Chapter 208: Chapter 208: Outnumbered

Natalie took the news with the solemn gravity of a child who knew she was being entrusted with something important and intended to rise to it magnificently.

Rafael had imagined several possibilities on the walk back to their suite. Excitement. Confusion. Questions. A dramatic declaration that she required time to process such life-altering political developments. Natalie was, after all, their daughter. There was always the risk that she would respond with entirely too much intelligence in too small a body.

Instead, she blinked at them from where she sat on the carpet in the nursery sitting room, surrounded by an arrangement of toy horses, colored blocks, and one decisively dismembered plush lion that had apparently lost a leg during battle.

“A sibling?” she repeated.

Gregoris, seated beside her now with the same steady calm he brought to war councils and marital arguments, nodded once. “Yes.”

Natalie’s silver eyes widened.

Then she gasped. A full, delighted intake of breath that made Rafael immediately suspicious of what was about to come out of her mouth.

“Like Arik?” she asked, visibly thrilled.

Rafael, who had been preparing something more measured and emotionally nuanced, paused. “That is your first comparison?”

Natalie twisted on the carpet to look up at him, scandalized by the question. “Arik has a brother. A baby brother.”

“That is not actually a quality unique to Arik.”

“It is to me,” Natalie informed him with complete confidence.

Gregoris’s hand settled at the small of Rafael’s back as he leaned against the doorframe, and Rafael deeply resented that the touch steadied him instantly, because this was supposed to be his elegant parental moment and not an occasion for his husband to silently anchor him through unexpected emotion.

Natalie had already abandoned her blocks and was on her feet in one smooth, determined burst, crossing the room at speed to throw herself at Rafael’s knees.

He looked down, affronted on principle. “Natalie.”

“You said don’t jump on you,” she said at once, adjusting her approach with visible effort until it became a careful hug around his waist instead. “I’m not jumping. I’m embracing responsibly.”

Rafael stared at the ceiling for one brief second. “You are your father’s child in the worst procedural ways.”

Gregoris said nothing.

Which, given the unmistakable trace of amusement in the room, meant he was enjoying himself.

Natalie tipped her head back, eyes bright. “Can I teach the baby things?”

Rafael looked down at her. “That depends entirely on what those things are.”

Natalie thought about this. “Important things.”

“That,” Rafael said, “is not a reassuringly specific answer.”

“I can teach the baby where the good biscuits are hidden.”

Gregoris, traitor to order, said, “That seems useful.”

Rafael turned his head slowly. “You are undermining my standards in real time.”

“It is valuable information.”

“It is contraband information.”

Natalie tightened her hold around Rafael’s waist by a fraction and looked up at him again, suddenly earnest beneath all the excitement. “Will the baby stay?”

The room quieted.

Children had a way of striking directly at the center of things without warning. Rafael felt it then, that delicate, private ache that had been sitting beneath the surface ever since Marin said the word stable.

He bent more carefully than he would have liked to kiss the top of Natalie’s head.

“That,” he said softly, “is very much the plan.”

Gregoris crouched then, bringing himself level with their daughter. His hands settled on her shoulders, broad and careful, and his voice remained calm in that way it always did when he was saying something that mattered too much to say poorly.

“The baby is still very small,” he told her. “So we’ll be careful. We don’t tell everyone immediately. And you don’t throw yourself at Rafael even if you’re excited.”

Natalie glanced at Rafael’s middle with sudden horror. “Did I damage the baby?”

“No,” Rafael said at once, before the guilt could root too deeply. “You did not damage anyone. You are simply enthusiastic in a manner that occasionally threatens furniture.”

Natalie visibly relaxed.

Then, because apparently she had inherited not just Rafael’s flair but Gregoris’s tactical mind, she looked between them and asked, “If the baby is small, does that mean Papa has to be spoiled?”

Rafael folded his arms. “Finally. Someone in this household with sound judgment.”

Gregoris rose to his feet again. “He was going to be spoiled anyway.”

Natalie nodded solemnly. “Good. Because if he gets grumpy, it spreads.”

Rafael turned his head slowly. “Excuse me?”

Natalie, entirely unrepentant, sat cross-legged in her chair with the serene confidence of a child who had just delivered a clinically valid observation. “It does,” she said. “When Papa is grumpy, the room changes.”

Gregoris, traitor to all reasonable loyalties, gave a single approving nod. “Accurate.”

Rafael stared at both of them with quiet disbelief. “I see. So I am not a beloved husband and father in this household. I am apparently an atmospheric event.”

Natalie considered that. “A pretty one.”

That, at least, took some of the sting out of it.

Rafael sighed as if burdened by the limits of the people around him, then opened one arm toward her. Natalie slid off the chair at once and went to him, climbing into his lap with the easy certainty of a child who had never once doubted she was adored there. Rafael held her automatically, one hand smoothing over her hair while she leaned against him and tilted her face up again.

“So,” she said, clearly unwilling to let the matter go unfinished, “when does the baby come?”

Rafael looked at Gregoris as if the question should be formally redirected.

Gregoris, who had long ago made peace with being used as the operational branch of their marriage, answered, “Months.”

Natalie frowned. “That’s too many.”

“Yes,” Rafael said. “It is.”

She thought about that with a severity worthy of a council session, then brightened. “But then I get a brother or sister.”

“You do,” Gregoris said.

Natalie settled more comfortably against Rafael and announced, with the certainty of someone choosing her own future, “I want one like Arik.”

Rafael blinked. “One like Arik.”

“Yes.” Natalie nodded seriously. “He has Cecil.”

There was a brief pause.

Then Rafael, despite himself, softened. “Ah. So this is about hierarchy.”

“It is about fairness,” Natalie corrected. “Arik has a baby brother, so I want one too.”

Gregoris, who had the look of a man finding this entirely reasonable, asked, “And what if it’s a sister?”

Natalie considered that with grave importance. “That is also acceptable.”

“How generous of you,” Rafael murmured.

Natalie ignored the comment and continued, “But the baby has to like me.”

Rafael touched two fingers dramatically to his chest. “Natalie, my love, the baby will adore you.”

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