CHAPTER 248: CHAPTER 248: HONEYMOON, APPARENTLY (2)

Victor closed the space between them with a single step. His scent hit Elias first, warm and dark, like crushed resin and smoke from cedar embers. Something old and familiar. Something that had always been said to be mine.

His hand came up, fingers sliding along Elias’s jaw before pinching gently at his chin, guiding, no, insisting, that Elias look at him.

Victor’s eyes smoldered with crimson, as if his rage was burning inside and he couldn’t let it out. Elias’s hazel eyes met that flame without wavering.

The ocean outside breathed against the shore, long and quiet. The curtains whispered along the floor. The room was warm, but the air between their bodies felt taut, almost sharp.

Victor’s voice was calm now. Darker for it.

"Look at me."

Elias did. His hazel eyes met Victor’s crimson ones, deep and molten like a coal banked just before it flares. Victor’s breath warmed the space between them, tinged with the cool salt of the sea he had walked through.

Elias’s disappointment settled in the air like warmth leaving a room.

"What do you want, Victor?" He asked without moving his gaze. "What more do you want from me when you have everything you want?"

The accusation and tone tore through Victor’s rage like iced water. Elias wasn’t mad or regretful; he was disappointed and there was something deeply wrong.

"Elias..."

Victor’s fingers were still on his chin, but they stiffened, as though an invisible blow had landed where words shouldn’t be able to strike.

Elias didn’t pull away. His voice stayed level, quiet, and unbearably steady.

"You want my body. My loyalty. My presence. My obedience," Elias said. "You already have those. But you’re still not satisfied. So tell me... what is it you’re trying to take now?"

Victor’s jaw moved once, a muscle pulling sharply beneath the skin. He looked, for a moment, less like a god and more like something built of instinct, raw and ancient.

"I am not trying to take from you," Victor said, though the words came slow, like they were being selected one by one. "I am trying to keep you."

Elias’s breath hitched, but his expression did not soften. "There is no difference if keeping means I stop being myself."

Victor’s eyes flickered. A low sound, barely a sound at all, more breath than voice, left his throat.

"You think I have everything I want," Victor said, and the sea breeze brushed past both of them as if drawn closer. "I don’t. I have you near me, but I do not have you with me."

Elias’s brows drew together, faint but real.

Victor continued, the words quieter now, less controlled. "You move beside me, but you are always ready to move without me. Your plans have layers I don’t see. You hold pieces of yourself apart, like you are preparing for the moment you need to escape."

Elias sighed, trying to calm down; he was raising his walls again, walls that he learned the last year to lower for the man... the god in front of him. He was used to doing everything on his own, and in recent months, he had let Victor do whatever he wanted; aside from his jokes about Victor’s possessiveness, he never complained. He had previously told Victor that he did not want to become lost in the vastness of his mate.

Elias lowered his eyes. "I’m sorry. I... didn’t want to put our child in danger."

Victor’s thumb brushed once along the line of Elias’s jaw, an unthinking movement, like his hands were trying to soften where his voice could not.

The apology didn’t soothe him.

If anything, it carved deeper.

"Elias," Victor said, and this time his voice wasn’t angry but something rougher, something scraped raw by fear. "I know you didn’t want to put her in danger. I know you would die before you let harm touch her. I know that." His fingers curled slightly, not tight, but steady. "But that’s not what hurt."

Elias’s lashes lowered, and his voice came quieter. "Then tell me what did."

"The fact that your first instinct was to handle it without me." Victor’s breath was warm against Elias’s cheek, too close, too steady. "That your mind moved to strategy before it moved to us."

Elias’s jaw tightened, but he forced himself not to look away.

"I..."

He stopped. The words tangled. The old instincts flared, the ones built from years of being small and unseen and weaponized. The ones that had taught him that survival meant alone.

Victor saw it happen. He felt the shift, the way Elias’s shoulders pulled inward, the breath he held too tightly.

He didn’t let it continue.

Victor’s hand moved to the side of Elias’s neck, fingers brushing the mark that bound them as mates.

Elias’s breath shivered once, barely visible.

Victor drew him closer with a steady pull that didn’t allow distance to exist anymore. Elias’s chest met Victor’s, the heat of him immediate, real, and impossible to ignore. The scent of resin and smoke wrapped around him like warm night air.

Elias didn’t resist.

Victor drew Elias closer, one arm around his back and the other resting at the base of his skull. Elias didn’t resist; he let himself be gathered in, the movement familiar in a way that made something in Victor’s chest tighten. The scent of smoke and warm resin lingered between them, earthy and steady rather than overwhelming.

The memory of their earlier conversations surfaced without warning. Elias had told him once that he feared being absorbed into something bigger than himself, becoming just one more piece of a god’s gravity. Victor had promised then to take only what Elias offered and to wait for the rest. He had kept that promise. He had marked Elias only when Elias said yes. He had waited.

And yet here they were again.

Not because Elias had lost trust. Not because anything between them had broken. But because something had pushed old fears to the surface. Victor understood that instinctively. He didn’t say it, and he didn’t let his expression change. The realization remained silent and contained. Poseidon. It could be dealt with later, away from Elias and away from the part of him that needed reassurance more than answers.

Victor lifted Elias’s face slightly, guiding him up for a kiss. It wasn’t urgent or possessive. Elias’s hand curled into the fabric at Victor’s chest, holding on rather than holding back. The ocean outside moved in its own rhythm, steady waves brushing the sand, and the curtains shifted with the breeze from the open doors.

When Victor finally drew back, he stayed close enough that their breaths still mingled. His voice was quieter now, almost gentle.

"You don’t have to carry things alone anymore," he said. "Not because you can’t. But because you don’t need to."

Elias exhaled slowly, his posture easing just enough to show that he heard him. Not fully relaxed yet, but no longer bracing.

The room felt warmer than before.