Chapter 466: Chapter 466: On Leave

By the time Chris reached eight and a half months, the palace had reorganized itself around him with the seamless ruthlessness of an institution that understood two facts very clearly.

First, the future second child of Saha would arrive when it pleased.

Second, if anyone made that more difficult for Chris than it already was, Dax would become a problem of national scale.

So Dax had taken leave. Actual leave.

Or something close enough to it that parliament had learned to survive limited exposure to his direct interference while he remained in the private wing, conducting only the meetings he absolutely refused to hand off and glaring at everyone else as though they had personally designed the concept of late pregnancy.

At that exact moment, one such meeting had just ended.

Dax stepped out of the study after forty-five minutes of hearing ministers use too many words for problems that did not deserve them, removed the earpiece from one ear, and rolled one shoulder once beneath the black silk of his house shirt.

Then he crossed back into the private suite and forgot the rest of the kingdom existed.

Chris was in the sitting room by the long windows, and for one brief, dangerous second Dax simply stopped.

He had seen him every day.

That did not help.

Chris was dressed for comfort in a way that somehow only made him more unbearable to look at: a loose dark shirt falling softly over his shoulders, the fabric parted low enough to show the collar at his throat, and one of the simpler pieces – fine black leather with a teardrop sapphire resting against skin. Dax already knew too well. His black hair was shorter now than it had once been, neat around a face sharpened by intelligence and softened only slightly by the strain of carrying their child. He was seated sideways on the sofa with one arm draped along the back, one bare foot tucked beneath him, and the unmistakable curve of late pregnancy shaping the line of him beneath the fabric.

He looked comfortable.

He looked tired.

He looked beautiful in a way Dax still experienced as an attack.

And, perhaps most offensively, he looked like he belonged exactly like this – heavy with their child, already annoyed by the world, still elegant enough to make Dax briefly consider canceling the concept of government again.

Nero, now well over two and thriving as a domestic menace, was on the rug in front of the sofa arranging wooden animals into what he claimed was a ’meeting.’

This consisted primarily of making the lion sit on top of the elephant and yelling “No” at a stuffed fox.

Rowan was standing nearby with a tablet in hand and the expression of a man who had made peace with many things against his will.

Chief among them: Dax’s spending habits.

The steward’s office still suffered. Of course it did. But over the last year Rowan had evolved from active resistance to a colder, more sophisticated state of endurance. He no longer looked scandalized when Dax commissioned something private, expensive, and emotionally deranged. He only made sure the invoices were routed properly, the security chain was airtight, and no one in procurement said anything stupid enough to get themselves demoted.

This, Chris had once said, was what growth looked like in monarchy.

Rowan had called it surrender.

Now he glanced up first and saw Dax in the doorway.

“Your Majesty,” he said.

Chris turned his head.

Dax, who had intended to cross the room with full control and some dignity, instead stood there for half a second too long and stared at his mate like a man who had just discovered the concept of reverence and was irritated by it.

Chris noticed immediately.

His mouth shifted. “That expression usually means either parliament were incompetent or I look better than they do.”

“Yes,” Dax said.

Chris arched a brow. “That was not the question.”

“It was the answer.”

Nero looked up at once. “Papa!”

Dax crossed the room then, because a child was demanding him and because Chris still being there in soft light and dark fabric and late pregnancy had made standing still feel briefly impossible.

Nero launched himself upward with all the confidence of a prince who assumed successful pickup was his birthright.

Dax obliged, lifting him one-handed without effort.

Nero immediately wrapped his arms around Dax’s neck, then leaned back far enough to announce, “Meeting bad.”

Chris smiled faintly. “That is your default assumption for all governance.”

“Bad,” Nero repeated more firmly.

“Yes,” Dax said. “Usually.”

Rowan, glancing down at the tablet, said dryly, “I’ll note that the heir opposes parliamentary continuity.”

“He opposes shirts with buttons,” Chris said. “His politics remain immature.”

Nero frowned at him. “No.”

“There he is,” Chris murmured.

Dax sat beside Chris with Nero still perched on one arm, then let his free hand settle instinctively over the curve of Chris’s stomach, broad and warm and immediately possessive.

The child moved under his palm.

He felt it at once.

So did Chris, whose eyes half-lidded for one second as the baby shifted hard enough to be visible even through fabric.

Dax’s hand stilled.

That, too, still had the power to rearrange him.

He looked down, then at Chris.

Chris watched his face and said with quiet malice, “You remain very easy to emotionally destabilize for a king.”

Dax ignored that. “Has she been kicking you like this all morning?”

Chris leaned farther back into the cushions. “Not constantly. Only when I make the mistake of thinking I might enjoy peace.”

Nero, hearing that and misunderstanding it completely, leaned over and patted Chris’s stomach.

“Baby, no kick.”

Chris looked down at him. “Tell your sister that.”

Nero took the responsibility seriously.

He patted the curve of Chris’s stomach again, more firmly this time, and repeated, “No kick.”

The baby responded at once with a hard shift that made Chris inhale through his teeth.

Dax’s attention snapped to him instantly. “What?”

Chris waved one hand lazily, though the movement lacked conviction. “Nothing dramatic. She objects to being disciplined by a tyrant.”

Nero frowned at the insult to his authority.

“Papa no tyrant,” he said.

“Yes,” Rowan murmured without looking up from the tablet. “That would be the great constitutional lie of our age.”

Chris smiled faintly, but it didn’t last.

Something tightened low in his body.

A band of pain that pulled across his stomach and back hard enough to make his fingers close over the edge of the sofa cushion before he could stop them.

Dax saw it. “Chris.”

Chris let out a slow breath through his nose and waited for the sensation to pass. “I said nothing dramatic.”

Rowan looked up.

Nero, still in Dax’s lap, glanced between them with the suspicious alertness of a child who had learned that adults got quiet right before interesting things happened.

Dax’s hand was already on Chris’s stomach again. “Chris.”

Chris turned his head and met his gaze. “It could be nothing.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the only one you’re getting until I know whether my body is being inconvenient or treasonous.”

Another tightening hit before the sentence was fully done.

Chris’s shoulders went still. One hand moved instinctively lower over the underside of his stomach as if he could steady something there by force of irritation alone.

Dax set Nero down immediately.

The child looked deeply offended by the loss of elevation. “Papa—”

“Stay with Rowan.”

Nero stared at him, startled by the tone.

Rowan was already moving. He crossed the space, crouched, and held out one hand with the competence of a man who understood at once that the room had shifted categories.

“Come on.”

Nero looked at Chris instead. “Papa?”

Chris forced his face to soften and held out a hand long enough to brush Nero’s curls back once. “Go with Rowan.”

Nero hesitated, then nodded with grave reluctance and went.

Dax’s full attention was now on his mate. He didn’t get to open his mouth.

Chris said, very clearly, “If you call the entire medical wing for one contraction that turns out to be false labor, I will bite you.”

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