Chapter 202: Chapter 202: Spoiled in Reasonable Measures

“For fuck’s sake, Rafael.”

The words came out low and wrecked, more growl than sentence, and that alone made Rafael smile against the wall.

He was trembling too hard to make it elegant, but the triumph was still there.

“That,” Rafael said, voice hoarse and smug, “is not a denial.”

Gregoris lifted his head from Rafael’s back. His breathing had steadied only slightly, but the worst of that raw edge was already being forced back under control, locked down with the same ruthless discipline he used for everything else. One of his hands slid once over Rafael’s hip, firm and possessive, not soothing so much as reminding.

“You are in heat,” Gregoris said. “And impossible.”

Rafael let out a weak laugh. “You say that like this is new.”

“It isn’t.”

The answer was flat. Certain. Very Gregoris.

For a while, neither of them moved. The room stayed thick with heat, the walls holding their breaths, the ruined order of the bedroom scattered around them in silence. Rafael’s body had gone almost entirely loose, every muscle spent, the earlier soreness from training swallowed now by a heavier, duller ache that would be much harder to dramatize later with a straight face.

Gregoris shifted first.

Rafael hissed under his breath, instinctively trying to press back, and was immediately pinned in place again by the broad hand returning between his shoulder blades.

“Stay still,” Gregoris said.

Rafael closed his eyes. “You always say the least romantic things imaginable.”

Gregoris ignored that and eased them apart, one hand steady at Rafael’s waist, the other still controlling his balance. Rafael’s knees nearly betrayed him the moment the knot was deflated and out of him.

Gregoris caught him. One arm came around Rafael before he could fold awkwardly against the wall or pretend he had not just nearly collapsed.

Rafael leaned into him for a second longer than dignity allowed.

Then he sighed. “Don’t look pleased with yourself.”

“I’m not.”

“You are internally.”

Gregoris did not answer. Which meant yes.

He turned Rafael without warning and lifted him again, carrying him to the bed with the same unbothered efficiency that had once been far more frightening when Rafael had still been learning the limits of him. Back then Gregoris had thought he could pick Rafael up, move him, command him, and use him like a pretty distraction, a toy that would either bend or break to suit him.

He had learned better.

The hard way.

He set Rafael down on the sheets and stepped back just far enough to drag a towel over his hips, then reached for another.

Rafael watched him through half-lidded eyes. “You become very domestic immediately after being monstrous.”

Gregoris looked at him once. “You were the one testing my discipline.”

“And?”

“And you lost.”

Rafael made a scandalized sound. “Excuse me?”

Gregoris came back to the bed and started drying Rafael’s hair with brisk, efficient movements. “You’re exhausted. Your legs are done. And you’re about to pretend this was all part of your strategy.”

Rafael lifted his chin. “It was.”

“No,” Gregoris said. “Your strategy ended when you nearly gave out on the stairs.”

—

A few days later, Rafael had come to one very important conclusion.

His daughter was being spoiled on a structural level.

Not by him, obviously. Rafael had standards.

No, the real threat came in the form of warmth, elegance, and love that made it impossible to fight back. Catherine Frasner had returned Natalie that morning after what had supposedly been a short family visit and what Rafael privately classified as a coordinated campaign of indulgence. Gregoris’s brothers had been no better. Between the three of them, Natalie had come home with new ribbons, two toys powered by tiny ether cores, a little coat she absolutely did not need, and the serene expression of a child who had been adored without interruption for days.

The saving grace was that Natalie herself remained blessedly normal.

She was not demanding. Not fussy. Not tyrannical. She accepted being loved and spoiled the way a well-born child ought to accept tribute: with confidence, good manners, and no urge to become unbearable.

Rafael considered that one of his finest parental achievements.

“She’s too calm,” he said, watching Natalie kneel on the carpet of one of the smaller palace family rooms, carefully arranging a set of lacquered animals beside a softly humming ether-lit toy house. “I don’t trust it.”

Across from her, Arik – black-haired, sharp-eyed, and already far too composed for a six-year-old – looked up from where he was trying to place a tiny mechanical carriage in front of the house.

“She’s fine,” he said.

“That,” Rafael replied, “is exactly what people say before children start reorganizing households.”

Natalie, without looking up, handed Arik a carved fox. “He’s important.”

Arik examined the fox with proper seriousness. “Why?”

“Because he tells people things they don’t want to hear.”

Arik considered that, then nodded once. “So he works at the palace.”

Rafael looked at Gabriel with immediate vindication.

“You see?”

Gabriel, seated on the sofa near the window with the posture of a man still recovering from childbirth but refusing to look fragile about it, raised a brow. He was dressed simply by his standards, dark hair a little shorter than before, posture relaxed only because he had chosen for it to be.

Beside him, a cradle had been placed within easy reach, though Cecil was asleep elsewhere for the moment, under enough supervision to satisfy even Damian’s insanity.

“You sound proud,” Gabriel said.

“I am proud,” Rafael answered. “And concerned. Catherine is a sweetheart, which makes her more dangerous. Natalie has been kissed, fed, praised, dressed, and probably told she is brilliant at least twelve times an hour.”

Gabriel’s mouth shifted faintly. “She probably was.”

“That is not the point.”

Rafael watched Natalie and Arik again. They got on well, which was lovely in theory and deeply dangerous in practice. Arik already had that quiet, contained authority children sometimes developed when raised too close to power, and Natalie had the sort of composure that made adults lower their guard. Together, they looked less like children at play and more like the early stage of a political alliance.

Of course, that was likely Damian’s fault.

Damian had insisted on becoming Natalie’s godfather with the calm inevitability of a man who had never once been told no by the world and taken it seriously. Rafael, who had no desire to argue with the Emperor on matters involving his daughter, had accepted that. Then, because one terrifying godfather clearly was not enough, Rafael had asked Gabriel as well.

It had felt only right.

Damian had been pleased in that deeply alarming way of his, and Gabriel had accepted with far more grace than the situation deserved.

The result was that Natalie now had two godfathers, one of whom spoiled her because he loved Gabriel and had decided Rafael’s child fell under the same circle of protected people, and the other because Gabriel actually had sense.

Rafael still wasn’t convinced the arrangement was entirely safe.

“They like each other,” Gabriel said, following his gaze.

“Yes,” Rafael said. “Which means trouble later.”

“You say that like you didn’t arrange half the trouble in your own life.”

Rafael turned to him with offense. “I arranged beauty. Trouble arrived on its own.”

Gabriel gave him a look that suggested this was historically false.

The room itself was warm with filtered afternoon light and the soft hum of ether infrastructure hidden behind polished walls and carved panels. The palace always sounded faintly alive if one paid attention – wards nested into the structure, lighting lines pulsing behind stone, and the low background thrum of the systems that kept the imperial residence both elegant and nearly impossible to invade.

It was peaceful.

Then the door opened.

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