Caught by the Mad Alpha King-Chapter 425: Acceptable metric [Win-Win]

Months passed quickly and loudly, with the country’s expectations hanging off every hour like a second shadow.

The palace returned to its usual rhythm: meetings, briefings, appearances, and decisions that looked small on paper and changed everything in practice. Dax and Chris slid back into their roles while still quietly learning how to fit love into the machinery of rule without letting it get crushed.

They were rulers.

They were parents.

They were still very much in love and still very much in each other’s space.

Chris had the increasingly inconvenient suspicion that his son - his babbling, angelic son - was conspiring with his other father for siblings. Nero had perfected the art of looking innocent while doing maximum emotional damage, which meant Chris would take one look at him and think, ’We could do this again.’

And then the entire palace would react like Chris had calmly announced he planned to duel the concept of recovery.

It started, as most catastrophes in this palace do, in a hallway.

Chris was walking with Nero tucked against his chest in that secure sling the physicians had approved with the enthusiasm of people who enjoyed not having to treat royal concussions. Nero’s head lolled, warm and heavy with milk-drunk peace, his tiny fist clutching the edge of Chris’s shirt like he had issued a personal decree that this fabric belonged to him now.

Rowan walked beside them with the tense, prayerless devotion of a man who had been promoted into a life of emotionally managing a monarch who considered ’self-preservation’ a suggestion.

Killian followed at a respectful distance, silent as protocol and twice as sharp. His hands were folded behind his back, his posture perfect, and his face composed in a way that implied he’d seen worse.

Chris adjusted the sling, kissed Nero’s hair without thinking, and sighed.

Rowan’s head snapped toward him instantly. "No."

Chris blinked. "No what?"

Rowan’s stare was flat. "Whatever you were about to say. No."

"I haven’t said anything yet."

"That’s how it starts," Rowan replied, voice low with conviction. "You sigh like you’ve discovered a beautiful, suicidal hobby, and then the entire south wing becomes a triage station."

Chris’s mouth twitched. "Rowan."

"Your Majesty."

Killian’s gaze remained forward. If anyone else had been watching, they might have assumed he wasn’t listening. But Killian listened to the air itself. Killian listened to silences.

Chris paused near a window where winter light came in pale and clean, the courtyard below glittering with frost like the palace had been dusted in crushed sugar. He looked down at Nero. Nero stared back with the serene confidence of someone who had never filed paperwork, never suffered a press conference, and had absolutely no respect for adult fear.

Chris’s voice, when he spoke, was almost thoughtful. "Do you think..."

Rowan’s eyes narrowed.

"...that he’s going to remember this stage?" Chris finished softly.

Rowan exhaled once, tense relief trying to happen and failing. "That stage?"

"This." Chris tipped his head slightly, looking at Nero’s round cheeks, the slow blink, and the calm little mouth that made every guard in a ten-meter radius feel like they might die for him. "The innocent part."

Rowan’s shoulders loosened by a fraction. "Yes," he said, carefully. "He’ll remember what you give him. Safety. Routine. Love. He won’t remember specific days."

Chris hummed, considering.

That was, unfortunately, a sound Rowan had come to fear.

Chris’s gaze drifted up, unfocused, the way it did when he was doing math in his head. Not the kind with numbers. The kind with consequences.

"He’s going to get older," Chris said quietly.

Rowan’s eyes sharpened again. "Yes."

"And then he’ll be... less small." Chris’s thumb brushed over Nero’s fist. Nero grabbed harder, as if offended by the concept of growth.

"Yes," Rowan repeated, like speaking gently to a wild animal. "That’s typically how children work."

Chris nodded, still distant. "And then it’s just... him."

Rowan didn’t move. Killian didn’t move either, but the air around him tightened.

Chris glanced at Rowan, and there it was: the look. "I don’t want him to be alone."

Rowan closed his eyes for half a second, not in prayer but in resignation. "Chris."

Chris lifted a hand. "No, listen. I’m not saying now. I’m not saying immediately. I’m not saying I’m going to sprint into a physician’s office like a man possessed."

Rowan opened his eyes slowly. "That sentence did not reassure me."

"I’m saying," Chris continued, stubbornly reasonable, "that time is going to move anyway. And if we’re going to do this, if we’re going to give him a sibling, then the idea of it shouldn’t feel like a crime."

Rowan’s jaw tightened. "You nearly died."

Chris’s gaze flicked, fast and sharp, like the word had snapped a cord. "You’re being dramatic," he said, shrugging with a carelessness that was ninety percent spite and ten percent self-defense. "I only had a C-section. The rest was fine."

Rowan stopped walking.

Killian’s eyes shifted faintly, the way a blade angled toward light.

Rowan’s voice went low. "The rest was fine."

Chris nodded, committed to the lie with royal dignity. "Fine."

Rowan stared at him like he was deciding whether to resign or start screaming. "Chris, you spent half that pregnancy asleep."

Chris blinked once. "I was tired."

Rowan’s expression sharpened. "You were sedated by your own body."

Chris’s mouth twisted. "That’s an interpretation."

"That’s a diagnosis," Rowan snapped, then immediately moderated his tone because Nero was there and because Rowan had a soul. "You were constantly sleeping because your pregnancy was risky. We had physicians rotating like a guard schedule. We had Nadia living in your wing like a vengeful saint."

Chris tried to wave it off. "Yes, and it worked. See? Fine."

Rowan’s eyes narrowed in slow disbelief. "Your definition of ’fine’ is that you survived."

Chris’s smile flashed, bright and infuriating. "It’s a solid metric."

Killian, still walking behind them with the calm of an oncoming storm, said mildly, "It is the lowest acceptable metric."

Chris glanced back at him. "Traitor."

"I am loyal," Killian corrected. "To your continued existence."

Rowan pointed at Killian without taking his eyes off Chris. "Exactly." Then his gaze sharpened, the worry rearranging itself into suspicion the way it always did when Chris got too calm about anything dangerous. "Also - where did the omega who was afraid of pregnancy go? How are you suddenly so fine with it now?" His voice dropped a notch, pointed. "Does His Majesty know?"