Chapter 209: Chapter 209: Pregnancy

The second pregnancy did not unfold with the same novelty as Natalie’s had.

He was familiar with the sensation of exhaustion settling behind the eyes rather than in the limbs. He knew how quickly an ordinary afternoon could be ruined by nausea, by dizziness, by a child deciding that his internal organs were decorative suggestions and not fixed necessities. He knew what it meant to love something so fiercely while resenting, at intervals, the fact that it appeared to believe his bladder was a military target.

By the fourth month, the household had adjusted around him with alarming efficiency.

Gregoris became worse.

That was Rafael’s official opinion on the matter.

His husband had always been attentive in the unnerving, relentless way of a man who could coordinate troop movements across borders and still notice that Rafael had pushed citrus too far at breakfast.

Chairs appeared before Rafael had decided he wanted one. Glasses of water materialized at his elbow. Meals were adjusted. His schedule was shortened. His clothes were altered with such discretion that even Rafael had to admit the work was excellent, though he refused to praise anyone aloud for making him visibly, undeniably pregnant.

Natalie, meanwhile, embraced her promotion to elder sibling with military seriousness.

She checked on Rafael daily with all the pomp of a very small official conducting inspections.

“Are you tired?”

“Yes.”

“Is the baby behaving?”

“No.”

“Do you need biscuits?”

“Always.”

At five months, she began speaking to Rafael’s stomach with the grave patience of a diplomat attempting negotiations with a small foreign power.

“At present,” Rafael informed Gregoris one evening as Natalie pressed both hands to his middle and solemnly explained household biscuit storage protocols to the unborn child, “our son or daughter is receiving a deeply skewed education.”

Gregoris, sitting beside him with one arm draped across the back of the sofa and the other resting on Rafael’s knee, watched their daughter in silence for a moment.

Then he said, “It’s useful information.”

Rafael turned slowly. “I married beneath my standards.”

Gregoris’s mouth moved by a fraction. “No, you married someone who understands logistics.”

Natalie, without looking up, added, “And biscuits.”

Rafael had stared at both of them with the bleakness of a man profoundly outnumbered already and not at all reassured by the fact that the numbers were about to worsen.

By the sixth month, the child had developed opinions.

Strong ones.

Mostly at night.

Or in the middle of meals.

Or precisely when Rafael had finally managed to settle into a comfortable position after ten full minutes of strategic adjustment involving cushions, posture, and a running internal monologue about how pregnancy had been sold to society under false pretenses.

He had not expected the kicks to feel so personal.

Natalie had been active too, but this child seemed to have inherited Gregoris’s impossible timing and some deeply suspicious instinct for disruption. He kicked when Rafael tried to sleep. He kicked when Rafael tried to read. He kicked when Rafael tried to ignore him and maintain an elegant expression through conversation. And, most offensively, he kicked whenever Rafael stood up to go to the bathroom, as if applauding the event.

“Your son,” Rafael informed Gregoris one evening, one hand braced against the edge of the bed and the other spread over the taut curve of his stomach, “is using my bladder as a war drum.”

Gregoris, who had been removing the ether-braced tactical layers from his forearms after returning from duty, crossed the room at once and rested a hand over Rafael’s.

The child kicked again.

Gregoris looked down.

Then, with the complete seriousness of a man reviewing battlefield evidence, he said, “Strong.”

Rafael gave him a flat look. “That is not the correct response.”

Gregoris bent and pressed his mouth to Rafael’s temple. “He’ll be trouble.”

“He already is trouble.”

A pause.

Then Gregoris, traitor that he was, said, “That may be genetic.”

Rafael had gasped softly in offense and hit him on the arm with the nearest cushion, which accomplished absolutely nothing except making Gregoris catch the projectile one-handed and look at him with the calm amusement of a man who knew he was loved despite his flaws.

Which was, unfortunately, true.

The afternoons became quieter as summer settled over the estate.

Heat made Rafael sleepier, slower, and softer at the edges in ways he did not appreciate but could not entirely resist. His body wanted rest with a stubborn authority that even he had learned not to challenge too often.

On that particular afternoon, the mansion fell into one of those rare, almost sacred silences that occur when everyone has been efficiently directed elsewhere, and even the corridors appear to understand that peace should not be disturbed.

Rafael had been sitting in one of the nursery parlor chairs with a book open in his lap and absolutely no memory of the last three pages.

His son had been active for most of the hour, pressing and shifting with smug persistence low in his belly, and the combination of that, the heat, and lunch had left him suspended in a state just above sleep and just below functional irritation.

He rested one hand over the underside of his stomach and breathed out slowly.

Then the child kicked again, squarely and with purpose, against the exact place that made Rafael go still in offended disbelief.

“Oh, for the love of—”

He closed the book carefully.

The baby responded with another thump, this one lower.

Rafael narrowed his eyes at the ceiling.

“This,” he informed his unborn son with aristocratic bitterness, “is harassment.”

The child, unsurprisingly, was unmoved.

He shifted in the chair and sighed. There was no point pretending he would be allowed to remain seated much longer. His bladder had been issuing warnings for several minutes, and experience had taught him that ignoring them in the current state of affairs was the kind of pride the body punished swiftly.

Still, before surrendering fully to the tyranny of biology, he wanted to check on Natalie.

She had been with her nannies in the adjoining sitting room earlier, drawing something with suspicious concentration and refusing to explain what it was beyond the vague statement that it involved ’planning.’

Rafael rose with care, one hand braced on the arm of the chair, the other instinctively settling at the curve of his stomach as he found his balance. Six months made movement less graceful than he preferred, though he still performed it with enough dignity to suggest the problem lay with the architecture and not with him.

He stepped into the corridor and followed the familiar route toward the smaller family sitting room near the nursery wing.

The door stood slightly ajar.

Rafael slowed as he approached, prepared already to find Natalie either half-buried under illustrated books or in the middle of explaining some impossible theory to the unfortunate staff assigned to supervise her.

Instead, the room was quiet.

Softly lit by late afternoon sun filtering through gauze curtains, warm and golden across the rugs, the chairs, and the low table by the windows.

The nannies were nowhere immediately visible, likely in the adjoining nursery or just beyond the half-open inner door.

And in one of the large armchairs near the window sat Gregoris.

Rafael stopped.

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