Bound by the Mark of Lies (BL) Chapter 384 - 378: Golden-eyed son

Nearly two months later, the imperial delivery wing, sealed and guarded by four elite Shadows, felt more like a war room than a dical chamber.

Inside, the lights were dimd to a soft glow, ward lines humming faintly along the walls as the air thickened with ether and heat. Gabriel lay on the delivery bed, half-covered by a thin linen sheet, his robe discarded long ago. Sweat slicked his skin, his dark hair damp and curling slightly at the edges. Every breath ca in sharp, shallow pulls. The pain didn’t co in waves anymore, it was like a tide, rciless and constant.

Damian sat on the edge of the bed, leaned close, and braced one hand tightly around Gabriel’s. The other moved in careful patterns across Gabriel’s abdon, ether channeled through his fingertips in slow pulses, soothing, numbing.

"Another push," the physician instructed, quiet but firm, from the foot of the bed.

Gabriel hissed through his teeth, the tension in his jaw sharp enough to cut. "If you say that one more ti..."

"I’ll make him stop," Damian offered flatly, voice low in his throat, though his hand didn’t stop. "Say the word."

"Shut up and don’t let go."

Damian’s golden eyes never left him. "I won’t."

The room slled of blood, pheromones, and ozone. dical staff moved with efficiency, silent except for clipped, coded phrases. The imperial physician had already dismissed two aides for tremors in their hands. The mont had long passed into sothing sacred. And dangerous.

Outside the warded chamber, deathly silence hung in the air like perfu.

Edward stood like a statue against the far wall, black coat immaculate, gloved hands behind his back. His eyes, nearly black, were fixed on the sealed door ahead of him. He hadn’t spoken in half an hour. He hadn’t moved in twenty minutes. But the two guards down the corridor were sweating like pigs in a slaughterhouse.

One tried to cough, Edward turned his head slightly.

He stopped breathing.

No one made a sound after that.

When a physician stepped out briefly to retrieve fresh linen, Edward’s gaze snapped to him like a blade unsheathed. "How far?"

The oga physician paled. "It’s progressing. There’s... no cause for alarm."

Edward didn’t blink. "He’s in labor. Everything is cause for alarm."

He didn’t raise his voice.

The door closed again behind the physician. Edward resud his silence, one foot tapping once, faintly, against the marble.

Inside, Gabriel’s fingers clawed into Damian’s wrist.

"Almost there," Damian murmured, his forehead nearly touching Gabriel’s. "You’re doing—"

"I’m dying." He exhaled, pushing with the contractions. "Remind again, why did I refuse the C-section?"

Damian didn’t flinch, he’d stopped reacting three contractions ago. His voice stayed maddeningly calm, like he wasn’t watching his entire soul fracture with every scream Gabriel bit back.

"Because you said, and I quote, ’If one more person tries to tell what my body can or cannot do, I’ll castrate them with a spoon.’"

Gabriel let out a breathless laugh that might’ve been a sob. "That sounds like ."

"It was you. Thirty-six hours ago. With a spoon."

Gabriel’s fingers tightened around his wrist again, and Damian didn’t even wince; he welcod the pain. It ant Gabriel was still there.

"I swear to the gods," Gabriel gritted out, voice cracked, "if this child looks entirely like you after all this pain, then soone is even more spiteful than ."

Damian’s mouth twitched, but his voice was steady, laced with sothing older than devotion. "Then he’ll be beautiful, dangerous, and impossible to ignore. Like his other parent."

Gabriel didn’t reply. Another contraction stole the breath from his lungs and drove his spine off the cushions. Damian caught him, both arms bracing him upright as Gabriel shook in his hold.

It went on like that: hours of ether-laced murmurs, bone-deep exhaustion, and a level of focus that turned ti to fog.

Then...

A cry.

Thin. Wet. Loud.

Gabriel didn’t hear it first, he felt it. Like the snap of a thread pulled too tight, the world exhaled around him and left him weightless.

Damian’s hands shifted to steady him, his body still a fortress behind Gabriel’s left shoulder as the dical team moved fast and practiced.

The room blurred. Gabriel blinked against the sweat dripping into his lashes.

"Is he...?" He whispered, voice hoarse.

"He’s here," Damian said quietly, reverently.

And then, they brought the child forward.

Small. Flushed. Alive.

The wails had gentled to soft, uneven hiccups, and as Gabriel reached out, the weight placed in his arms felt like the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth.

The baby opened his eyes for the first ti.

And Gabriel stilled.

Golden. Brilliant, impossible gold, Damian’s eyes, exactly, burning in a face too small to understand what it had already conquered.

Gabriel let out sothing between a laugh and a gasp, curling protectively around the tiny fra, and then he stopped.

The shift in him was imdiate.

Laughter cut off. His expression stilled, no longer wonder, but a kind of slow, dawning horror masked under restraint. Panic didn’t look like much on Gabriel. It didn’t have to. The stillness was worse.

Damian felt it first, how Gabriel’s arms froze. Then the way his breathing hitched, shallow and sharp. His own body tensed in response, every muscle ready to shield, to fight, to burn if needed.

The dical staff had barely begun to murmur when Damian’s voice landed like a sword through silence.

"What’s wrong?"

Gabriel didn’t answer at first. His fingers hovered above the baby’s cheek, not quite touching. His gaze locked on those impossible golden eyes as if they were counting down to sothing he wasn’t ready to face.

"Damian..." he whispered. "Didn’t you say your gold eyes aren’t inheritable?"

The words were too soft. Too exact.

One of the physicians froze. Another took a sharp breath but said nothing.

Damian didn’t blink.

He lowered his gaze to his son, their son, whose small golden eyes had been watching him with unnerving calm for soone born less than a minute ago. Then, slowly, those eyes drifted shut again, lashes fanning across impossibly soft skin, and the child let out a quiet, barely-there moan, like he was already tired of all this attention.