Chapter 239: Chapter 239: Get out! [Win-Win]

Cecil stared at him.

Gabriel lifted a brow. "Well?"

"That is not a real option."

"No," Gabriel agreed. "It is an educational fantasy."

Cecil leaned back in the chair with the expression of a man deeply insulted by the fact that his family kept offering him technically available paths to death and calling it advice. "He is a reborn warlord."

"Yes."

"He is only partially Arik on his more merciful days."

"Yes."

"And he is still somehow afraid of you being angry with him."

Gabriel’s mouth moved at one corner. "That part is healthy."

"That part is insane."

"That part," Gabriel said, "suggests his instincts continue to function despite everything else."

Cecil exhaled through his nose.

Arik - Goliath - whatever combination of elder brother, imperial heir, ancient violence, and beautifully maintained social menace he had settled into this decade - was not a man one corrected casually. Not unless one had a death wish, diplomatic immunity, or Gabriel. The fact that Arik could stand in council radiating civilized ruin, look at grown nobles as if they were decorative inconveniences, and still go visibly more careful around Gabriel when he thought he had pushed too far was one of the palace’s more reassuring structural truths.

Not because it made Arik harmless.

Because it proved there remained at least one person whose disappointment he considered a genuine threat.

"You say that," Cecil said, "as if you don’t enjoy it."

Gabriel picked up his tea again. "I enjoy many things."

"That was not a denial."

"No."

Cecil looked at him, then away again, because unfortunately there was no arguing with reality and even less with Gabriel when he was calmly inhabiting it.

Arik had never feared punishment in the childish sense. He had outgrown that - or perhaps never possessed it properly in this life. But Gabriel’s anger was different. Gabriel’s anger had never needed volume to do damage. It conveyed disappointment with surgical precision, and for someone like Arik, who could tolerate hostility, suspicion, and even political hatred with bored contempt, disappointment from the wrong person cut a completely different path.

Especially from Gabriel.

Especially because some part of Arik - some part as old as Goliath and some part painfully, embarrassingly his mother’s son - still wanted to be looked at by Gabriel and not found wanting.

Which, really, was only fair.

Everyone in this family had at least one unreasonable terror, and Gabriel’s disapproval had long since earned a place among the more practical ones. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

Cecil folded one arm over his middle. "You do realize that if you were slightly less terrifying, palace life would become more efficient."

Gabriel looked at him over the rim of the cup. "No. It would become sloppier. Damian would revert to his old habit of disposing of people who annoy him in full view of the ether-lit corridors; Edward would finally have the heart attack he has been postponing out of professionalism, and Arik would probably take an armored car, a security convoy, and half a tactical unit to Wrohan to collect his revenge personally."

Cecil was silent for a beat.

Then, with visible reluctance, "That is... annoyingly plausible."

Gabriel lowered the cup to its saucer with a soft click. "I know."

It was, unfortunately, true.

Gabriel’s terror did something very specific to the palace. It kept the imperial residence functioning like a seat of government instead of a beautifully funded crime scene. It kept Damian civilized in the narrow practical sense that there were fewer bodies bleeding onto polished black stone under the ether lamps. It kept Edward from collapsing in the middle of a scheduling crisis with six ministers waiting on encrypted comm lines and three departments asking for sign-off on energy allocation. And it kept Arik - who was heir, warlord, and entirely too capable of turning personal offense into military-grade logistics - from treating every insult like a border incident waiting for an excuse.

Cecil leaned back in the chair. "You say that like you’re proud."

Gabriel’s expression stayed serene. "I say that like I prefer infrastructure."

"That is a diplomatic way of describing domestic intimidation."

"That," Gabriel said, "is a dramatic way of describing competent imperial management."

Cecil looked at him flatly. "I’ve watched you reduce senior officials to apologizing in front of interactive ether displays because they chose the wrong tone."

"Yes," Gabriel said. "And look how much more carefully they speak afterward."

The worst part was that, again, he was not wrong.

"Now," Gabriel said, leaning back into his chair with the air of a man about to become either extremely useful or historically regretful, "about your actual issue."

Cecil, who had spent the last several minutes being professionally disassembled by his mother and was therefore suspicious on instinct, narrowed his eyes. "That tone suggests danger."

"That tone," Gabriel said, "suggests biology."

That was worse.

Gabriel lifted his cup again, then seemed to think better of trying to combine tea and this conversation at the same time. He set it back down on the saucer with careful elegance.

"Alphas can be marked anywhere," he said. "There is no requirement, as there is for omegas, that the scent gland be involved. If Frederik wants it, you are not constrained to the most politically visible option."

Cecil went very still.

Gabriel watched him with the kind of desperate amusement only a parent could achieve when they realized they were about to say something deeply practical that would also, inevitably, ruin the next hour of their own peace.

"You still can do it," Gabriel said. "And keep it private until someone in this house decides to conduct a proper marriage with something resembling order."

For one glorious second, the room went silent.

Then Cecil grinned like a man who had just been handed ammunition, legal justification, and a route around the fortress wall all at once.

Gabriel saw it happen in real time.

Cecil rose from the chair with appalling speed, already halfway back to life, purpose, and scandal. "I’ll mark him somewhere nobody can see, then."

Gabriel’s eyes narrowed.

Cecil, because he had inherited more than enough audacity from both sides of the family and had no intention of using it responsibly, added with perfect sincerity, "His dick, for example."

Gabriel closed his eyes.

With the profound and ancient exhaustion of a parent who had spent decades holding together an empire powered by ether, budgets, military strategy, and sheer personal will, only to find that his own son remained fully capable of reducing him to this.

"This," Gabriel said into the silence, "will be my villain origin story."

Cecil looked deeply pleased with himself. "That seems excessive."

Gabriel opened his eyes and looked at him with the flat, beautifully restrained stare of a man deciding whether murder would count as corrective parenting if done tastefully enough.

"You came to me," Gabriel said, "for wisdom."

"Yes."

"I gave you a medically and politically viable option."

"Yes."

"And your first instinct was to say that sentence in my office."

Cecil considered that. "It was honest."

"It was a sentence that should have died in your throat."

"That feels anti-innovation."

Gabriel gave a short, disbelieving laugh and leaned back into the chair again, one hand briefly covering his mouth as if to prevent either further amusement or immediate violence. The ether panels in the walls cast pale light across the office, too elegant by half for a conversation now containing the phrase ’his dick’ in relation to dynastic management.

"God," Gabriel muttered, not even pretending neutrality anymore. "You really are Damian’s child."

"That is rich coming from the man who just solved the problem."

"I solved the political problem," Gabriel said. "What you choose to do with that information is what will later be used against me in family history."

Cecil’s grin did not diminish in the slightest. If anything, it sharpened. The problem with Cecil was that he had never needed much encouragement where Frederik was concerned. The worse problem was that, once encouraged, he moved with horrifying speed.

Gabriel saw the trajectory instantly.

"No," he said.

Cecil paused at the door. "No what?"

"No leaving this office and going to Frederik with the expression you currently have."

Cecil looked entirely unrepentant. "I’m inspired."

"I can see that. It’s the problem."

"Do you want me to be less honest?"

"I want you to be less feral."

"That seems anti-family."

Gabriel laughed again, helplessly, this time with a short, sharp sound that carried just enough disbelief to feel justified. "Get out."

Cecil wisely did.