Chapter 216: Chapter 216: Time

“When?”

The word was, in Gregoris’s mouth, both a practical question and something far more dangerous… a logistical inquiry wrapped around raw want, stripped of ornament and made all the more ruinous for it.

Rafael’s breath caught.

Gregoris’s thumb moved slowly along the line of his jaw, warm and possessive. The sensible part of Rafael – the father, the strategist, the man who knew perfectly well what adding another child meant in real terms – tried, briefly, to reassert itself.

It lost.

“Preferably,” Rafael began, and heard the slight unsteadiness in his own voice, “soon.”

He noticed an immediate shift in Gregoris, but Rafael wasn’t done.

He leaned in just enough for his mouth to brush Gregoris’s ear, his next words quieter, lower, and more intimate for being offered so close.

“Or,” he murmured, “when my heat comes.”

Gregoris made a low sound in his throat – a rough, restrained note of approval that sent heat straight through Rafael’s body.

When Gregoris drew back enough to look at him, the silver in his eyes had darkened into something fierce enough to unsettle breath itself.

“Why choose?” he said.

And then the world shifted.

With effortless strength, Gregoris lifted him.

Rafael barely had time to catch a breath before instinct took over, his legs wrapped around Gregoris’s waist, his arms locking around his neck.

Gregoris kissed him then, claiming in a way that made the corridor, the house, and the whole quiet ether-lit world around them seem to narrow into touch, breath, and the man holding him as though he already knew the answer to every question worth asking.

One of Gregoris’s hands spread broad across Rafael’s back and the other kept him firmly in place.

“We can do both,” Gregoris said against his mouth.

The words landed like a promise.

Rafael felt the heat of them low in his body, and the ache of his own desire became sharper under Gregoris’ voice, hold, and comfort. The air between them felt thicker now, charged with bond and pheromones and everything they were to each other – alpha and omega, yes, but also husband and wife, choice and answer, want and home.

Rafael closed his eyes for one breathless second, then opened them again and looked at Gregoris properly.

“Outrageous,” he whispered.

Gregoris kissed the corner of his mouth. “You like outrageous.”

Rafael’s laugh was soft and shaken and not nearly as offended as it should have been.

“Yes,” he admitted. “Unfortunately.”

—

Four years later

Four years later, the child arrived in public wrapped in velvet blue and entirely too much confidence.

Aylin had inherited none of Gregoris’s coloring, which Rafael considered one of the few obvious moral victories life had ever granted him.

She had soft brown hair that caught the light warm instead of cold, blue eyes of a clear, impossible shade that made old court ladies go visibly tender when she looked at them too directly, and a face so unfairly like Rafael’s that people often needed a second to recover from seeing the resemblance rendered in miniature. At four years old, she was still at that age where she seemed to belong half in a nursery portrait and half in the center of a diplomatic incident, depending entirely on whether she was smiling.

At the moment, she was doing neither.

She sat on Rafael’s hip with the absolute authority of a child who had long ago decided that palace parties were exhausting, noble children were unpredictable, and her father’s arms were the only civilized part of the evening.

Rafael, who had spent the first hour of the event being admired, greeted, observed, and quietly envied for looking offensively elegant while carrying a daughter who resembled him so closely it bordered on theatrical cruelty, adjusted her more securely against his side, and looked across the ballroom with the calm of a man who saw everything.

The imperial palace of the evening wing shimmered around them.

This was a smaller palace gathering by imperial standards, which still meant six-meter ceilings, ether-threaded chandeliers suspended like captured constellations, live string music carried through discreet sound arrays hidden in carved gilded panels, and enough layered security woven into the architecture that the room itself felt faintly alive.

Ether lines glowed under gold in the molding. The polished marble underfoot held a low pulse of climate regulation. Glass doors at the far end opened toward illuminated terraces and winter gardens guarded by transparent ward veils so delicate they looked like moonlight caught in the air.

Guests moved in clusters beneath the light – nobles, military officials, council members, and their families, all wrapped in silk, tailored black, polished metals, and expensive discretion.

And somewhere in that expensive, carefully arranged sea of power, Gregoris was working.

Rafael did not need to search long to find him.

He was positioned along the eastern side of the ballroom near one of the transition arches leading toward the private corridor network, dressed in formal Shadow Commander attire that looked elegant only if one had never seen what it could do. Dark silver and black. Ether-reactive seams woven into the fitted structure. A ceremonial layer over operational design, because this was the palace and appearances mattered, but not enough of one to disguise what he was.

Danger, honed and polished for imperial use.

Aylin followed Rafael’s gaze and found him too.

“There,” she said softly, one hand resting on Rafael’s shoulder as she pointed with the solemn confidence of a child identifying a favored landmark. “Papa’s husband.”

Rafael turned his head slightly and kissed her hair without thinking. “Yes, my love,” Rafael said, kissing her hair again, “but your father too.”

Aylin considered that with the grave seriousness of a child sorting out categories of possession and affection.

Then she nodded once, apparently satisfied that Gregoris could belong to multiple people provided the hierarchy remained properly documented.

“Still working too much,” she concluded.

“That,” Rafael murmured, “is a separate and ongoing offense.”

A soft laugh, low and elegant, came from nearby.

Gabriel sat only a short distance away in one of the curved gilt-backed chairs arranged beside the central floral display, looking as though he had been carved into the evening as part of the palace’s more expensive architecture. Beside him, Damian stood with the effortless stillness of a man who made every room rearrange itself around his existence, whether it wished to or not.

Aylin looked at Gabriel with immediate interest.

Children, Rafael had noticed, were often drawn to beauty before they learned caution.

“Did I say something funny?” she asked.

Gabriel’s mouth softened by a fraction. “No. Accurate.”

“That,” Rafael said, “is one of the reasons I keep her.”

Aylin tucked herself closer against him, blue eyes moving between Gabriel and Damian with the solemn concentration of someone taking inventory of imperial adults. Then, because she had inherited Rafael’s face and none of his self-preserving restraint, she pointed toward Damian.

“He is the scary one.”

The silence that followed was brief.

Then Damian’s mouth curved, very slightly.

Rafael closed his eyes for half a second. “My love.”

“What?” Aylin asked. “He is.”

Gabriel lifted his glass. “Again. Accurate.”

“This palace,” Rafael said, “is full of enablers.”

“It’s full of people with eyes,” Gabriel corrected.

That, infuriatingly, was also true.

Rafael adjusted Aylin more securely on his hip and looked across the ballroom once more, because the real problem tonight was not Damian’s reputation or Gabriel’s dangerous amusement or even the fact that his youngest daughter had already begun identifying threats in a room full of nobles with alarming efficiency.

No.

The problem was standing half a ballroom away in formal black with silver at the shoulders, looking exactly like a younger, more elegant disaster.

Frederik.

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