Chapter 286: Chapter 286: It’s about time

“Trevor,” he drawled, voice lazy with morning calm. “You do realize it’s not even eight? Someone better be dead.”

“Give it time,” Trevor replied smoothly.

Dax hummed, amused despite himself. “So. What catastrophe have you engineered now?”

There was a moment of silence, and the heartbeat stretched longer than necessary.

“Lucas is pregnant.”

The fork stilled completely.

That was the smallest glitch in the smooth control. But Chris felt it through the bond like the faint quake beneath solid ground.

Joy mixed with hunger and an ache he never allowed breath.

Then Dax smiled with warmth, his mask sliding back into place like it had never left.

“…it’s about time,” he said lightly.

On the other end of the line, Trevor sputtered. “That’s it?!”

“Please,” Dax replied. “I’ve seen how you look at him. You’d declare war on the sun if it made him squint. I was only waiting for your self-control to shatter.”

Chris watched him.

Trevor kept talking, his voice laced with a dry sort of wonder, as though he still didn’t quite believe the words “Lucas is pregnant” belonged to him. He rambled about timing, about how long they had both waited, and about fear and joy and inevitability tangled together. Throughout it all, Dax responded in the same way that people had come to expect from him: lightly amused and composed. He offered congratulations wrapped in teasing, reassurance hidden beneath sarcasm, and the kind of warmth that could be mistaken for arrogance if one didn’t know where to look.

Chris knew where to look.

Under the humor and the unbothered calm, something else pulsed. A quiet longing that moved beneath Dax’s skin like a tide, old and instinctive and aching in a way kings were never meant to show. Through the bond it felt like warmth pressed too tightly against his ribs, something tender and dangerously sincere.

When the call ended, Dax set the phone aside as if he had merely discussed legislation rather than life, and he picked up his fork again with dignified ease. He emptied the space of any visible reaction with the discipline of a man who spent his life mastering his own storms.

He crossed the room without speaking and slid himself into Dax’s lap, simply because he could.

He just wrapped an arm around Chris’s waist, pressing his face briefly into Chris’s shoulder like he was grounding a tender wound before it could bleed.

“I’m sorry.” Chris said, looking out of the window. He couldn’t see the disappointment on Dax’s face. Chris wasn’t ready for a child; he barely accepted his bond, his husband, and his new life just a few months ago.

Dax didn’t let that apology settle long enough to hurt him.

His hand came up slowly, and because of their height difference, he had to bend just a little, closing the distance like gravity was helping him. His fingers slipped beneath Chris’s chin, tilting his face up.

“Look at me,” he murmured, his deep voice rumbling through his chest before it even reached the air.

Chris did.

And it was ridiculous how small he felt and yet how safe. Sitting on Dax’s lap meant he was pulled against a torso like a wall, solid and massive, broad enough that he could have disappeared into it if he wanted to. Dax’s arms wrapped around him effortlessly, like holding him required no effort from a body built for violence and war. Chris barely reached Dax’s collarbone like this. Standing, he usually landed somewhere around Dax’s sternum; here he was practically surrounded.

If Dax chose, he could pick him up with one arm and carry him away without breaking stride.

The fact that he never would was part of why Chris trusted him.

There was no frustration in Dax’s eyes. Only that impossible depth of affection that made his gaze feel like a place Chris could rest inside.

“There is nothing to apologize for,” Dax said quietly, one thumb brushing along Chris’s jaw in a slow, grounding stroke. His hand was so much larger it practically framed half his face. “Nothing.”

Through the bond came warmth. Through intimacy came something more primal: that quiet hum of restrained instinct, powerful and caged and utterly obedient to him. Chris felt it in the breadth of the chest pressed against his back, in the rise and fall of lungs much larger than his, and in the heart that beat like it belonged to a creature bigger than one man had any right to be.

“My biology is loud, not my judgment,” Dax continued, dry humor softening the truth. “Yes, instinct screams for heirs when the bond is secure. When I look at you, it imagines tiny versions of your stubbornness and my temper terrorizing the palace.” A faint smile appeared. “But instinct doesn’t rule me. I do. And I will never choose instinct over you.”

He dipped his head until his forehead rested gently against Chris’s temple. The effect was overwhelming: the sheer size of him, the scent of heat and king and alpha, and the sense of being surrounded without ever feeling trapped. If Chris leaned back even a little, his entire frame disappeared in Dax’s arms.

“I am not disappointed,” Dax said softly. “Not in you. Not in us. Trevor deserves peace and joy. Lucas deserves to be cherished. That makes me happy. And yes…” He exhaled, honest without burdening. “There is longing. A quiet ache at the idea of small hands. Little footsteps. Something of us carried forward. But that can wait.”

He tightened his hold just enough to remind Chris that he was already full.

“There is no clock ticking over your head,” he murmured. “No expectation waiting to snap shut. The only time that matters is the day you look at me and say, ’I’m ready.’ That’s when this becomes real.”

Chris swallowed, and the knot inside loosened.

“And if that day never comes?” he asked, needing to hear it out loud.

Dax didn’t miss a beat.

“Then it never comes,” he replied simply. “And I will still wake up every morning and be stupidly in love with you. My life doesn’t become less meaningful without an heir. It is already full.” A slow, amused warmth slipped into his expression. “Though for the record, if you ever do decide to try, I will be… very enthusiastic about contributing to the process.”

Chris laughed into his shoulder, the sound muffled by the absurdly broad chest he was pressed against.

“There it is,” Dax murmured, satisfied, his hand sliding through Chris’s hair like he had every right in the world to be gentle. “That’s the only future I care about right now.”

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