Sometime in the middle of the night.

Behind Neville, pressing against him in an intimate embrace, ’Grayson’ opened his eyes. His eyes glinted against the dim light, gazing at Neville before him with possessive tenderness and barely restrained hunger from the sheer skin-to-skin contact.

"Still so defenseless," he murmured, his voice a low rumble. "Even after all this time, you still have no idea of what’s happening around you."

’Grayson’ began to extract himself from around Neville’s body carefully. Neville stirred slightly from the moment, a small furrow appearing between his brows as the warmth behind him faded.

’Grayson’ paused for a second and focused on doing something.

Soon, his pheromones began to move in a way that was no longer that overwhelming and concentrated on filling the room with its scent. A soft but subtle, gentle current of fresh water pheromones washed over Neville, carrying with it an almost addictive quality of assurance and comfort.

It was an expert manipulation of pheromones that Neville himself had never learned—perhaps didn’t even know was possible. The furrow between Neville’s brows smoothed out, and he sank into a deeper sleep. One hand still curled around the pillow where Grayson’s warmth had been.

’Grayson’ watched this for a moment longer with a slightly pained expression on his face.

Then he came out of the blanket, bare naked,d and rose from the bed. He made sure that his bare feet were not making a sound against the floor as he walked.

He reached the front of the walk-in cabinet, and the doors slid open automatically at a touch. It revealed rows of carefully arranged clothing.

His hand bypassed the business suits and dress shirts, reaching instead for a dark robe—a fluffy bathrobe that looked out of place among the elegance of everything else inside it.

As he pulled the robe from its hanger to cover himself, something moved beneath his skin.

His tail twitched involuntarily, having shrunk to a more manageable size but still very much there. His wings, similarly shrunk but not gone, rustled against his back.

"Troublesome," ’Grayson’ muttered, attempting to shrug into the robe.

The fabric caught on his wings, bunching awkwardly across his shoulder blades. Meanwhile, his tail seemed determined to poke through the gap at the back, creating a rather undignified bulge in the plush material.

For several long moments, engaged in a silent wrestling match with a bathrobe.

The bathrobe won the first two rounds.

Finally, through careful maneuvering and sheer stubbornness, ’Grayson’ managed to arrange the robe in a way that concealed his beast features while still allowing him to move freely. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and his lips twitched in amusement.

"He would laugh," ’Grayson’ said to no one in particular. "If he’s awake, he would definitely laugh until he couldn’t breathe."

The thought seemed to please him rather than annoy him. He secured the robe’s belt and made his way out of the bedroom, through the living area, and up the staircase to the study.

The penthouse was designed for a man who valued both luxury and privacy. The bedroom opened into a long hallway leading to a kitchen at the end and faced a spacious living area straight ahead.

The stairs were waiting on the side of the living room to avoid hindering the view of the floor-to-ceiling window. It would lead to the second floor, which in turn connected to a series of rooms. But hidden in one of these rooms was a study that doubled as a private command center.

’Grayson’ walked around these silently in the dark.

The door to the study recognized his biometrics and slid open. Inside, the room was dominated by a curved desk that faced another wall of windows, below which sat the main control console for the penthouse’s central system. Screens flickered to life at his approach, displaying various feeds and data streams.

’Grayson’ settled into the chair and began to work.

His fingers moved across the interface with ease, pulling up surveillance feeds and system logs. He knew that Grayson had finally fitted the penthouse with state-of-the-art security systems. There were cameras and AI robots that covered every angle, sensors monitored every door and window, and it recorded everything with unfailing accuracy.

All of which was about to become a problem.

’Grayson’ pulled up the surveillance archives, his silver eyes scanning the timestamps like a hawk. There, he found the recordings of all of his interactions with Neville in the past 3 days. All of it was captured in real time.

His jaw tightened.

Although he found everything very special and endearing, even memorable, he had to make this grave choice.

"Even if you and I are the same," he said softly in a cold tone. "I still don’t want to share my moments with him with you."

His fingers danced across the control, initiating a cascade of commands that would have made most security specialists weep.

"Not with how you barely manage to keep him by your side." He said with grave finality.

The screens flickered once, twice, and then went dark. When they came back online, the surveillance archives showed nothing but static for the past twelve hours.

The self-destruct protocol had been thorough. Not a single frame of footage remained, not a single audio clip, not even the metadata that might have left a trace that something had been recorded there in the first place.

’Grayson’ sat back in the chair with a satisfied expression. The moment Grayson woke up at the end of this rut with no memory of what had happened, he would find nothing in the surveillance. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

This was how it should be. Grayson thought, but also pursed his lips with a slightly troubled expression. But this would trouble Vee from explaining later.

Yet, ’Grayson’ had the audacity to shrug casually, saying, "He would be fine."

But ’Grayson’ wasn’t quite finished yet.

He turned his attention to the work that had been piling up during Grayson’s rut.

Maxwell Corporation wouldn’t stop running just because its CEO was not available. There were reports to review, contracts to approve, and a concerning number of messages from various department heads who seemed convinced that the world would end if they didn’t get immediate feedback on their latest proposals.

’Grayson’ handled them all with efficiency that bordered on ruthless.

Approve.

Deny.

Leave for further discussion.

His decisions came quickly and certainly.