Chapter 94: Chapter 94: Planned

Gregoris was stationed where he was supposed to be: at the edge of the dais, posture immovable, the Emperor’s Bloodhound carved into ceremony and discipline.

And Rafael was doing it on purpose.

Damian noticed. Of course he did. Nothing escaped the emperor’s attention, least of all the way Gregoris’s gaze kept returning, controlled, restrained, but undeniably fixed.

“A bit distracting,” Damian remarked mildly, eyes flicking toward the pale shimmer of fabric and gold across the hall. “Your husband seems to be enjoying the evening.”

Gregoris did not look away. “He is conducting a psychological operation.”

Damian’s mouth curved. “Is it working?”

Gregoris exhaled slowly through his nose. “Excessively.”

There was a pause, then Gregoris tilted his head, considering. “If Gabriel walked out dressed like that, intentionally placed in your line of sight, aware of what he was doing, what would you do?”

Damian did not even have to think.

“I would kill anyone who looked.”

The answer was calm, concise, and delivered with the same tone he used when discussing troop movements or border security.

Gregoris absorbed it.

“And if Gabriel did it on purpose,” Damian continued, eyes still on the hall, “to test me, to provoke me, to remind me that he is mine and that I am not allowed to touch him in public? I would endure it. I would stand exactly where I am standing now. And I would remember every face that dared to forget who he belongs to.”

A corner of Gregoris’s mouth twitched.

“So it is not about the clothes,” he said quietly.

Damian glanced at him. “Never is. It is about the intent of the man wearing them.”

Gregoris’s gaze returned to Rafael. The open collar. The pale gold catching the light. The deliberate placement within his line of sight and beyond his reach.

“He knows what he is doing,” Gregoris said.

Damian hummed. “Of course he does. You married someone very similar to my consort.”

Gregoris let the words settle.

Marin’s instructions echoed in his mind: restraint, calm, no stress, no exertion, and no claiming until the pregnancy was stabilized. He followed them to the letter.

But liking what he saw was not forbidden.

And compared to the man beside him, who would happily have reduced the room to ashes for a single look, Gregoris found himself thinking, with a trace of dark amusement, that he might be the reasonable one after all.

He sighed.

“I will let him have his fun,” Gregoris said at last, voice low and even. “The marriage will be public soon enough. He deserves the satisfaction of knowing that every eye in this room understands what he already does. that he is mine, and that I am not hiding it.”

Damian finally looked at him properly, a slow, knowing smile curving his mouth.

“You speak as if this is magnanimity,” he said. “In truth, you are winning either way.”

Gregoris did not deny it. “He wanted a reaction. He will have it. Just… contained.”

Damian let out a soft laugh, the sound warm and unguarded, rare from an emperor in the middle of a ceremony. “Contained. Yes. Like at Alexandra’s charity gala.”

Gregoris’s jaw tightened a fraction, trying to hide his grin.

“You did not lose control that night by accident,” Damian went on, amusement bright in his golden eyes. “You saw an opening. You saw him unguarded, luminous, exactly where he should not have been. And you took the moment. I was wondering how you, of all my men, lost your control. Then it hit me: you never did.”

For a heartbeat, the hall’s music seemed to fall away.

Gregoris’s grin formed without shame. “Took you long enough.”

Damian’s smile widened, sharp with recognition. “Busy, yes. But not blind. You chose the moment, the place, and the witnesses. You wanted the claim to be seen, even if you pretended it was an accident.”

Gregoris’s gaze stayed on the hall, on the pale gold glint that kept drawing his eyes back. “I wanted him to know I would not hesitate,” he said simply. “And I wanted everyone else to understand it was not a lapse.”

Damian gave a low, amused huff. “So the Empire’s most disciplined hound planned his own ’loss of control.’”

“Control,” Gregoris replied, “is deciding when to release it.”

Damian’s eyes softened with something like approval. “You did not just secure a marriage,” he added quietly. “You secured an heir.”

Gregoris’s jaw set, pride and possessiveness threading through his restraint. “Both were inevitable.”

Damian laughed openly this time, the sound cutting through the ceremonial hush. “You really are winning either way. A consort who knows exactly how to provoke you, and a child on the way to completing it all.”

Gregoris’s grin lingered, unrepentant. “He gets his spectacle tonight. I get my future.”

Damian glanced once more toward Rafael, radiant and deliberately placed, then back to Gregoris. “Then let him have his victory. You already have yours.”

“I’ve learned for the best,” Gregoris said, his expression settling back into composed control, the disciplined mask sliding neatly into place.

Damian hummed in acknowledgment, eyes still following the pale-gold figure across the hall.

“What will you do about Delphine?” Damian asked quietly. “She won’t stay silent much longer.”

“Nothing,” Gregoris replied. “She will find out that Rafael is married and expecting, and that will be a direct strike to her entire sense of control.” A pause. “My sources indicate she believes that if Rafael is humiliated enough – isolated, whispered about, quietly diminished – he will return to her. That he will seek refuge in the only authority he once obeyed.”

Damian’s expression cooled. “She is delusional.”

“She is strategic,” Gregoris corrected. “Which makes her more dangerous. But also predictable.”

“And the press?”

A faint, humorless curve touched Gregoris’s mouth. “Well funded. Loyal to the highest bidder. And currently, you pay me very well.”

Damian huffed softly. “So she will wake up one morning to discover her son is not disgraced but legally bound to the Emperor’s Bloodhound and carrying his heir.”

“Yes.”

“Publicly.”

“Yes.”

“And protected.”

Gregoris’s gaze returned to the hall, to the pale gold figure laughing softly among the court. “Utterly.”

Damian considered that, then smiled, slow and sharp. “That will wound her pride far more than any scandal ever could. I want to see that.”

“You will,” Gregoris said. “Soon.”

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