, half-distracted, trusting the neat way Gregoris always organized his life. One page slid in with the rest, hiding in plain sight like a knife tucked into velvet.

A marriage form.

Because Rafael hadn’t wanted to “deal with marriage then.”

So Gregoris had decided Rafael didn’t need to.

Rafael swallowed, throat tight, and the question he’d meant as a challenge turned into something else in his mouth.

No. Nothing was normal with this man.

Rafael let out a slow breath and looked away, as if the window could offer him a new husband on short notice.

“No,” he said, voice clipped. “Doesn’t matter anymore.”

Gregoris’s thumb stroked once over Rafael’s knuckles, calm as a metronome. “What doesn’t matter?”

Rafael’s laugh came out short and humorless. “Pretending you’re tame. Pretending there’s a version of you that fits into the category of ’reasonable husband.’”

His gaze flicked back, sharp again, but there was resignation under it – wary, familiar, and infuriatingly intimate. “I understand.”

Gregoris’s eyes held his. “Say it.”

Rafael’s jaw tightened, then he forced it out, because the truth was easier than pretending. “You’re going to let your mother ask that question because you like the answer.”

Gregoris didn’t deny it.

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