Chapter 154: Chapter 154: Marriage and moving corpses
"So... about my work..." Elias trailed off, not sure how to make the question sound anything but awkward.
"Yes?" Victor’s head tilted, a few strands of dark hair catching the lamplight. His crimson eyes glinted with the kind of mischief that belonged more to a spoiled cat than to the executioner of gods.
Elias exhaled through his nose. "What do I do now? Go back to the lab, or just stay in your arms forever?"
Victor’s mouth curved, warm and faintly dangerous. "Well, the latter is far more pleasurable for me," he said without shame, "but I’ve already had Stone transfer your work to the Numen labs. If you want to go back to it, it’s there. Your PhD stands as well... Stone signed on as your academic guardian partly because he likes you, partly to spite Jonathan."
Elias lifted a brow in mock surprise. "Or because he wanted someone to exploit."
"That too." Victor’s thumb brushed an idle circle at Elias’s waist. "But he can’t anymore. Not without my permission."
Elias looked at him for a beat, weighing the words, then huffed a quiet laugh. "So my work’s still mine, but now it lives under your roof."
"It lives where you’re safe," Victor corrected gently. "What you do with it is still your choice."
The weight of that landed heavier than Elias expected. For a moment he simply sat there, fingers absently tracing the edge of Victor’s ring. "I spent years trying to claw out a space to stand on my own. Now I don’t even know what ’on my own’ means."
Victor tilted his forehead against his, the contact light but steady. "Then start where you left off. Work if you want. Stay here if you need to. Just... decide because you want to, not because Jonathan Clarke wrote it into a ledger."
Elias’s mouth twitched, the beginning of a smile creeping through despite himself. "You make it sound so simple."
Victor’s crimson eyes softened. "It is simple," he murmured. "Hard, but simple. And for once, the hard part isn’t yours alone to carry."
Elias let out a long breath, the tension in his shoulders easing by degrees. "All right," he said finally. "Maybe I’ll try working again, under my own name, this time."
Victor’s smile sharpened, but the warmth never left it. "Good. That aside..." his thumb made a slow circle against Elias’s hip, "...we have something as important as that to discuss."
Elias reached for his now-cold tea and turned to Victor with a raised brow. "What?"
"Our marriage."
Elias inhaled at exactly the wrong moment and sprayed a thin mist of tea across the arm of the chair. He coughed, eyes wide. "What? Do you have any chill?"
Victor’s expression didn’t flicker. If anything, the hint of a smirk at the corner of his mouth deepened. "No," he said simply. "You told me you love me. I don’t do half-measures."
Elias grabbed a napkin from the desk, blotting at the tea, his brown eyes narrowing as if that could restore the gravity in the room. "You’re supposed to start with something like ’let’s go on a trip’ or ’move in together,’ not..." he waved his hand vaguely at the space between them, "marriage."
Victor tilted his head, crimson eyes glinting like banked fire. "We already live together," he said evenly. "You’re already under my protection. This is only a formality."
"A formality?" Elias echoed, still coughing a little. "You’re impossible."
"Impossible, yes," Victor agreed, the smirk softening to something almost earnest. "The other option is to talk about you being my soulmate."
Elias stared at him over the rim of the mug, as if that word had a weight all its own. "I prefer marriage..." he muttered, setting the cup down before he could spill again. "And here I thought you’d be more patient after you have me."
Victor’s laugh came low and velvet-dark, the sound brushing along Elias’s skin like a promise. "Patience?" he murmured, leaning in until his forehead almost touched Elias’s. "I’ve waited centuries for something like you. What makes you think patience survived the moment you said you loved me?"
Elias tried for dry but it came out softer, his eyes sliding away. "Because you’re supposed to be a god. All self-control and thunderclouds."
"I am," Victor said simply. "But you’re not a storm I want to keep at a distance." His thumb traced a slow circle at Elias’s hip again. "Marriage, soulmate...call it what you want. I’m not pushing you to the altar tomorrow. I’m telling you I’m not going anywhere, and I’m done pretending otherwise."
The words settled between them, heavy but not suffocating.
Elias huffed a breath, eyes flicking up at him again. "You really don’t know how to do normal, do you?"
Victor’s mouth curved faintly. "Normal is for mortals. I’m offering you mine."
"You really are dramatic..."
Victor’s thumb grazed along his jaw, a quiet retort already forming, when the door opened without a knock.
Ashwin stepped inside. His usual lazy grin was gone, his phone still in his hand like he’d just come straight from a call. "Matteo’s corpse moved again," he said flatly. "Something’s wrong with it."
The temperature in the room seemed to shift with the words. Victor’s palm stayed at Elias’s waist, but his gaze slid toward Ashwin, crimson irises narrowing into something older and colder.
"Moved?" he repeated, voice low, the velvet edge now carrying steel.
Ashwin nodded once, all traces of his usual smugness stripped away. "Security feed picked it up and GPS sent alarms to our monitoring center. He is walking again; this time he’s heading south... toward the facility where we stashed the alpha that attacked Elias last time."
Victor leaned back in the chair, his hands still firm at Elias’s waist. The fire in his eyes coiled tighter, a quiet glow behind the amused curve of his mouth. "Now this is interesting..." His thumb made a slow pass over Elias’s hip, as if to ground him even as he spoke. "Catch it. I want the cadaver brought to me."
Ashwin tilted his head slightly. "Alive?"
Victor’s smile widened a fraction, but it was the kind of smile that made even a god shiver. "Whatever state it prefers to arrive in. I want to see it myself."
Ashwin gave a single sharp nod and pulled his phone from his pocket, already flicking through contacts. "Consider it done." He paused, flicking a glance at Elias. "You’ll stay here?"
Victor didn’t answer right away. His thumb traced another slow arc over Elias’s side, a promise and a warning in one. "He stays," he said at last, still looking at Ashwin. "No one touches him. Not while I’m gone."
Ashwin’s brows rose at the implicit while but he didn’t comment. "Understood."
Elias shifted slightly on Victor’s lap, fingers curling against the fabric of his shirt. "What’s happening?" he asked quietly.
Victor finally looked back at him, the molten edge in his eyes softening just enough. "Something that should be dead is walking toward what belongs to me," he said simply. "I’ll find out why."
"Can I see him?" Elias asked.
"Sure."