Bound by the Mark of Lies (BL)-Chapter 340 - 334: For our child

"Then for what," he asked, his voice cold enough to frost the air between them, "if not for you?"

Damian’s lips parted, but no easy answer came. He didn’t look away, though, just let the silence stretch between them like a tether straining between two cliff edges, both too stubborn to fall.

Then, after a moment, softer, quieter, but not less firm:

"For our child," he said. "Let Gregoris and Alexander handle it."

Gabriel’s eyes narrowed; he hated how capable Damian was. Hated how calm he remained, how easily he could thread words together like silk and steel and loop them around Gabriel’s throat, soft enough to sound like care, firm enough to control him.

He hated that it worked.

Because Damian didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t beg or demand or plead. He just knew how to hold him, not physically, no, but where it mattered.

Gabriel looked away for a fraction of a second, jaw tight, chest hollow with everything he hadn’t said since the moment he saw blood on a white handkerchief and thought, this is how it ends.

"Just stay with me, will you?" Damian said, and the words weren’t sharp this time.

They were soft.

So soft, they broke through the tension like breath fogging on glass.

Then Damian reached out again, slower this time, weaker, his movements not as steady as before and slid his fingers between Gabriel’s.

Cold. Too cold.

But real.

Alive.

Gabriel’s gaze flicked back down to the hands between them, to the way Damian’s grip tightened with insistence. A grounding touch, not to anchor himself, but Gabriel. ƒгeewёbnovel.com

A pause stretched between them.

Then Gabriel nodded, just once, and tightened his hold in return.

"I’m not going anywhere," he murmured.

—

Two rooms away, the sound of boots striking polished stone echoed with sharp clarity, too coordinated and deliberate to be routine, and the royal guards stationed along the corridor barely had time to register the change before their weapons were removed, their orders revoked, and their authority reduced to silence.

There was no shouting. No drawn blades. Just the quiet, devastating inevitability of protocol collapsing.

They stood still, backs straight, uniforms pressed, watching as the very corridor they had been trained to defend was turned over.

The doors at the far end opened in perfect synchrony with Edward’s final clearance seal dropping, and in that instant, the entire hallway changed. The world they knew, the polished veneer of royal protocol, was gone, replaced in a heartbeat by the colder, older order of the Shadows.

They didn’t march in.

They replaced.

Not a single step out of rhythm, not a single word spoken, they filled the space like darkness reclaiming territory it had only ever loaned. Their black field gear was reinforced with ether-threaded armor, their faces blank, unreadable beneath tactical hoods, and every movement held the calm weight of men and women who did not need permission to kill.

The hallway, once ceremonial, now felt like a sealed tomb.

And at its center strode Gregoris, his coat still singed from the unmarked teleportation jump that had brought him back into the palace without clearance, without corridor confirmation, and without waiting. The ether pulse hadn’t even settled against his shoulders when he entered, followed closely by Edward, silent and sharp-eyed, and Alexander, whose presence carried less heat and more precision, like the breath before a sword strike.

The two remaining lieutenants of the royal guard hesitated when they saw them, only just beginning to understand what had changed.

Gregoris didn’t slow.

"You are relieved," he said, his voice quiet and absolute.

They saluted as if that might save them and stepped aside with the soundless deference of men who knew this wasn’t a matter of rank anymore, it was survival.

"They’ve been moved to the training compound," Alexander said, his voice level, unaffected, as if he were reporting on the weather and not the arrest of the entire royal guard. "The entire shift. No exceptions. They surrendered their weapons and communication bands. No one leaves until cleared."

Gregoris’s gaze swept across the corridor with surgical calm, his eyes flicking from one retreating figure to the next, memorizing expressions, posture, gait—looking for hesitation, guilt, the twitch of someone who thought they might still walk away from this. He watched like a man cataloging targets, not comrades.

"Where is Decker?" he asked.

Edward, already scrolling through the master log, didn’t flinch. "He’s on a mission with Duke Maximilian," he said, his tone clipped, efficient. "The northern border inspection. Standard perimeter evaluation. I’ve sent him the news. I expect him to appear any minute now."

Gregoris said nothing.

He simply tilted his head slightly, expression unreadable, and continued watching the last of the guards being escorted out of the wing with Shadows flanking them on either side, silent escorts, but deadly ones. No one spoke. No one resisted. That was the part that made it worse.

Alexander crossed his arms loosely, his eyes flicking to Edward without shifting his stance. "He won’t be happy."

"Whenever they planned it," Gregoris said, voice low, sharp, and certain, "they knew Decker wouldn’t be here."

And before anyone could answer, before Edward could even finish the new pulse scan he had triggered on the north gate security stream, two Shadows materialized at the edge of the hall, their cloaks still shimmering faintly from the gate jump, and between them stood Maximilian Claymore, looking slightly winded and absolutely furious, one arm locked around the upper chest of Leslie Decker, who was trying, and failing, to free himself with the sort of force that made the air crackle around him.

"What the fuck happened?!" Decker roared, his voice like a storm shattering protocol with every syllable, as he twisted in Max’s grip and tried to surge forward—toward the sealed wing, toward the Shadows, toward something he hadn’t seen but felt, too late and too far from the place he’d sworn to protect.

Gregoris didn’t move.

Max held firm, one hand braced against Decker’s shoulder, his own brow furrowed and jaw set with the tension of someone who hadn’t slept since the report had reached them mid-air.

"Stand down, Les," Max said under his breath, his voice iron behind the calm, each word wrapped in command, not because he doubted Leslie’s fury, but because he knew it would destroy more than it could protect. "They’ve already sealed it. You barge in like this, you’ll give Gabriel more reasons to think someone inside was complicit."

"Someone from inside was complicit!" Leslie spat, his voice raw and hoarse, too loud for the hall but too honest to be silenced. "And I will kill every one of them with my own hands."

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