Chapter 70: Chapter 70: Truths

The bond in Rafael’s nape flared.

The comm slid out of Rafael’s hand before he even really understood he’d let it go.

A shadow had simply materialized into the room.

Ether flooded the air, as if reality had bowed to make space for something too heavy to stand neatly within it. The mansion’s wards reacted instantly, shuddering, tightening, and then kneeling into obedience. Lamps flickered. Pressure shifted. The air tasted like ozone.

Rafael blinked.

Gregoris stood in front of him.

He was dressed in the same black combat layering, armor scorched at the edges, and boots dusty with foreign earth. His breathing was quiet, but the ether burn was visible in the faint ghosting of pale veins under his skin and the rigid set of his shoulders. He must have burned half his channels raw to cut travel time like that.

He wasn’t supposed to be back yet.

But he was.

Because something had pulled him here hard enough to break distance.

He hadn’t teleported to the mansion but to Rafael.

Rafael’s lungs finally dragged in air.

Gregoris didn’t look at him yet.

His hand was still wrapped around Rafael’s for half a second longer than necessary, pulling him back into his own body. Only then did he let go. The bond stabilized, no longer warm and fuzzy, but awake and protective.

He raised the comm to his ear.

“Lady Rosenroth.”

The line went silent.

Even Delphine Rosenroth, a woman who intimidated ministers and nobles without raising her voice, hesitated. The weight of him traveled cleanly through the connection.

“May I ask what gave you the right,” Gregoris said quietly, “to speak to my omega like that?”

For a heartbeat, the call held nothing but quiet.

Delphine gathered herself as elegantly as only she could do it.

When she spoke again, she was composed. Aristocracy distilled into tone.

“Duke Alamina,” she said, cool as polished glass, “do not involve yourself in matters you lack the context to comprehend. This is between me and my son. You may be… many things to him, but you are not family. You do not dictate the terms of mine.”

Gregoris’s jaw flexed once.

Delphine exhaled softly through the line, as if addressing a poorly behaved council member.

“This is not a military directive or a battlefield conquest. This is my household. My blood. And only I decide how I deal with the discipline. You do not insert yourself into how I choose to handle it.”

She didn’t spit the word, but the word ’it’ sliced regardless.

Rafael’s stomach turned.

Gregoris went still, the last thread of restraint had snapped in complete, frozen silence.

“And that,” Delphine continued, oblivious or uncaring, “is the last you will hear from me on this matter. Do not…”

Gregoris’s voice slipped through, every inch the executioner and not even close to the tone he was using with Rafael.

Rafael realized that even when he poisoned Gregoris, when he pushed every button, he never once used that lifeless voice.

“One thing, Lady Rosenroth, before this line closes for good.”

Her breath stilled on the other end.

“Remember,” he said softly, taking his sweet time, “that you are still under imperial observation after conspiring with Rosaline to poison His Grace the Consort. Have you told Rafael yet? How, after that disastrous tea party, for him, not you. You chose treason anyway? That you decided you were willing to gamble your entire bloodline’s execution if it meant forcing him onto a throne beside Damian as a controllable consort?”

Gregoris did not give her room to recover.

“You have spent years,” he said quietly, “naming your fear ’protection.’ Calling your ambition ’love.’ Dressing control as ’care.’ You are, frankly, a crueler torturer than I am, and I say that with professional respect.”

The silence on the other end sharpened, gone brittle and dangerous.

“But I never considered you my enemy,” he said, as if he were explaining to a child that pretending was not the same as reality. “Enemies require acknowledgment, maybe respect for the threat they pose. You never warranted that. You are merely another name on Damian’s list of liabilities to be crossed out when the Empire is bored enough to clean house.”

He paused.

Rafael could almost feel Delphine’s composure cracking through the line.

“And listen very carefully,” Gregoris said, his voice softening into something far more terrifying. “You will never reach for my omega again without his explicit consent. I don’t care about what you believe he owes you.”

He tilted his head slightly, steel silver eyes fixated on the carefully manicured garden, because that gaze was not for Rafael.

“Your social weight,” he finished, “is not as valuable to the Imperial House as you seem to think it is.”

The line stayed silent.

Gregoris didn’t wait for whatever she might decide to make of that.

He ended the call.

Rafael’s knuckles were white against the edge of the sofa cushion, skin pulled tight, veins standing out along the back of his hands. He’d gone rigid without noticing. His shoulders locked. His posture was perfect, almost statue-like. One he learned at a young age.

He forced his fingers open.

They didn’t move at first.

He swallowed once and tried again. The joints loosened with a faint ache, sensation prickling back into his fingertips like circulation returning to a limb left numb too long. He unclenched slowly, like proving to himself that he still could.

He looked up.

Gregoris was already watching him.

With attention sharp enough to cut, fixed entirely on Rafael, as if every threat in the Empire had lined up behind that call and he was selecting which one to destroy first.

Rafael licked his lips, realizing his mouth was dry.

“So,” he asked quietly, voice thinner than he wanted it to be, “it’s… true?”

Gregoris didn’t pretend not to understand.

“You mean,” he said evenly, “did she truly conspire to poison Gabriel?”

Rafael’s throat worked.

“Yes.”

Gregoris didn’t look away.

“Yes,” he said.

Rafael let out a breath before asking the rest.

“How far?” he asked, because if he didn’t ask now, he never would. “How much of that was posturing… and how much of it was real?”

Gregoris’s jaw worked once, a faint flicker beneath composed control.

“For a while,” he answered, voice quieter now, “Delphine Rosenroth cooperated with Rosaline. They plotted two contingencies. In the most likely version, Gabriel would be neutralized, rendered unable to carry heirs. Permanently. A political castration disguised as tragedy.”

Rafael closed his eyes briefly.

That would have… broken Damian.

Gregoris continued.

“In the other scenario,” he said, and the room seemed to cool again, “Gabriel would die. Quickly. With plausible deniability. Chaos would follow. The Empire would fracture. Rosaline would maneuver with Hadeon. Your mother,” that word came out too clear, as though Gregoris refused to accept it unquestioned, “intended to position you as the omega the Empire would need. Desperately. And she was willing to risk execution for it.”

Rafael stared down at his hands.

He looked like he might laugh for a moment. He didn’t.

“She was going to… put me there,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Not because she believed or trusted in me. But because she wanted… power close enough to control.”

Rafael reached for Gregoris before his mind could process it, and the alpha pulled him into his arms. “She wanted to ruin everything for… power she would never have. Even me and my brother Layle.”

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