Chapter 63: Chapter 63: Four in the morning

The manor breathed differently when Gregoris was gone.

Shadows didn’t swagger. They didn’t slam doors or laugh too loudly in corridors the way soldiers did. But they existed in a very specific tension when their commander was away, like wolves pacing a territory that didn’t quite feel like theirs to defend alone. The halls whispered. Wards hummed low, restrained but alert. Lights stayed lit longer than necessary, as if no one quite trusted darkness without him in it.

When he returned, the world exhaled.

The main doors opened without a sound. The wards stirred, brightened, and then relaxed with the lazy stretch of something ancient recognizing its master. He stepped inside quietly, though he was incapable of going unnoticed here. Power trailed him like heat after lightning. Blood stained his coat, his gloves, and the curve of his jaw.

He has not removed it yet.

It was four in the morning, and the manor was silent. Only the cicadas outside dared make noise, and even they sounded cautious.

Gregoris moved slowly as exhaustion overtook him. Tired in the way that only prolonged violence could leave a man, ether eaten through his channels until they hummed quietly with burn, muscles aching from controlled brutality, mind edged with the strange quiet that comes after too much precision killing.

He wanted simple things: a shower, a bed, and silence.

He wanted Rafael too, but the omega was far from being simple.

His steps softened automatically as he reached their wing. He could already feel the pulse he was looking for; the omega scent wrapped through the rooms, layered into the sheets, and soaked into the air until even the stones were learning what comfort meant.

He opened the bedroom door.

Gregoris expected darkness. He expected the steady rhythm of sleeping breath.

Instead, Rafael was awake.

He was sitting against the headboard, wrapped in blankets like armor, hair mussed, eyes far too alert for someone meant to be recovering. The bedside lamp cast soft light across his face, turning irritation and relief into something fragile and painfully human.

Soft blue eyes met the steel grey of Gregoris.

Gregoris stopped breathing.

“…you’re awake,” he said, voice lower than usual, hoarse with disuse and distance.

Rafael lifted a brow. “You bleed an empire dry for over a week and then walk back in at dawn like a haunted murder painting. Yes. I’m awake.”

Something tight inside Gregoris uncoiled.

The tension he wore better than clothes eased slightly. Enough that his shoulders dropped a fraction. Enough that the killing quiet behind his eyes finally cracked.

“You should be sleeping,” he muttered, because pretending irritation was easier than admitting relief.

“I ran out of sleep yesterday,” Rafael replied dryly. “Turns out recovery has… limits. Who knew?”

A breath of laughter ghosted out of Gregoris before he could stop it. Gods. He had missed that mouth.

He took another step inside. Then another.

Rafael’s gaze flicked down.

He saw the blood. ALL of it.

He went very still.

For a long, dangerous second neither of them spoke. The manor’s wards purred softly in the silence, acknowledging both danger and its disappearance with equal reverence.

Rafael swallowed once, his fingers tightening on the sheets. “Whose?”

Gregoris didn’t blink. “Not mine. I’m tired, Rafael, not clumsy.”

Rafael breathed out slowly.

Some of the sharpness in his posture loosened, but not much. His eyes traveled up again, slow and clinical, cataloguing every inch of Gregoris with ruthless thoroughness. The blood. The exhaustion. The subtle way he braced his weight, like if he stopped thinking about it, his body might simply stop obeying.

“You look like hell,” Rafael said softly.

Gregoris’s mouth curved. “I’ve seen worse.”

Rafael only hummed, as he was sure that Gregoris didn’t need to lie to show his power. “Aside from the fact that you used too much ether… What should I know?”

“You should know,” Gregoris said quietly, voice roughened at the edges by exhaustion and something far more dangerous than rage, “that your mate came home… and the first thing he wants is a kiss.”

Rafael blinked.

Of all the things he had expected: grim reports, half-truths dressed as reassurance, stoic dismissal, that wasn’t on the list.

A startled, helpless softness pulled through his expression.

“A kiss,” Rafael repeated, as if he needed to make sure the word existed in this reality.

“Yes.” Gregoris didn’t look away. Didn’t pretend it was anything other than a desire. “A kiss. I wanted one when I left too, but you were already sleeping.”

Something delicate and infuriating twisted quietly in Rafael’s chest.

He stared at him for a heartbeat longer, at this ridiculous, terrifying, impossible man who could peel apart nations with a look and then stand there like this, bloody, exhausted, stubborn, and honest in a way that felt rarer than victory.

Rafael exhaled, not defeated, just… resigned to tolerating him, because admitting he was loving the bloodhound was a little too much for his mind right now.

“Of course you did,” he murmured. “You absolute menace.”

Gregoris leaned the smallest fraction closer, like gravity agreed with the sentiment but wanted to test it anyway. “So?”

“So,” Rafael said, very calmly, “you are going nowhere near this bed.”

Gregoris blinked. “…excuse me?”

“You are excused.” Rafael gestured at him with a look that could have filed a government decree. “You heard me. First you shower and change, then we negotiate kisses and bed privileges.”

“You are in my bed,” Gregoris reminded him dryly.

“And you marked me, which gives me authority,” Rafael didn’t back down.

“If you want authority,” Gregoris replied, voice just a shade lower, “marry me first.”

Rafael stared at him.

Then he gave him the longest, slowest, most devastating side-eye the manor had probably ever witnessed.

“No.”

Gregoris raised a brow. “No?”

“No,” Rafael repeated, absolutely unbothered. “You don’t get to weaponize exhaustion and blood loss into a proposal. Go shower.”

“That wasn’t exhaustion talking,” Gregoris muttered.

“That was still blood on your collar talking,” Rafael countered smoothly. “Which means your negotiating power is currently somewhere between ’wet cat’ and ’crime scene.’ Try again when you smell like a human being.”

“I am not a wet cat,” Gregoris said flatly.

“You will be,” Rafael said pleasantly. “In about five minutes.”

Gregoris stared at him.

Rafael stared back.

The air between them warmed, softened, thickened into something that felt dangerously like affection disguised as stubbornness.

“…you’re impossible,” Gregoris sighed.

Rafael smiled, slow and victorious. “And you’re still standing here instead of showering. Which one of us is really losing?”

For a moment Gregoris looked like he might argue, simply out of principle. Then his shoulders loosened. The battle was over. This one, at least.

“Fine,” he said at last, like the word offended him on a personal level.

“Good,” Rafael murmured, satisfied. “Go. Hot water. Clean clothes. Then come back and try the marriage line again when you can string romance together without blood on your cheek.”

Gregoris hesitated.

“Will the bed still be available?”

“That depends,” Rafael said calmly.

“On?”

“How quickly you move.”

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