Chapter 342: Chapter 342: Friends

For a few quiet minutes, the room settled into that rare, fragile rhythm where nobody had to perform. Trevor drank his tea. Lucas ate like a man who had survived worse than pastries. Chris stayed curled into the velvet, shoulders finally loosening under the small, warm weight in his arms.

Dax watched.

He didn’t do it in an obvious way. He didn’t lean forward or stare like an idiot. His gaze rested where it always rested when Chris held something precious: on the line of Chris’s jaw, the careful way his hands supported the baby’s neck, and the instinctive tilt of his body to create a shield without thinking about it.

Sebastian was only a few months old, still soft in every way, still built for warmth and sleep and the occasional dramatic sneeze.

He had Lucas’s green eyes.

But everything else…

Everything else could have been Chris.

The black, soft hair. The bone structure waiting under the baby softness. The mouth, when it relaxed into sleep. The way the child’s lashes sat, the curve of the cheek, and the small stubborn set of the chin that looked absurd on someone this tiny and yet somehow familiar.

If Sebastian had been placed in Chris’s arms in any room that wasn’t this one, with any context stripped away, strangers would have assumed the child was his.

Dax felt something tighten. A quiet, primal satisfaction twisted with possessiveness and want.

Chris looked right with a child in his arms.

And it had nothing to do with heirs. It was the simple, brutal truth that the world could have taken one look at that picture – Chris in a wrinkled shirt, collar perfect, baby tucked into his chest like he was the safest place in existence – and rewritten a dozen rumors into a new story without asking anyone’s permission.

Dax’s thumb traced the rim of his coffee cup once.

Sebastian shifted, making a tiny sound, then rooted closer against Chris’s chest, trusting without thought.

Chris murmured something under his breath – soft, affectionate, exhausted nonsense – and kissed the baby’s hair again like it was instinct instead of choice.

Trevor’s gaze slid across the room.

He saw it.

Not in the way Lucas saw things, Lucas was already reading Dax like a report, cataloguing the emotional weather for future use. Trevor saw it the way an alpha who had built a fortress out of wealth and control saw it: as a potential complication.

As something that could be pulled by the wrong hands.

Trevor’s expression didn’t change. The tea remained in his hand. His posture remained relaxed.

But his eyes sharpened slightly as they landed on Dax.

“Your Majesty,” Trevor said, voice smooth, jokingly.

Dax looked up, raising a brow at the title. “Yes.”

Trevor’s smile was polite enough to be harmless. It wasn’t.

“Could I steal you for a moment?” he asked. “There’s a security update about the border route. I’d rather you hear it from me than from an aide who enjoys embellishing.”

Chris, sunk deep into the sofa, didn’t lift his head. “If this is about the prince, I’m resigning,” he murmured into Sebastian’s hair.

Trevor’s gaze flicked toward Chris with faint amusement. “Not about the prince,” he lied gracefully.

Dax’s eyes moved to Chris, just a brief check, as if making sure the request wouldn’t pull Chris into something he didn’t have the energy to survive.

Chris’s hand adjusted under Sebastian’s spine automatically, carefully. The baby’s green eyes blinked up at him, solemn and sleepy, then closed again as if the world was boring and Chris was safe.

Dax stood.

It was a simple movement, but it changed the room anyway. Dax carried gravity whether he tried or not.

Lucas caught the shift and looked up, already aware of what Trevor was doing. His gaze met Trevor’s for half a second, silent agreement passing between them, the kind that didn’t need words.

Chris didn’t notice. Or he noticed and didn’t care. His entire attention was on the child in his lap, and Dax felt a strange, quiet relief at that.

Trevor crossed the parlor toward the door with the ease of a man walking through his own house.

“Two minutes,” Trevor said lightly, as if he was asking Dax to taste a new wine instead of leaving the room for an alpha conversation.

Dax followed without question.

Behind them, Chris mumbled something to Sebastian that sounded like, “You’re lucky you can’t read treaties,” and Lucas made a soft sound of laughter.

The door closed.

The quiet in the corridor felt different. Less velvet. More steel.

Trevor walked a few paces, just far enough that the parlor was out of earshot and nobody inside would catch the shape of their voices. He stopped beside a window that overlooked the estate grounds. Then he turned.

“You were looking,” Trevor said, faintly amused.

Dax leaned onto the doorframe with his strong arms crossed over his chest. “I am in fact permitted, legally, to look at my husband.”

Trevor’s mouth twitched, half a smile, half a sigh, the expression of a man who had known Dax long enough to understand exactly how dangerous “permitted” could become when paired with Sahan instincts.

“Yes,” Trevor said mildly. “You are permitted. That wasn’t my concern.”

Dax’s violet eyes stayed calm; that usually meant he’d already made decisions and was simply waiting for the world to catch up.

Trevor tilted his head, voice still light, like they were discussing the weather and not the fragile line between affection and bulldozing. “My concern is that you were looking like a man who just discovered a new favorite idea.”

Dax huffed a laugh, quiet, genuinely amused. “He is holding a baby.”

“He’s holding my baby,” Trevor corrected pleasantly. “And he looks like he invented the concept.”

Dax’s gaze flicked toward the parlor door for a fraction of a second, territorial. Then he looked back at Trevor, and, for the first time, his mouth curved into something warmer.

“He looks right,” Dax admitted, simply.

Trevor watched him in silence for a beat, reading between the words the way he read balance sheets and battle maps.

Trevor’s voice lowered a notch, still friendly, but more direct. “Have you talked to him?”

Dax’s brow lifted. “About what?”

Trevor’s stare sharpened. “Don’t do that. We both know what.”

Dax leaned back against the wall as if the corridor belonged to him too, shoulders loose, posture relaxed, the image of control. “Children,” he said at last, because Trevor was his friend and deserved honesty.

Trevor didn’t move. “And.”

Dax’s smile widened, amusement again, the kind that made him look younger and far more dangerous. “Yes.”

Trevor exhaled through his nose like he’d been holding it. “And you didn’t bulldoze.”

Dax gave a short laugh this time, almost quiet enough to miss. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

Trevor’s eyes narrowed. “I think you’re a king. Kings bulldoze for breakfast.”

Dax’s gaze flashed. Something sharper, proud. “I asked.”

Trevor waited.

Dax’s tone softened by half a degree, almost imperceptibly. “He said not now. Maybe later. Maybe never. And I accepted it.”

Trevor’s shoulders loosened so visibly it was almost comical. Relief, like a locked door finally opening.

“You accepted it,” Trevor repeated, as if tasting the concept.

Dax’s eyes held steady. “I am not forcing him into something he doesn’t want.”

Trevor studied him for a long moment, then let out a quiet breath. “Thank you.”

Dax’s lips quirked. “You’re thanking me for basic decency.”

“I’m thanking you,” Trevor corrected, voice dry, “because your basic decency looks suspiciously like restraint, and restraint is not your first language.”

Dax laughed again, low and genuine. “Chris is my first language.” His gaze flicked, once, toward the parlor door like a compass checking north. “This was all?”

Trevor took a deep breath. “No. There is something more.”

Dax’s amusement faded, not into suspicion but into attention. “Spill it.”

Trevor’s jaw tightened. For a heartbeat, he looked less like a duke and more like an alpha who knew exactly what kind of information could detonate a room if placed in the wrong hands.

“You remember that Lucas had lived two other lives because of Benedict…” Trevor began.

Dax’s eyes didn’t blink. “Yes.”

“Well,” Trevor continued, voice quieter now, “Adonis Malek was involved too.”

The temperature in the corridor dropped without anyone touching a window.

Dax’s violet eyes darkened with something that wasn’t anger so much as inevitability. “He is a wanted man,” he said, each word measured. “Soon I will get my hands on him.”

Trevor nodded once, grim. “Yeah… I know.” He dragged a hand over the back of his neck, a rare sign of discomfort. “He… had a journal in Palatine.”

Before he could finish, Dax interrupted.

“I want it.”

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