Chapter 69: Chapter 69: Not enough

The food had arrived with the quiet efficiency of a house that refused to let even emotional catastrophes occur on an empty stomach. Peter brought a three-course meal. The food he prepared suggested long negotiations, diplomatic strain, or the kind of conversations that either ended in familial reconciliation or court-level disaster. So… a lot of protein to incentivize him to survive.

Rafael ate.

Not because he truly felt hungry, but because logic insisted on occupying space in his brain even when anxiety wanted to scream through the halls. Food helped the mind focus. Focus helped ensure Delphine did not verbally annihilate him through sheer maternal force.

Also, Peter stood at a socially reasonable distance, radiating, ’You will eat like a civilized human being before you do anything self-destructive.’

He obeyed, if only because he did not currently possess the energy to start another war inside this mansion.

Afterwards, he drifted into the sitting room with the resigned grace of a man walking into his own execution. The room was bright, elegant, warmed by sunlight and old magic. The couch accepted his weight like it had been waiting for him, and he allowed himself one slow breath while the weight of the impending call settled fully over his chest.

The comm rested on the table.

He stared at it for a moment longer than necessary. A ridiculous thought crossed his mind… that if he didn’t pick it up, reality might choose to behave differently. That perhaps not speaking it aloud meant it didn’t exist yet. That Delphine remained in the blissful ignorance of before.

But Rafael had never been allowed the luxury of before. His life was always afterward. After revelations. After choices he couldn’t unmake.

He lifted the comm.

The mansion quieted. Even the wards seemed to dim slightly, as if respectfully stepping back from whatever was about to happen.

“Call Delphine Rosenroth,” he said.

The line connected.

It rang once.

Twice.

Three times.

Each chime slid through his nerves like the ticking of a countdown.

He leaned back into the couch, hand loosening into his hair, thumb brushing reflexively near the faint warmth of the mark at his nape. It pulsed again, an echo of presence, of stability, of someone miles away who was still bound to him.

He did not know whether that helped or made this worse.

“Please be busy,” he muttered to the device. “Please be in a meeting. Please be asleep. Please be lecturing Parliament. Please be…”

The ringing stopped.

A connection tone clicked.

Silence bled out on the line, that weighted stillness that belonged to a woman who did not rush to speak, because power never needed to.

Then her voice.

Cool.

Cultured.

Unimpressed by the universe itself.

“Rafael.”

He closed his eyes.

Well. She wasn’t busy.

“Hello, Mother,” he said, and there was no escaping anything now.

Silence lingered a breath too long.

The kind that meant she was thinking. Weighing. Deciding where to begin dismantling him.

When Delphine finally spoke, it was calm in a way Rafael knew too much. She had already rehearsed everything before the call and was waiting for him to reach out to her.

“So,” she said lightly, almost conversationally, like discussing a social lunch, “you remember how to call.”

Rafael’s fingers tightened around the comm.

There it was.

“I…”

“You disappeared,” she continued smoothly, gliding straight over his attempted sentence as though his voice were merely atmospheric. “For over a month. With no explanation, notice, or forwarding schedule. Not even a message for your mother, who, might I remind you, raised you to at least pretend to respect the concept of consideration.”

“Mother…”

“And as if that were not enough,” she went on, tone still silken, words sharpened like diamonds, “you reemerge not as Rafael Rosenroth, respected omega, political strategist, and one of the most eligible omegas in the empire. No. You reappear hidden behind the only man in the Empire capable of erasing someone from existence without leaving dust on the floor. One that threatened your mother’s life.”

Rafael inhaled slowly.

“Gregoris is not…”

“The rumors say,” she continued, unbothered by fact, “that you vanished into his shadow like a scandal he wanted to keep. That you let yourself be tucked neatly behind a man whose face is synonymous with war crimes and ’state-sanctioned necessities.’”

Her voice did not rise, but it cut Rafael just as deep.

“The Empire has had a great deal to say,” she added softly. “About you. About him. About the… nature of your situation.”

He dragged a hand down his face, trying to control the tremor in his voice and hands and the rising instinct of ending the call or yelling at her.

“Mother…”

“Oh, and since we are already recounting public humiliation,” Delphine said pleasantly, “let us not forget your… attire at the charity gala.”

Rafael stared at the ceiling.

“Scandalous,” she continued. “Indecent. Unbefitting of your position. I believe the quote from The Imperial Observer was ’a political statement disguised as seduction.’ And that was one of the kinder interpretations.”

“It was a suit,” Rafael muttered.

“It was a declaration,” she corrected. “And if that were not enough, you then had the magnificent audacity to let Gregoris escort you into his car in full view of the international press.”

Her voice dipped, finally, beneath the surface of composure.

“And then, Rafael,” she said, breath sharpening just slightly, “you kissed him.”

Silence opened between them again.

Rafael swallowed.

“You kissed,” she repeated quietly, “the Emperor’s executioner. On camera. As if you were in some romantic drama staged for public entertainment. As if the world did not watch you. As if your last name did not weigh anything. As if our house were… trivial.”

He could hear the eyes she must have closed when she said it.

He could feel the hand she likely pressed to her temple.

“You vanished. You aligned yourself with the most dangerous man in the Empire. And you dared to do it publicly.”

Her voice softened further.

Which meant the knives were coming out.

“Tell me, Rafael,” Delphine murmured, velvet turning to wire, “was humiliating your house worth it?”

His throat tightened.

“Mother…”

“Do not,” she said, still soft, still cultured, “mother me now. You forfeited that tone the moment you chose your pride over your bloodline. It is clear as day that you do not love me. Or, at the very least, you do not love this family as much as you love your… impulses.”

The room felt smaller.

“I never said…”

“You do not need to,” Delphine replied, voice unshaken. “Your actions speak eloquently enough. You vanish. You refuse contact. You choose to hide behind the most terrifying man alive as though that absolves you of responsibility. You think me stupid, Rafael? You think I cannot see what you are doing? Why call me now, of all times, if you will not listen? If you will not care for how much sleep I lose because of you?”

Something inside him went very still.

The floor beneath him did not move, but it felt like it tilted anyway, gravity slipping sideways as old instinct closed a hand around his lungs.

The world narrowed to sound.

Not to her voice, ironically, but to the lack of anything else. The air hummed faintly through the ventilation system. Somewhere deeper in the manor, a ward pulsed like a heartbeat. His fingers had gone cold around the device without him noticing. He became acutely aware of how straight he was sitting. How shallowly he was breathing.

’Not enough.’

’Not right.’

’Always too much or never enough.’

The same trap.

The same old, carefully upholstered cage of guilt and expectation.

He hated that he remembered how to sit smaller. How to disappear without moving.

“I only…” he started, and even he could hear how thin it sounded. How young.

Delphine sighed.

A sound heavy with cultivated disappointment.

“Rafael,” she said gently, and the gentleness slid straight under the skin, “you have always been difficult. Always convinced you know better. Always choosing chaos and then acting wounded when consequences arrive. I cannot indulge this forever. I will not. I am tired.”

He stared at the far wall.

His vision blurred without tears. Just distance. Just… fog.

Her words blurred too, becoming more shape and weight than meaning. The bond at his nape pulsed faintly, warm and strong completely at odds with the cold tightening under his ribs.

He was here. He was an adult. He was mated. He was safe.

And still…

Still his chest locked, breath caught halfway between inhale and exhale, body reverting to that old, horrible posture of being wrong just for existing the way he was.

Trapped.

Again.

Something in his head began to pull back, like a tide retreating too fast. The room dimmed at the edges. The distance between sound and body widened.

“…are you even listening to me?” Delphine’s voice cut through distantly, clipped and irritated now. “This is exactly what I mean, when confronted, you withdraw. You always…”

Her sentence never finished.

Fingers closed gently over his.

The comm slid out of his hand before he even registered releasing it.

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