Chapter 210: Chapter 210: Domestic

His husband was still dressed in full Shadow tactical gear, black and dark silver, the structure of which had softened only slightly with rest. Ether-threaded seams traced faint, dim lines along the fitted layers at his shoulders and chest, and the quiet embedded technology of the uniform caught the light in restrained glints where it reinforced motion and defense. It was a brutal elegance designed for violence, precision, and survival, and it appeared almost surreal in the middle of a nursery wing washed in summer hush.

One arm rested along the chair, broad and still.

The other curved protectively around Natalie.

Their daughter was sprawled across him in complete trust, turned sideways in his lap as if she had climbed there with every intention of remaining only a moment and then failed entirely to continue being awake. Her cheek was pressed to Gregoris’s chest, one small hand fisted lightly in the front of his uniform, silver hair slightly mussed from sleep.

Gregoris’s head had tipped back against the chair.

He was asleep too.

Not deeply, Rafael suspected. Men like Gregoris did not sleep deeply anywhere but beside the people they trusted most, and even then only in fractions. But enough. Enough that the mouth capable of terrifying military briefings and devastatingly concise marital replies had gone quiet and unguarded. Enough that, for one suspended moment, he did not look like the Empire’s shadow-made weapon.

He looked like Natalie’s father.

Rafael stood in the doorway, utterly still.

Something in his chest softened so quickly it almost hurt.

There were moments, now and then, that reached under all his cultivated sharpness and found him anyway. Gregoris had likely come in straight from work, still armed, only to end up captured by a child half his size who had decided his lap was hers. And because Gregoris, who could bend fear into obedience without raising his voice, had apparently sat down for her and not moved again.

Rafael’s gaze moved from Natalie’s sleeping face to Gregoris’s.

Then lower, to the way Gregoris’s hand covered almost all of Natalie’s back even in sleep, steady and protective by instinct.

A traitorous warmth bloomed low beneath Rafael’s ribs.

His son shifted again inside him, a rolling, insistent movement this time, as if reminding Rafael that he too was present for this emotional ambush.

Rafael placed a hand over his stomach on reflex.

“Well,” he murmured under his breath, too quiet to wake either of them, “apparently you’re not the only Frasner intent on conquering me.”

The child kicked once, almost indignantly.

Rafael’s lips twitched.

He should have left them there, he thought. Should have turned away, found another chair, and summoned someone to bring tea, perhaps preserving the stillness of the scene untouched.

Instead, compelled by affection and long habit and his own inability to leave anything emotionally significant entirely unacknowledged, he stepped soundlessly into the room.

The floor muffled his approach.

He reached the chair and looked down at them properly.

Natalie had one leg hanging half off Gregoris’s lap at an angle that would absolutely make her complain about her neck later despite this having been entirely her own choice. Gregoris’s uniform, for all its engineered flexibility, could not possibly be comfortable enough for sleep, and yet he had remained there.

Rafael touched two fingers very lightly to Natalie’s hair first, smoothing back a loose strand from her temple.

She made a soft sound in her sleep but did not wake.

Gregoris did.

His eyes opened at once.

Silver, clear, instantly aware.

For one brief second he was all Shadow again, alertness snapping silently into place with terrifying speed.

Then he saw Rafael standing there, and the tension left him just as quickly.

“You should be asleep,” Gregoris said, his voice low and roughened slightly by sleep.

Rafael arched a brow. “That is an interesting accusation from a man napping in a chair with a child attached to his chest.”

Gregoris glanced down at Natalie as if only now verifying the evidence against him. “She fell asleep.”

“And you, apparently, were ambushed.”

A pause.

Then, with perfect calm, Gregoris said, “Yes.”

Rafael looked at him for a beat, then at the tactical gear, then back at his face.

“You came here dressed for war.”

“I came from work.”

“And were defeated by a four-year-old.”

Gregoris’s hand moved once over Natalie’s back, almost absent. “She asked me to sit down.”

Rafael stared at him.

Then, because there was really no defense against that, he exhaled softly through his nose and felt his whole expression betray him into something gentler than he usually permitted in daylight.

His son kicked again.

This time Gregoris noticed at once. His gaze dropped to Rafael’s middle.

“Still active?”

Rafael placed a hand more firmly beneath the curve of his stomach and gave him a look full of elegant suffering. “Your son has spent the last hour treating my internal organs like training equipment.”

Gregoris’s eyes changed.

Very carefully, so as not to jostle Natalie, Gregoris shifted one hand free and held it out.

Rafael stepped closer without thinking and let Gregoris rest his palm over the place where the baby had been moving.

There was a pause.

Then a hard kick landed under Gregoris’s hand.

Natalie snuffled once in protest at the slight motion but stayed asleep.

Gregoris looked down at Rafael’s stomach in silence.

Rafael saw the expression on his face and knew, suddenly and unequivocally, that he would never tire of this. Of seeing a man built like a catastrophe brought quietly to his knees by the existence of his family. By a daughter asleep on his chest. By a son not yet born. By Rafael himself, standing there with afternoon light across his skin and six months of their child beneath his hand.

“Well?” Rafael asked softly because he was vain enough to require verbal confirmation of awe. “Is he strong?”

Gregoris lifted his gaze to him.

“Yes.”

Rafael tilted his chin. “Naturally.”

Gregoris’s thumb moved once against the side of Rafael’s stomach, almost unconsciously. “He feels like Natalie did.”

Rafael’s expression shifted.

For all his complaints, for all his theatrical offense at discomfort and inconvenience and the outright tyranny of pregnancy, that simple sentence landed somewhere tender.

“He does,” Rafael admitted quietly.

Gregoris watched him for another moment. Then his gaze flicked toward the empty chair opposite and back to Rafael again.

“Sit.”

Rafael looked offended on instinct. “I am capable of standing.”

“You’re sleepy.”

“I am pregnant, not terminal.”

Gregoris did not blink. “Sit.”

Rafael opened his mouth to object on principle.

Then his son kicked downward with enough force to make him close it again and look heavenward in silent betrayal.

Gregoris waited.

Rafael narrowed his eyes. “I dislike that you are so often right.”

“I know.”

That was, frankly, an intolerable answer.

Still, Rafael lowered himself with care into the chair beside them, adjusting his position until his back was supported and his legs were comfortable, one hand still resting over the shape of his stomach.

For a little while, no one spoke.

The room remained washed in warm light and slow quiet. Somewhere beyond the inner door a nanny moved softly, having apparently noticed that the child in question was no longer in need of intervention and wisely chosen not to intrude. The estate beyond the walls continued in its ordered rhythm. But here, in this room, time loosened.

Gregoris sat with Natalie sleeping against him.

Rafael sat across from them with their son moving beneath his hand.

And all at once the future seemed less abstract than it had that morning.

A son.

Another child.

Another Frasner face, perhaps.

Rafael looked at Natalie’s silver head against Gregoris’s chest and then at Gregoris’s own ash-blond hair, at the cold silver of his eyes, at the impossible likelihood that this child too might emerge looking exactly like the man who had ruined Rafael’s standards for everyone else.

He closed his eyes briefly.

Then opened them again and said, in the tone of a man delivering a stake conclusion he deeply resented, “If he comes out looking exactly like you, I want it formally noted that I have been outnumbered in my own household.”

Gregoris looked at him in silence.

Then, because sleep had softened him just enough to allow honesty without ornament, he said, “Too late.”

Rafael stared.

Gregoris glanced down at Natalie, then back at him, his hand still resting where their son had last kicked.

“You already are.”

Rafael held his gaze for a long moment.

Then he looked at his sleeping daughter, at his husband in tactical black with a child sprawled over his heart, at his own six-month stomach shifting with life under his palm, and felt something warm and helpless and absurdly happy settle into him despite every effort to remain sophisticated about it.

He sighed.

“I married disastrously.”

Gregoris’s mouth curved, barely.

Natalie, half-asleep and without opening her eyes, murmured into Gregoris’s chest, “Papa’s grumpy again.”

Rafael looked at the ceiling with exhausted betrayal.

Gregoris, monstrous traitor, actually smiled.

And from somewhere beneath Rafael’s ribs, his son kicked once more like agreement.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep