The grand hall of the imperial palace had never looked more radiant. Polished marble gleamed beneath towering golden candelabras wired with ether-glass, string quartets played harmonies programmed through crystal amplifiers that probably cost more than Rafael's entire townhouse, and the Empire's elite were all gathered to celebrate a historic announcement with the Empress-in-waiting, Gabriel von Jaunez, six months pregnant with the Emperor's heir.
It should have been a night of joy. Of diplomacy. Of wine, canapés, and polite applause.
But Rafael Rosenroth was not joyful.
He stood beneath a chandelier calibrated to shift glow temperature with ambient mood, currently stuck on a cheerful gold he found personally offensive, and wondered how everything had gone so horribly wrong in less than three hours. Alexandra, smiling sweetly beside a stunned foreign envoy, had ruined his life with nothing more than a comment, a clink of her wine glass, and a pointed glance toward the throne.
Now the most dangerous man in the Empire, after Damian himself, was watching Rafael like he was a particularly sweet dessert left unattended in a room full of knives.
'How did I get here?' Rafael thought, suppressing the urge to throw himself out the nearest window. Preferably one sealed with thick security-grade ether glass.
He shouldn't have come tonight. He knew that.
But it was Gabriel's pregnancy announcement, and Gabriel had personally invited him through a sealed priority ping. Declining would've meant social suicide. Attending meant facing Alexandra.
He should have taken the social suicide. Faked a data breach. Or maybe a deathbed wound.
Rafael's fingers tightened slightly around the stem of his champagne flute as the memory flashed back less than an hour ago, barely a breath after the toasts had ended.
They were talking about Max and his secret mate finally arriving in the capital and about Irina being interested in Alexander, the second commander of Damian, until Alexandra decided to drop the bomb.
—
Rafael frowned. "Max has what?"
"A mate," Damian replied casually. "He's on his way back from the western district. You'll meet him soon."
Rafael turned and stared at Max. "You never said anything."
"He doesn't say much," Alexandra said. "Except when he's making trouble. Which means…" she turned slowly, gaze narrowing with calculated mischief, "that the only one of us still unattached is you."
Rafael immediately sat straighter. "I'm not… That doesn't mean…"
"I think Gregoris would be a good fit," she said, as if commenting on weather conditions or bandwidth.
Gabriel choked slightly on his drink. Damian didn't even try to hide his grin.
Rafael blinked. "I'm sorry, what?"
Alexandra turned to him with the sweetness of a woman who had once bribed an entire council to stall a vote just because she didn't like the committee's color palette. "He's stable and deliciously dangerous. Surprisingly gentle when not chasing traitors across the continent. He needs someone diplomatic to balance him out."
Rafael opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "Are you trying to pair me, the one omega that runs from my mother's attempts at marrying me off, with the mad bloodhound of the Emperor?" He realized what he said and turned to Damian. "No offense, but he is definitely not normal."
"He can hear you," Damian said with a wide grin, his golden gaze fixated on a shadow form near the thrones.
Rafael froze.
There was a long beat of silence, one that stretched just enough to allow regret to settle like a stone in the gut.
He turned his head slowly toward the throne platform. One of the shadows there shifted in the low light of the chandelier. The movement was indistinguishable for untrained eyes but enough to confirm that yes, Gregoris had been standing there the entire time.
Gregoris rarely spoke aside from the moments he barked orders or reported to the Emperor. The ether at the edges of the hall pulsed faintly with his presence, humming with low, predatory pressure.
"Nope," Rafael said quickly, lifting both hands like a man confronted with a feral animal. "I would rather retire at a monastery."
"Why?" A smooth voice asked from his back right.
Rafael's spine went rigid.
That voice did not belong to anyone in the conversation circle. It was deeper, smoother, and close enough for Rafael to feel the man's warmth behind him.
Slowly, very slowly, he turned his head.
Gregoris stood just behind him. He wore the simple formal black of the Shadows, but on him it looked like incarnate sin. His ash-blonde hair was swept back. His steel-silver eyes were strangely unreadable.
Rafael swallowed, finding his little sliver of courage. "Because no one wants the most feared man in the Empire as a love interest."
Gregoris didn't flinch. Didn't even blink. He simply studied Rafael like the answer had already been carved into the space between them, waiting for him to catch up.
"That's not true," he said at last, voice low, almost casual. "I get plenty of offers."
"Then take them," Rafael replied, a little too quickly.
Gregoris hummed. "A hunt is more interesting."
And with that, like nothing had happened, he vanished, slipping back into the ether-lit edges of the room, as if he'd never been there at all.
Rafael stared at the space Gregoris had just vacated like it might still bite him.
"What was that?" he muttered, half to himself, half to Alexandra, who was already grinning into her wine glass like someone watching a very promising storm roll in.
"That," she said, utterly delighted, "was the beginning."
"I don't want a beginning," Rafael hissed. "I want distance. I want polite, vague interest at most. I want someone with… with hobbies. Not a body count."
Gabriel, lounging a little too comfortably beside Damian, gave him a look that was all false sympathy and terrible amusement. "You might get a garden," he offered. "If you survive the courting."
Max actually choked on his drink.
Alexandra, unbothered, leaned forward like a queen bestowing doom. "You're the only one left. Christian has Astana. Irina has Alexander. Max has someone on the way. You, dear Rafael, are the last unclaimed territory."
"I'm not territory!" Rafael protested.
Damian hummed, gaze drifting to the corner of the ballroom where Gregoris had vanished. "Tell him that. I'm sure he'll listen."
"Please, Your Majesty, tell me it's just a joke." Rafael almost begged.
Damian turned to look at him fully then, calm, composed, and faintly amused in the way only an emperor with far too much power and far too little mercy could be.
"A joke?" he echoed, golden eyes glinting beneath the chandelier's light. "Rafael, you're one of the most eligible omegas in the Empire. Handsome. Loyal. Stubborn enough to survive this court. Why would I joke?"
"Because he's insane," Rafael said, voice rising slightly. "He sleeps with his knives. He once took out five men before his coffee. He doesn't even blink when people scream."
"Neither do you," Alexandra murmured, ever the portrait of innocence with war in her eyes.
Rafael turned to her, scandalized. "That was once, and he was being inappropriate!"
He paused, grasping for arguments like a man outnumbered with no terrain advantage. "Do you realize my mother would kill me before handing me over to him? She has a curated vision of the perfect husband. Gentle. Mild. Preferably allergic to sharp objects."
Gabriel, thoughtful now, tilted his head slightly as if recalling something from the edges of classified memory. "Well… he is the Duke of Alamina. From the rebellion. It's not public, but Delphine surely knows the name."
Rafael blinked. "What?!"
"He's one of the two commanders of the Shadows," Damian added, lounging back like this was his favorite theater. "Did you think I wouldn't want his vote in Parliament?"
Rafael looked around, as if the air itself had betrayed him. "You made the bloodhound a duke?!"