Caught by the Mad Alpha King-Chapter 464: Morning Evidence

The next morning, Chris looked at his husband with deep suspicion.

A long, narrow-eyed suspicion of a man who had married a seven-foot-three king, knew exactly what that implied in private, and was now being forced to sit with the consequences in broad daylight while every part of his body filed separate complaints.

He was in a chair by the bedroom windows, one leg folded carefully beneath him, the other positioned with the caution of someone who had discovered several new muscles overnight and did not care to discuss any of them. His black hair was still slightly damp from a second bath, his clothes soft and loose, and his expression sharp enough to cut glass despite the obvious air of someone who had been thoroughly overruled by his own mate for most of the night.

Across from him, Dax sat in another chair with Nero in his arms.

Which was unfair.

Not because Dax looked too composed. He didn’t. Chris could see the drag of fatigue in him, the slower movements, the faint stiffness when he adjusted his shoulders. He was sore too. He was simply being insufferably dignified about it.

He had showered already, dressed in dark house clothes, with his white-blonde hair tied back loosely at the nape, purple eyes clear and calm and entirely too pleased with himself. The black ring sat on his smallest finger like it had always belonged there.

Chris took one look at that serene face and narrowed his eyes further.

Dax noticed, of course.

"What?"

Chris stared at him. "You continued."

"Yes."

Chris let the silence sit.

Dax, apparently deciding honesty remained fashionable this week, added, "For some time."

"I know," Chris said. "I was there."

Nero, who had no interest in adult hostility unless it benefited him directly, was focused on Chris’s collar.

It was one of the simpler ones by royal standards - fine black leather, fitted cleanly around Chris’s throat, with a dark decorative charm resting at the hollow of it. Modest, compared to some of Dax’s more aggressive acts of affection. Still expensive enough to fund a village road.

Nero had decided he wanted it.

This had become the axis on which the morning turned.

He sat very seriously in Dax’s lap, one little hand braced on Dax’s chest for leverage, the other stretching stubbornly toward Chris from across the space between chairs.

"Mine," Nero said.

Chris looked at him. "No."

Nero frowned, reached farther, and tried again. "Mine."

"No."

"Mine."

Dax adjusted him slightly higher when he nearly tipped himself out of his lap in pursuit of theft. "It is not yours."

Nero looked offended by this family-wide failure of reason. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

Chris folded his arms carefully and winced very slightly in the process.

Dax’s gaze dropped at once.

Chris caught it. "Do not."

Dax’s mouth moved faintly. "You’re sore."

Chris stared at him with immense dignity. "Your gift for observation remains breathtaking."

Nero, detecting weakness in the room, redoubled his efforts and made an impatient grab toward the charm.

Chris caught his hand midair. "No."

Nero looked down at his own betrayed fingers. Then up at Chris. Then at Dax.

"Papa," he said, in the tone of a man lodging a formal complaint.

Dax, traitor that he was, did not side with him. "No."

Nero processed that with visible offense, then laid his head briefly against Dax’s chest as if grief had claimed him personally.

Chris watched this performance in silence.

Then: "He gets that from you."

Dax looked at him. "No. I commit."

"That," Chris said, "is not the defense you think it is."

Nero lifted his head again, recovered with insulting speed, and pointed at Chris’s throat. "Pretty."

That took some force out of Chris immediately.

He looked down at his son, who was now studying the collar with solemn fascination, all previous outrage redirected into admiration.

"It is," Chris said.

"Mine," Nero concluded.

Chris sighed. "Your reasoning remains flawed."

Dax’s hand settled lightly over Nero’s stomach before the child could launch himself bodily out of his lap again. "You may look."

Nero looked.

Then, very gently for once, he leaned forward and tapped the charm with one finger instead of trying to rip it off.

Chris went still for half a second.

Well... That was progress.

"There," Dax said quietly. "You survived not stealing something."

Nero looked pleased with himself.

Chris, still suspicious on principle, shifted in his chair and regretted it instantly.

Dax noticed that too.

"You should stay in bed."

Chris looked at him flatly. "And let you look smug from a superior angle? Never."

"I am not smug."

"You are literally sitting there with post-coital serenity and a toddler in your arms like some kind of indecent domestic painting."

Dax considered that. "That sounds flattering."

"It was not intended that way."

Nero, deciding the conversation had once again strayed too far from his interests, patted Dax’s chest and announced, "Papa pretty."

Chris closed his eyes briefly.

Dax’s mouth curved. "At last. Recognition."

"That child," Chris said, opening his eyes again, "is too young to be enabling you."

"He has standards."

"He has two words and a criminal agenda."

"Still," Dax said, "accurate."

Nero, delighted by being included at all, wiggled with enough force that Dax had to tighten his hold.

Then he spotted the black ring.

His whole face lit up.

"Rock."

Chris pointed immediately. "No."

Nero looked startled. He hadn’t even moved yet.

"You were going to," Chris said.

Nero blinked.

Dax looked down at the ring, then at his son. "You may look."

Nero looked.

Then, because apparently his morning was dedicated to testing boundaries without fully crossing them, he reached out and touched the black stone with one cautious finger.

"Pretty rock," he said.

Dax looked at the ring on his hand, then at Nero, and some of the private elegance from yesterday returned to his face. "Yes," he said.

Chris watched both of them from across the room and let out a slow breath.

This was how families survived, he thought. Through grief rings and stolen sleep and toddlers trying to inherit collars by force while their fathers argued across a sunlit bedroom.

Nero, satisfied by beauty and denied theft in equal measure, settled back against Dax and yawned hugely.

Chris eyed him. "You’re tired already."

"Up," Nero said, which in his current vocabulary meant almost anything from ’pick me up’ to ’fix the world.’

"You are already up," Chris replied.

Nero frowned, decided language had failed him, and buried his face into Dax’s chest instead.

Dax rested one hand over the back of his son’s head and looked at Chris across the room.

His gaze dropped once, deliberately, over Chris’s posture, the careful way he was sitting, the collar at his throat, and the very obvious suspicion that had not fully left his face.

Then his purple eyes lifted again.

Chris narrowed his own. "Do not look pleased."

"I am pleased."