Chapter 205: Chapter 205: The Wrong Man

Vercourt stepped back immediately, but it was too late.

Gabriel did not raise his voice. One look from him was enough to chill the corridor, to make even Astana stand still in that careful manner of a man already recalculating the remainder of the afternoon.

“What,” Gabriel asked, each word clipped clean, “is Lord Vercourt doing in my secretary’s path?”

Vercourt opened his mouth.

Rafael, still holding his documents with insulting composure, answered first. “Making poor life choices.”

Gabriel’s gaze flicked to Rafael once, quick and assessing, then returned to the noble. “I asked him.”

Vercourt swallowed. “My lord consort, there has been a misunderstanding.”

Rafael almost smiled.

Because men like this always reached for the same thing once caught: misunderstanding, misreading, mutual interest, and ambiguity. They tried to make what happened look messy enough that blame could spread.

And Vercourt, apparently, was going to aim for the filthiest version available.

He straightened by a fraction, clearly deciding that cowardice alone would not save him now. “I only stopped to speak. Duke Rafael was… receptive.”

Astana’s face did not move.

One of the guards did, very slightly, the kind of movement that suggested disbelief bordering on professional insult.

Rafael looked at Vercourt with open fascination. “You are going to lie badly in front of witnesses. Amazing.”

Vercourt, having committed himself to ruin, kept going. “He encouraged the exchange. I assumed—”

“You assumed,” Gabriel cut in, “that cornering a marked omega in an imperial corridor would become more believable if you called it flirtation.”

The noble’s jaw clenched. For one reckless instant, something ugly flashed across his face: anger, a stifled appetite, and humiliation sharpened into rage.

Then, because he had clearly decided destruction was preferable to retreat, he said, “Perhaps if your secretary spent less time inviting attention—”

One second Vercourt was standing upright in front of Gabriel, trying to turn malice into accusation.

The next instant, he was off the ground.

Gregoris had him by the throat with one hand, lifted so cleanly his boots dangled inches above the polished floor. The documents in Rafael’s arms did not so much as tremble, though the scene in front of him had improved dramatically.

Vercourt made a choking sound, hands flying to Gregoris’s wrist in blind instinct.

It did nothing.

Gregoris did not look enraged in the loud, easy way lesser men did. That would have been almost comforting. No, he looked like himself at his worst: calm stripped down to something deadly, with silver eyes that were flat and empty, which meant that pain had already become a solved problem in his head.

The only visible sign of fury was the absolute stillness in him.

“Say it again,” Gregoris said.

His voice was quiet. That made it monstrous.

Vercourt clawed uselessly at his hand, face already changing color, his feet kicking once against empty air.

Gabriel did not intervene.

Rafael suspected the consort was, if anything, exercising admirable restraint by remaining where he was.

Astana, beside him, kept his posture perfect. “I assume,” he said very softly, “this is no longer a corridor matter.”

“No,” Gabriel replied. “It’s a burial one.”

Vercourt managed a strangled noise that might have been protest. Gregoris tightened his grip.

Rafael inhaled, and under the lingering stink of panic and cheap alpha arrogance, he caught it at last – the residue of what Vercourt had done before Gabriel arrived, before witnesses turned the scene. A planned pheromone push that was ugly and sharp was intended to fill the space while leaving a stain. Not enough to affect Rafael through Gregoris’s mark, not truly, but enough to leave a scent. Enough that any unmated omega, or any fool trying to build a rumor, might have read it exactly as intended.

How inventive.

How terminal.

Gregoris had smelled it too.

Of course he had.

That explained the particular quality of the silence around him now. This was no longer about insult. No longer about lies. This was about another alpha throwing pheromones at his mate in the Emperor’s palace and then trying to blame Rafael for it.

Very bold. Very stupid.

Gabriel’s gaze dropped once to the noble’s kicking feet, then rose again to Gregoris’s face. “Don’t kill him here.”

Gregoris did not look away from Vercourt. “Why?”

Not a question. A challenge.

Because Gregoris was mad enough now that courtesy, rank, and geography had all become secondary concerns.

Gabriel’s tone stayed level. “Because the cleaners will complain.”

That finally drew the barest shift through Rafael’s chest that might have become laughter in another life.

Vercourt, meanwhile, had stopped trying to argue. His fingers were weakening against Gregoris’s wrist. His face had gone blotched and ugly, eyes wide with the sick realization that this had moved beyond scandal into survival.

Gregoris stepped closer until the noble’s back struck the corridor wall with a sharp, echoing impact.

The sound rang down the ether-lined stone.

“I can make it clean,” Gregoris said. “Or, if your cleaners are especially fussy today, my men can clean it.”

Gabriel chuckled. “Very well then.”

Gregoris inclined his head once.

Then he looked back at Vercourt.

That was all.

Vercourt understood it too late.

He made a broken sound and tried to twist away from the wall, but Gregoris’s hand was still around his throat; there was nowhere to go. His boots scraped uselessly against polished stone, his fingers clawing at Gregoris’s wrist with the blind panic of a man discovering that palace rumors had done him the grave disservice of making the Shadow Commander sound less real than he was.

“You pheromone showered my mate,” Gregoris said.

Vercourt’s mouth worked soundlessly.

Gregoris’s expression did not change. “You cornered him in an imperial corridor. You tried to smear him. Then you stood in front of witnesses and implied he tempted you.”

The noble managed a strangled rasp. It might have been denial. It might have been an attempt at begging. Gregoris gave it the same consideration he would have given an insect beneath his boot.

Rafael, still holding his documents with remarkable composure, said, “To be fair, he did try very hard to sell the fantasy.”

Gabriel glanced at him. “Rafael.”

“Yes?”

“You are enjoying this.”

“A little.”

“A lot,” Astana murmured from behind Gabriel.

Rafael looked faintly pleased. “Thank you, Astana.”

Gregoris’s grip tightened just enough to make Vercourt choke.

The sound echoed obscenely in the corridor.

“That scent,” Gregoris continued, voice still low, “should never have touched him.”

People had always misunderstood Gregoris. His possessiveness was not sweet or decorative. It was brutal in the old, dangerous way that had made Rafael despise him for mistaking beauty for weakness and charm for pliancy. Gregoris had learned better over the years.

And God help any man who made him revisit the lesson through Rafael.

Vercourt’s feet kicked again, weaker now.

Gabriel watched him with the detached interest of a man considering whether a report would be shorter with or without a body attached to it. “Try not to break the corridor warding,” he said. “Engineering will complain.”

Gregoris did not look away from the noble. “Then they can bill him.”

That made Gabriel’s mouth twitch.

Rafael, because he was still himself even here, said, “If he dies, I do think the paperwork becomes more theatrical.”

Vercourt made another choking sound at that, eyes wild now, darting from Gabriel to Rafael to the impossible stillness of Gregoris’s face.

He had expected outrage, perhaps. A scene. Maybe even scandal. What he had not expected, clearly, was to find himself in a corridor with three people who all seemed, in their own way, willing to continue this until it reached a conclusion he would not enjoy.

Gregoris took one step closer, pinning him harder against the wall.

“You thought,” he said, “that I’d smell your scent on my husband and doubt him.”

Vercourt’s face had gone mottled red and white.

Gregoris’s silver eyes were empty as winter metal. “That is the part I find insulting.”

Rafael felt something sharp and ugly settle warm in his chest at that.

A crack echoed in the room as Vercurt’s neck and skull were broken.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep