CHAPTER 83: CHAPTER 83: GREENHOUSE

Victor didn’t let go.

Not when Elias shifted in his lap with the squirming grace of a very annoyed cat. Not when Elias sighed dramatically into his collarbone. Not even when Elias muttered something obscene in three languages, one of which Victor was reasonably sure hadn’t been spoken since the first god was murdered by the second.

Instead, he tucked the blanket around them both like he had any right to be that gentle and pressed his lips to Elias’s temple in a kiss that lingered just long enough to feel real.

Elias huffed. "You’re enjoying this way too much."

Victor made a pleased noise low in his throat. "Naturally. I have a warm, snarky omega in my arms, a bed that smells like him, and at least twelve hours of uninterrupted possession. I’d be a fool not to."

"You are a fool."

"Ah," Victor sighed, content, "but I’m your fool."

Elias made a strangled noise and tried, again, to escape, but his body, traitorous and sore, refused to cooperate. Victor simply adjusted his hold, one hand resting against Elias’s lower back like he could feel every bruised nerve he’d left behind and didn’t regret a single one of them.

"You’re not going to let me move, are you?" Elias said flatly.

Victor tilted his head, considering. "No."

Elias exhaled slowly and sank a little deeper into the warmth pressed around him. "Of course not."

There was a short pause where Victor had the grace to shut up.

Then, with the kind of weary dramatics only Elias could manage after being emotionally and physically demolished by a smug immortal, he muttered, "What cosmic debt am I repaying? It’s not enough that you’re a dominant alpha with at least twice my stamina, no, you had to be a god too."

Victor made a sound deep in his chest, somewhere between a hum and a laugh, pleased and unrepentant. "For times your stamina, if we’re being accurate."

"I wasn’t asking for clarification."

"You’re welcome anyway."

—

Victor didn’t carry him like a man in love.

He carried him like a spoiled prince cradling his most expensive possession, a rare artifact made of silk and venom, precious only because it bit back. Elias didn’t bother protesting. He’d tried once, near the hallway, but Victor had just pressed a kiss to his hairline and said, "You’ll survive being adored."

Now he was here. Draped in a ridiculous velvet throw like some feverish noblewoman in convalescence, lounging in a gilded chaise placed, strategically, Elias suspected, in the center of one of Victor’s three indoor greenhouses.

Because of course, the man had three.

This one looked like a cathedral swallowed by nature. The glass walls stretched high, streaked with sun and mist, vines curling like lazy fingers around the frame. Bluebells and orchids spilled from hanging baskets, and there were cushions, actual, color-coordinated cushions, scattered artfully like someone had planned this whole morning down to the way light would hit Elias’s face.

Victor lounged nearby like a satisfied deity surveying his garden. He hadn’t said much since they entered, aside from: "This one’s my favorite. The humidity’s good for your skin." Which might’ve been sarcasm. Or affection. With Victor, the line was always disturbingly thin.

Elias didn’t move.

Not because he couldn’t, though his legs still throbbed with post-divine consequences, but because Adam had just arrived. And Adam, with all the elegance of a private butler trained and forgetting his panic from two days ago, was now unfolding a lacquered tray and placing it gently on the marble table beside Elias.

Coffee. Fresh. Rich enough to make the air itself curl with promise. A porcelain cup. A carafe. A second carafe of some glowing golden liquid that was probably juice. An absurdly delicate breakfast: honey-drenched toast, warm berries, and something folded like a crepe and dusted with ether-laced sugar.

Elias eyed the tray like it might explode if he blinked wrong.

Adam, as always, was composed to the point of eerie. His pale blue eyes flicked between Elias and Victor, expression carefully neutral, but Elias caught it. That faint softening at the corners of his mouth, the flicker of something dangerously close to fondness.

Victor, for his part, was doing absolutely nothing to deserve kindness. He was sprawled across a wicker lounger like he’d just returned from conquering something divine, legs half-crossed, shirt open, radiating smugness in soft, decadent waves. The bastard looked positively regal in the morning light.

"Your breakfast," Adam said mildly. "And your coffee, strong, as requested."

Elias narrowed his eyes. "I never requested it."

"No," Adam agreed. "But you need it."

Victor chuckled low in his throat. "He’s adjusting well, isn’t he?"

Adam’s gaze lingered on Elias for a breath longer than necessary. Then he gave the smallest nod. "Better than I thought he would."

Elias raised a brow. "Are you two having a secret support group behind my back?"

"Not secret," Victor said smoothly. "Adam was worried about you. I wasn’t."

"That’s because you have the emotional range of a mythological disaster."

"Which is precisely why I delegate the subtleties to him." Victor lifted his chin toward Adam, who accepted the accusation with the quiet dignity of a man long resigned to cleaning up divine messes.

Elias raised an eyebrow. "That explains a lot."

Adam didn’t blink. "You’re not wrong."

Victor, looking far too pleased with himself for someone being dragged through emotional mud, leaned back with a self-satisfied sigh. "See? Division of labor. I smite. He smooths. You survive."

Elias opened his mouth, presumably to threaten him with something sharp and domestic, when the door to the greenhouse creaked open.

A man entered with the quiet precision of someone who had spent decades perfecting silence. Bald, dressed in a black three-piece suit that fit like it was tailored by memory and spite, and wearing an expression carved straight from marble, he came to a stop just past the first arch of creeping vines.

Victor didn’t look at him, but his voice changed, barely. A fraction. Enough for Elias to notice.

"Report."

The man inclined his head. "Jonathan Clarke is at the main gate."

Elias went still.

The man continued, unbothered by the shift in temperature. "He’s requesting permission to enter. He says he wishes to speak with his son."

Victor still didn’t look up. "And you told him?"

"That he was occupied."

Victor hummed.

The air had gone thick now, viscous with something unspoken. Not power. Not rage. Just... calculation.

Elias hadn’t moved. He hadn’t breathed, not properly, not since the name had landed like a curse in the space between them.

Adam, ever tactful, stepped back just enough to remove himself from the blast radius.

Victor finally tilted his head, red eyes sharp and bright in the greenery, and glanced at Elias with that awful, terrible patience that only gods and bastards in love ever mastered.

"Do you want to see him?"