Chapter 483: Chapter 483: Embarrassment

Nero turned his head on the pillow and stared at him. “Because he was about to say something comforting.”

Dax considered that for half a second, then nodded once as if this were, if not reasonable, at least internally consistent. “Fair.”

Chris looked at him in disbelief. “That is not the correct response.”

“It’s an accurate one.”

“That has never stopped you from choosing a better response.”

“I save those for state occasions.”

Nero let his head fall back against the pillows and closed his eyes briefly. The movement pulled at the lingering ache in his shoulders and down his spine, a dull reminder that even lying still had become irritatingly physical. When he opened them again, Dax had moved further into the room and was now standing near the bed with that same controlled attention he had been carrying for days, as if Nero might still burst into flames if left unsupervised for too long.

It was deeply annoying.

It was also, Nero had to admit privately, better than waking up alone.

He hated admitting useful things.

Chris, apparently deciding the conversation had drifted enough, picked up the mug and held it out. “Drink.”

Nero looked at it with deep suspicion. “Still no.”

Dax folded his arms. “You need it.”

“I need a new body.”

“That is not currently available.”

Nero eyed him. “You’re both very casual for people who watched me nearly die.”

The words came out rougher than he intended.

Chris did not move, but something sharpened in his face.

Dax went completely still.

Nero noticed both reactions and regretted the sentence immediately, not because it was untrue but because it handed them too much.

So he added, drier, “Which, for the record, remains a terrible experience. One star. Would not repeat.”

Chris exhaled through his nose and leaned back in the chair. “Unfortunately, repetition is due in three months if you have a normal cycle.”

Nero stared at him.

Then he turned his head very slowly toward Dax as if hoping, against all evidence, that one parent in the room might choose mercy.

Dax did not.

“That’s optimistic,” he said. “It could be sooner.”

Nero looked back at Chris. “I want both of you removed from my immediate environment.”

“That sounds like a stress response,” Chris said.

“That sounds like survival instinct.”

Chris’s mouth twitched. “Fair.”

Nero let his head fall back against the pillows and shut his eyes as though darkness might spare him from the knowledge that his body had apparently signed him up for a recurring appointment with infernal biology.

“Three months,” he said flatly.

“If regular,” Chris repeated.

Dax, still standing near the door, folded his arms. “It won’t be this bad every time.”

Nero opened one eye. “That sounds suspiciously theoretical for a man who watched six physicians nearly lose their religion.”

“It sounds informed,” Dax replied. “The first full rut is often the worst.”

“Often,” Nero repeated. “What an inspiring word.”

Chris gave him a level look. “Would you prefer we lie?”

“I would prefer selective omission.”

“No,” both parents said at once.

Nero considered throwing something, realized he lacked both energy and useful ammunition, and settled instead for glaring at the ceiling.

The truly offensive part was that he believed them. Not the timing, perhaps, because the universe clearly had personal issues with him, but the basic premise. His body had crossed a threshold, however violently, and thresholds generally did not ask permission only once. They tended to recur. “Predictably,” said the physicians. “Manageably,” said the adults. “With planning,” said everyone who had not personally been roasted alive from the inside by it.

Nero thought planning sounded fake.

Chris, clearly following the shape of that silence, said more evenly, “You’ll have medical support in place next time. Suppressants would prevent any experience like this and…”

He paused, visibly searching for a version of the next part that did not sound like an assassination attempt on his son’s remaining dignity.

Dax, of course, ruined that immediately.

“You will have classes on sex and rut management.”

Nero stared at him.

Then at Chris.

Then back at Dax.

For one extraordinary second, the lingering pain, the exhaustion, and the heat still ghosting beneath his skin, all of it was eclipsed by pure disbelief.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last, very clearly. “What?”

Chris closed his eyes briefly.

Dax did not blink. “You heard me.”

“That,” Nero said, “was not a sentence meant to be said by a father.”

“It was a necessary sentence.”

“It was a criminal one.”

Chris lifted one hand. “In fairness, I was trying to reach that point with more tact.”

Nero turned on him at once. “You were going to say it too?”

“Yes,” Chris said. “Just with better phrasing.”

Nero let his head fall back against the pillows and stared at the ceiling as if it might open and remove him from this bloodline entirely.

Suppressants, he could understand in theory. Not happily. Not with enthusiasm. But in the abstract it at least belonged to the category of medicine, which had already declared open war on his privacy and won.

Classes, however… classes on sex and rut management.

Delivered, presumably, by adults.

Adults who would look at him with educational calm and use terms like instinct regulation and cycle response while pretending the entire thing was not a grotesque attack on his soul.

Nero lowered his gaze slowly back to Dax. “No.”

“Yes,” Dax said.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“This is retaliation for threatening Father.”

Chris, to his credit, looked offended. “I don’t need help retaliating.”

“That is not the point.”

“It’s still true,” Dax said.

Nero pressed the heel of one hand over his eyes. “This family is vile.”

Dax sighed like a man personally burdened by the gods. “It is not that bad. And at some point the suppressants won’t help. I thought boys your age were curious about it.”

Nero lowered his hand slowly and looked at him with the kind of disbelief usually reserved for natural disasters and tax law.

Chris made a quiet noise that could have been laughter or pain, which is a good thing.

Nero was seriously considering defecting to another country. “Even if that were true, I do not want to talk about it with my parents.”

“That,” Chris said, still seated with far too much composure for someone trapped in this conversation too, “is the first reasonable thing you’ve said in the last five minutes.”

Nero turned to him at once. “Then stop agreeing with him.”

“I’m not agreeing with him,” Chris said. “I’m agreeing with you.”

Dax crossed his arms. “That changes nothing.”

“It changes the trauma level,” Chris replied.

“It does not.”

“It absolutely does.”

Nero looked between them and decided that, somehow, both of his parents were making his humiliation worse in entirely different registers.

Dax, apparently unaware that he had already done enough damage for one afternoon, continued with the firm conviction of a man who considered biology a logistical problem and not the ruin of youth. “You don’t have to talk to us about it.”

Nero narrowed his eyes. “That is suspiciously different from the last thirty seconds.”

Chris leaned back a little, watching Dax with interest now, as if he too wanted to see whether this was an actual revision or simply a different route to the same indignity.

Dax went on. “You do, however, need information. A physician. A specialist. Someone competent and at least one private instruction. No embarrassment beyond what you manufacture for yourself.”

Nero stared at him.

That was, offensively, better.

Chris picked up the thread at once, because unlike Dax, he had at least been born with a functioning sense of human shame. “You’re not sitting down with your parents while we explain sex and rut protocol to you in graphic educational detail. I promise.”

Nero looked at him flatly. “The fact that you had to say that out loud means my life has already gone wrong.”

“That,” Chris said, “is also reasonable.”

Dax exhaled through his nose. “I was not proposing graphic detail.”

Nero and Chris both turned to look at him.

Dax paused.

Then, with admirable honesty, “I was proposing clarity.”

Chris closed his eyes briefly. “And this is why he thinks civilization is a mistake.”

Nero glanced away toward the window, toward the pale winter light over the city, toward any possible route of escape. “Can Nayra inherit the throne?”

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