Chapter 480: Chapter 480: New sibling

The rest of the summit was, to everyone’s lasting irritation and Dax’s limitless satisfaction, a success.

There was no leaked footage of any heir throwing cutlery, insulting a former emperor, or starting a cross-border crisis in formalwear.

The public images were excellent. Too excellent, in Chris’s opinion. Heirs photographed in polished clusters, young royals in discussion, future leadership framed against glass, steel, and flags.

Dax had looked impossible in every official release.

Chris had looked serene in all of them, which he personally considered an act of fraud.

Caelan had remained composed enough that no one could accuse him of missteps.

Arion and Sebastian had managed not to kill anyone.

Zion had emerged from the entire affair looking far more dangerous than he had on arrival.

Nero, naturally, looked as though he had been born under strategic lighting and mild scandal.

And then the summit ended.

The delegations left and the state complex returned to ordinary levels of political hostility.

Travis monitored Chris with the silence of a man who had already accepted that royal timing was a form of violence and adapted accordingly.

By the time two months had passed, the pregnancy was no longer a secret inside the marriage.

It was a secret with logistics.

A secret with supplements, scans, adjusted schedules, changed meal plans, and the sort of carefully worded notes that turned up in Chris’s calendar with suspicious frequency and all bore the invisible fingerprints of both Travis and Dax.

It was also, now, officially a secret that could no longer be kept from the children.

Which was why Nero and Nayra found themselves summoned to the private sitting room in their parents’ residence on a late afternoon that looked offensively ordinary for such an occasion.

The room was warm with autumn light and family use. There were books on one side table, a low arrangement of flowers Nayra had definitely not chosen, and one blanket folded over the back of the sofa because Chris liked things within reach even when he insisted he did not need them. The air smelled faintly of coffee, expensive wood polish, and the quieter, layered scents of home.

Dax occupied one of the armchairs by the window, long legs crossed, coffee in hand, looking so calm that Nero distrusted him immediately.

Chris was pacing.

That was the first sign this meeting mattered.

The second was that Nayra, who had entered in a bright sweater and with the expectation of either gossip or dessert, had gone silent within ten seconds of seeing their father cross the room for the fifth time.

Nero leaned one shoulder against the side of the sofa and watched the scene unfold with increasing interest.

Dax sighed as he watched Chris turn for the tenth time, set down his cup on the low table in front of him, and looked at his children. “Your father is pregnant.”

Chris stopped pacing so abruptly he almost hit the low coffee table.

Then he turned his head very slowly toward his husband.

Dax, who had just detonated the entire conversation with four words and the composure of a man announcing rain, looked back at him without the slightest sign of remorse.

Chris stared.

“You,” he said at last, very clearly, “are unbelievable.”

Dax lifted one shoulder. “It was efficient.”

“That was not the assignment.”

“It solved the problem.”

“It created three new ones.”

Nayra gasped first.

Nero, to his credit, did not.

He only went very still, his gaze flicking from Chris to Dax and back again with the attention of someone who had suspected something at the summit, been denied answers for weeks, and had now been rewarded with the bluntest reveal imaginable.

Then Nayra made a noise so high and delighted it should have cracked glass.

“What?”

Chris closed his eyes for one brief second, then opened them again with the look of a man betrayed in his own sitting room. “That,” he said, pointing at Dax, “was not how I intended to tell you.”

Dax looked unconcerned. “And yet they know.”

Nero folded his arms. “You really just said it like that.”

“Yes,” Dax said.

Nero’s mouth twitched. “I respect it against my will.”

Chris turned on him at once. “I expected more loyalty.”

“You raised me around him,” Nero said, jerking his chin toward Dax. “This outcome was inevitable.”

Nayra had already crossed the room and was now standing much too close to Chris, staring at him with huge eyes and open astonishment. “Really?”

Chris looked down at her and, despite everything, softened immediately. “Yes. Really.”

“With an actual baby?”

“No,” Nero said dryly. “With a theoretical administrative burden.”

“Nero,” Chris and Nayra said at the same time.

Dax, infuriatingly, looked amused.

Chris pointed at him again. “Do not encourage that.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

Chris made a sound of deep offense and finally sat on the sofa, either because the announcement was now beyond saving or because pacing in outrage while pregnant had stopped feeling theatrical and started feeling medically inadvisable. Nayra climbed up beside him without invitation, curling close at once like she had been waiting years for a valid excuse.

Nero stayed where he was another moment, studying them.

Then he said, “How far along?”

Chris glanced at him and seemed mildly grateful that at least one child had produced a practical question. “A little over two months.”

Nero nodded once.

He felt briefly insulted that he had not solved it sooner.

Nayra, meanwhile, was still stuck on the main point. “We’re getting a sibling.”

“Yes,” Chris said.

Dax corrected, “You’re getting another sibling.”

Nayra ignored him with the ease of a daughter long accustomed to choosing which parent mattered more in a sentence. “Oh my God.”

Then she looked at Chris all over again, and some of the sheer excitement in her face shifted into something softer and more careful.

“Are you okay?”

Chris smiled. “Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Dax said, with immediate certainty, “Travis is monitoring everything.”

Nero’s brows rose. “That sounds ominous.”

“It sounds competent,” Dax replied, taking his coffee back.

“It sounds like you’ve turned the doctor into a structural feature of the palace.”

“I considered it.”

Chris rubbed one hand over his face. “See. This is what I’m living with.”

Nayra barely heard any of that. She was still looking at Chris with fierce concentration, as if trying to assess the situation by love alone. “And the baby is okay too?”

Chris’s expression softened completely. “Yes. The baby is okay too.”

That was all she needed.

She hugged him immediately and with full force.

Chris laughed, startled, and put an arm around her automatically while Dax watched the scene with the look of a man who would now remember this exact second for the rest of his life and become impossible about it in private.

Nero saw that look and looked away on purpose.

Then, because he was still himself, he said, “Did you know at the summit?”

Chris let out a breath that sounded halfway between surrender and accusation. “Yes.”

Nayra’s head snapped up. “What?”

Dax answered this time. “We found out during the first dinner break.”

Nayra looked scandalized. “That’s insane.”

“Exactly,” Chris said.

Nero’s suspicion finally found its reward. He leaned back against the sofa arm and said, “That’s why everything was weird.”

Chris turned to him. “I was not weird.”

“You were,” Nayra said at once. “You were more tired. And Papa kept watching you like the air had personally offended him.”

Nero nodded. “That part didn’t narrow it.”

Dax, rather than denying anything, only looked pleased with their observational powers.

Chris stared at all three traitors in his house. “This is not the response I hoped for.”

“What response did you hope for?” Nero asked.

Chris opened his mouth, then closed it again, because the truthful answer was probably something thoughtful, controlled, emotionally resonant, and nowhere near the blunt reality Dax had inflicted on the situation.

Dax answered for him. “A speech.”

Chris turned slowly. “I hate that you know me.”

Dax only laughed delighted.

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