CHAPTER 186: CHAPTER 186: PERMANENT

"You rule half of it now," Killian said without raising his eyes from the tablet. "Congratulations."

Nadia was focused now, checking the inner lines of Chris’s neck and the curve of his gland below the nape, scanning with the kind of detached attention that only made things worse. "No nerve inflammation. The bond registered clean. Your levels are high but not unstable. You’re running a bit warm, though."

"I’m always warm," Chris muttered, sulking into the mattress. "That’s what happens when someone knots you five times in a row."

Killian didn’t even blink. "That’s your own fault."

Chris groaned louder this time, and Nadia gave Dax a look that walked the line between admiration and medical concern. "Did you at any point think to moderate?"

"I did," Dax said, deeply unrepentant. "Around the third time."

Chris reached blindly for a pillow and launched it at him. It missed by a margin of failure and shame.

"I’m prescribing you a gland stabilizer and pain relief gel," Nadia said, packing her tools with one hand. "And Dax, you are under strict order to not touch him again until tomorrow. I’m writing it into the imperial medical log."

Dax looked mildly betrayed. "I thought you liked me."

"I do," she said. "But you don’t know your own strength, and this is my patient now."

Chris made a triumphant noise that lasted until she added, "You’re also going to be required to report for full consort protocol training this week. Sahir is overseeing it himself."

"I knew this was a trap," Chris whispered.

Killian glanced at Dax. "He’s lucky. The last one didn’t get protocol. Just a wheelchair and two months of counseling."

Chris sat up a little too fast. "There was a last one?"

"No," Dax said instantly. "There wasn’t."

"He means," Killian corrected smoothly, "there were others. But not like this."

Chris narrowed his eyes, then winced. "I need that pain gel."

"I’ll send it now," Nadia said, already walking toward the door. "Killian, brief the staff. And remind Sahir to enter gently."

Chris groaned and fell back into the bed again.

Dax leaned over with a grin. "Want me to carry you to the shower?"

"Only if you delay Sahir and his documents until I can walk by myself."

Dax smiled, slow and smug, like a man who had every intention of carrying his consort and delaying a Prime Minister if necessary.

"I can delay Sahir," he said easily. "Whether or not I let you walk is another matter."

Chris glared at him from under the sheets. "If you so much as lift me bridal-style again, I will stab you. With one of your own medals."

"You say that now," Dax murmured, pressing a kiss to the top of Chris’s hair, "but you didn’t complain when I..."

"Out," Chris ordered, throwing the pillow again with more force this time.

Dax caught it one-handed, still grinning. "I’ll be in the lounge. Yell if you want me."

"I will never want you again," Chris called after him, face half-buried in the mattress. "Ever."

"Mmm," Dax answered from the doorway. "You said that after the third time too."

The door shut softly behind him.

Chris exhaled into the quiet, letting the silence settle back over the suite like a soft blanket. The bond pulsed faintly beneath his skin, warm, steady, and deeply unfair.

He groaned, turned his face into the mattress, and muttered, "I’m going to kill Sahir."

—

Chris didn’t think he’d ever been this clean.

He was showered, fed, and clothed... sort of. His bathrobe was technically a loungewear set made from some kind of imperial silk that felt like air and cost more than a civil engineer’s annual salary. He was freshly bandaged in three places he hadn’t known could bruise and was trying very hard not to wince when he sat down.

He didn’t ask what happened to the pillow he’d bitten through or the totally destroyed sheets.

Dax was working. At least, that was what he called it, lounging on the opposite couch with a tablet in one hand and Chris’s bare ankle pinned under the other, thumb tracing lazy lines along the bone like he was playing a favorite song on loop.

Chris had tried to yank his foot back exactly once. Dax hadn’t even looked up. Just tightened his grip slightly and said, "Mine," like it was the most obvious and irreversible truth in the world.

Now, Chris sat cross-legged... well, attempted to, on the far side of the lounge sofa, sipping tea he didn’t remember asking for, waiting for the next wave of royal interference.

It came in the form of the lightest knock on the door, followed by the absolute audacity of Sahir entering without waiting.

He didn’t look like a man walking into a romantic battlefield. He looked like a Prime Minister at peace with the possibility of death.

"Good afternoon," Sahir said mildly, stepping in with a thick leather folder in hand. His silver-trimmed mantle swayed as he moved, dignified and dramatic in a way that made Chris feel instantly underdressed and deeply unsafe.

Chris lowered his cup. "That better be poison."

"It’s paperwork," Sahir replied, with a glance that managed to be fond, judging, and exhausted all at once. "Which, depending on your level of patience, might be worse."

Dax didn’t look up. "I said I’d delay him."

"You did," Sahir agreed, shutting the door behind him. "You just didn’t succeed."

Chris narrowed his eyes. "Do we really have to do it now?"

Sahir gave him the most bureaucratically gentle smile Chris had ever wanted to punch.

"Yes," he said, without remorse. "You’re lucid, bandaged, hydrated, and, as far as the imperial calendar is concerned, twelve hours behind schedule."

Chris blinked slowly. "I’m sorry, I thought this was a monarchy, not an HR department with delusions of grandeur."

"It’s both," Sahir said, entirely unbothered, setting the folder down with the soft finality of a man who had personally buried empires in triplicate. "And your signature is now required on fourteen documents, three oaths, and one extremely outdated ceremonial scroll that the archivists insist we include for tradition."

Chris stared at the folder like it might explode.

Then he looked at Dax.

Then back at Sahir.

"Do I get a raise?" he deadpanned.

"You get diplomatic immunity and a private helicopter," Sahir said. "And the right to wear national symbols on your underwear."

Chris’s nose scrunched. "I’m not putting a bird crest on my ass."

"Technically," Sahir mused, flipping to the first page, "it would be above your ass. Centered. Gold thread."

Dax finally looked up, smirking. "You’d pull it off."

"I will pull you off this couch by your spine," Chris muttered.

"Not until tomorrow," Dax said smugly. "Doctor’s orders."

Chris turned to Sahir, deadpan. "Can I have him impeached?"

"You can request it," Sahir said cheerfully. "But you’d have to fill out Form 118B and declare yourself in opposition to your own consortship. That would trigger a full internal review and a case of treason."

"I’m not even married to him!" Chris said with the face of a man defeated by bureaucracy.

"Yet."

Sahir didn’t even flinch. Just slid the next set of documents across the table like he was dealing cards in a very high-stakes game of existential regret.

Chris blinked at the parchment. Then back at Sahir.

"Is that... a wedding application?"