By the ti the last months arrived, the palace had beco a machine built around one simple, dangerous truth: Christopher was going to give birth, and nobody in Saha knew how to be normal about it.
It wasn’t loud anxiety - not in the corridors where servants still moved with careful grace and guards still stood like statues - but it lived everywhere anyway. In how doors opened too quickly. In how als were checked multiple tis. In how the dical wing had been quietly reinforced with extra staff and extra supplies, as if the act of preparation could intimidate fate into behaving.
Dax didn’t say he was anxious.
Dax didn’t have to.
The staff read it in the way he checked the sa hallway twice. In the way his temper shortened by half a breath when soone stumbled over a report. In the way he stood closer to Chris than before, as if distance was an insult he could no longer bear.
Three months ago, they had found out it was a boy.
The announcent had been delivered like a minor state secret, wrapped in professional calm and surrounded by too many physicians who looked like they were trying not to smile too hard. Sahir had pretended this was a matter of succession and stability, which was his favorite way of coping with emotions. Killian had simply nodded, like a man accepting a new variable in his security planning.
Chris had blinked at the news and said, "Okay," as if they’d inford him the weather would be warm.
Dax had smiled. He had even kissed Chris’s forehead and murmured sothing soft enough to belong only to them.
And then, later, when the room had emptied and the doors had shut, Dax had gone very still.
Because he could feel the child’s scent.
It was faint, filtered through Chris, softened by the womb, and half-ford in the sa way that all unborn things were, but it existed. Dax’s instincts caught it the sa way they caught changes in Chris’s body before the man even realized it.
Alpha.
A tiny signature that made Dax’s own body respond on reflex, protective and territorial in a way that had nothing to do with politics.
Yet under it there was sothing else. A note that didn’t belong.
Sothing muted and strange, like a second scent braided into the first. Dax kept turning it over in his mind, trying to na it the way he could na threats and treaties and the weight of n in a room.
He couldn’t.
It slipped away every ti he tried to pin it down.
He would lower his head to Chris’ throat, where the bond mark was and the pheromones were most concentrated, and breathe slowly and carefully. He would feel the baby’s presence like a pulse beneath the skin, would catch that faint alpha signature again, and then that other thing would rise beneath it, subtle enough to mock him.
Chris noticed.
"You’re doing the staring thing," Chris had said once, voice dry, eyes half-lidded with amusent.
Dax hadn’t looked away. "I’m doing the listening thing."
Chris had snorted. "You can’t hear pheromones."
Dax had brushed his mouth against Chris’s jaw. "I can hear you being too calm."
That was the part the palace didn’t know how to handle.
Chris was... fine.
Not performing fine. Not forcing it. Not fraying at the edges in secret, as nobles expected an oga to do when his body beca public property due to rumor and fear.
He was simply... at peace.
Oddly so.
He had taken advantage of his condition at first, like any sensible person handed a dical recomndation and royal authority. For nearly a month, he had rested. Properly. He ate when he was told. He napped because he could. He let people carry things. He let Rowan glare at anyone who looked at him wrong.
It had been, objectively, responsible.
It had lasted exactly as long as it took Chris to beco bored out of his mind.
One morning, Dax had co into their sitting room expecting to find his consort tucked under blankets like a carefully protected treasure.
Instead, he found Chris sitting upright on the sofa, a tablet in hand, his eyes bright with the dangerous interest that indicated he’d resud reading reports.
The dical team had not been pleased.
Rowan had looked like he was deciding whether to drag Chris bodily back to bed.
Tania had chosen that mont to sit on Chris’s feet as if endorsing the rebellion.
Chris had looked up at Dax and said, unapologetically, "I rested. I’m done resting."
Dax had stared at him for a long beat. "You’re carrying my child."
Chris had arched a brow. "Yes. Which is why I’m not going to lose my mind from boredom, because stress is also bad."
It was infuriating logic.
It was also Chris’s logic, which ant it was annoyingly hard to defeat.
So he returned to work cautiously and selectively, with Rowan hovering like a threat in a suit and Sahir ’accidentally’ redirecting anything too heavy away from Chris’s desk. Chris accepted this manipulation with the calm superiority of a man who knew he could outmaneuver all of them if he wanted to.
He simply didn’t bother.
Because, sohow, he was still at peace.
He walked slower now. He ate more often, if only because Dax’s gaze made starvation feel like treason. He slept at odd hours, curled against Dax like an anchor, the bond humming peacefully.
And the closer they got to the birth, the more the palace started holding its breath.
Dax found himself staring too closely at servants carrying linens, physicians checking instrunts, and guards changing shifts. He checked routes. He checked doors. He checked windows that had never been a concern before.
Not because he believed soone could truly hurt him.
Because he understood, with a clarity that was almost insulting, that the only way to hurt him now was through them.
Through Chris.
Through the child.
Rowan had begun sleeping in the security office again, a sign he only did when he expected problems.
Sahir had started appearing in the mornings with ’casual’ updates that were far too detailed to be casual.
Killian had quietly doubled the palace’s inner periter and pretended it was routine.
And Dax... Dax woke so nights with his hand on Chris’s stomach like he’d placed it there while asleep, fingers spread as if he could shield the baby with skin alone.
Chris would blink awake, half-asleep, and cover Dax’s hand with his own.
"You’re spiraling," Chris murmured once, voice thick with sleep.
Dax’s jaw tightened. "I’m preparing."
Chris humd softly, unimpressed. "You’re spiraling."
Dax didn’t argue because doing so would have required him to admit it.
Instead, he lowered his head and gently, carefully pressed his mouth against Chris’s skin before breathing in again.
Alpha.
And that other note beneath it, still subtle, still unnad.
Chris’s hand threaded through Dax’s hair, slow and calming.
"He’s fine," Chris said, with confidence that wasn’t naive. It was the sa strange peace that had settled into him like he’d made a private agreent with fate.
Dax kept his mouth against Chris’s stomach for a mont longer, listening with everything he was.
Then he lifted his head and t Chris’s eyes.
"You’re too calm," Dax murmured.
Chris’s mouth curved, small and knowing. "Soone has to be."
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