The Demon Lord's Bride (BL)
Chapter 503: Preparing for the arrival is the fun of pregnancy

Chapter 503: Preparing for the arrival is the fun of pregnancy

"So beautiful..." I let out a soft sigh. Waking up in Natha’s arms while seeing Shwa first thing in the morning...

Felt like heaven.

"Indeed," Natha murmured against my hair, pulling me closer to him beneath the blanket. "Our child is beautiful before even born," and then he added in a whisper. "Like you."

"Hey!"

I slapped him lightly, laughing in embarrassment. It didn’t seem like he said it to flirt with me, but it still managed to make me flustered.

His words got me thinking, though...I never really thought much about how Shwa would look like. Would they become a perfect mesh of me and Natha, or would they take over one of us? Well, If I had to choose...

"I’d like it if Shwa looks like you, though..." I muttered dreamily.

Little blue boy Natha...how cute would it be? I got excited simply from imagining it! Ah...why didn’t I think about this before? I had to definitely ask Aunt Nezja for some pictures of Natha’s childhood, paintings, whatever! She must have had some...right?

"Hmm...I’m sure our child will be beautiful no matter what," Natha replied while running his fingers through my hair, combing it.

"Of course!"

Naturally, our child would be the prettiest in the world!

"But I prefer it if Shwa looks like you," he continued, and I gasped from the slight sense of betrayal.

"Hmm...but we already have a mini-me in Jade," I argued.

"Ah..."

Natha exclaimed softly as if he just remembered that Jade in a human form was literally a clone of mine--minus the hair. I giggled at his dazed expression and continued my daydream while staring at the blue pattern all over the flower.

"I want them to have little horns," I giggled. The numbers didn’t matter, but imagining small cones sprouting up from their head triggered my switch. "That’ll be so~ cute!"

"Really?"

"Mm!"

Natha looked taken aback by the notion that I found little Natha looked alike with little horns to be cute. But why was he surprised? He should have known now that I adored his demon form more than his human guise, and I particularly loved his horns--although I was banned from touching them ever since the honeymoon.

It took him about a dozen seconds to digest this fact, to which he replied with a defeated chuckle. "Well, I’m sure we’ll love Shwa regardless."

"Of course!" I huffed proudly, whole fully believing in my unlimited love for my child--children. "But...how long do you think we need to wait?"

"Hmm...we don’t even know how many layers are there."

"You’re right..." I turned to lay on my back and let out a sigh.

It was very exciting when we met the first development that we straight up staying here afterward. Natha only went out for a bit to tell the others that he would take the rest of the day off, and take some food for our dinner. We continued our picnic, but instead of eating, we just stared at the flowers.

Somehow, we spent hours just staring at it, feeling the pulse, watching the traveling lights, as if under hypnotize. It was weird, but at that moment, I felt like only a few minutes had passed--until my stomach grumbled and I realized that Jade was sleeping.

The rush of dopamine lasted even in my dream, as we lay on the bed while continuing to watch the flower. But after the euphoria had passed, impatience took over.

When will you fully bloom? How many stages there are? What caused you to bloom this time? Can I do it faster?

Question upon question filled the calming mind, and as my brain swirled to think about questions that not even the deities could answer, I remembered something and gasped. "Oh--I should write it down; the progress!"

I got up and rummaged through my storage ring, taking out a chest that I used to store books and stationeries. Where was it--I remembered buying a nice leather notebook during the last shopping session with Aina and Zarfa.

"Aha!" I pulled out a small, leather-bound, silver-framed notebook.

I had meant to use it to mark the progress in this ’pregnancy’, but since there was no visible progress before this, I had only filled in the first entry of the ’conceiving’ time.

As for my mood swings and cravings...let’s just leave it out.

"What is that? A journal?" Natha asked, peeking through my shoulder as I wrote the process of the second bloom.

"Yes!"

I felt his head nodding on my shoulder. "That’s a good idea," he said while leaning his head on my shoulder.

"Hehe..."

I wrote as much detail as I could, as well as drawing the flower’s new look. I couldn’t say I did it well, but we also had a recording device, so it was alright. While I was scribbling and doodling, Natha was watching behind my back, giving feedback from time to time, and when I finished, he hummed.

"Hmm...then, I should start doing my part," he said while finally detaching himself from my back.

"Your part?" I tilted my head.

He gave me that charming smile of him and spoke while curling his eyes. "Building the nursery."

I gasped.

* * *

For the first time ever since I lived in this Castle, I found out we had a whole unused bedroom gallery on the other wing of the master bedroom, sealed not only from entry, but also from sight.

"...why?" I asked with lips parted in bewilderment.

Why? Was I too stupid to realize there was a whole wing with four rooms across our bedroom? Granted, the entrance to the hallways was blocked by a floor-to-ceiling cabinet filled with miscellaneous things that did not pick my interest but...

No one also told me about this?

Natha cleared his throat and looked rather embarrassed before explaining. "At first, I...uhh, didn’t want you to sleep in any other bedroom when you came here, so I sealed the place before you came the first time."

My eyes narrowed at this sketchy demon pulling tricks on me. Not that I would choose to sleep in another room, but...

Wow.

How cunning, My Lord.

"And later on?"

"Later on?" Natha tilted his head--seemed like he had overcome his initial embarrassment. "Later on, there wasn’t a need for that, was there?"

My eyes narrowed even more, and I pinched his side until he finally relented and gave me the real reason while laughing. "Alright, alright--later on, I didn’t want you to use the room to sleep in when you got angry at me."

Geez, this demon!

"I wouldn’t leave the bedroom," I rolled my eyes, adding when he raised his brow and smiled. "I’d kick you to this side or run to the Lair."

"Sweetheart..." Natha made a whining sound and I laughed, skipping to the hallway to check the room that the servant had just cleaned up after almost a year.

There were four rooms in total, but only two of them were used as bedrooms. One looked like some kind of a drawing room or a lounge, and another one was filled with empty shelves--perhaps it used to be a storage?

"What do you think?" Natha asked after I finished looking around. We ended our short tour in the lounge, the one with the most sunlight.

"Are we going to use the whole wing?"

"Why not?" Natha shrugged.

I opened the window and looked out. Since it was on the other side of the Lord’s quarters, the room faced the Castle’s landscape; the buildings below the tower where we lived. I could see the research tower and the training ground from here instead of the garden--which meant this side would be more secure than the master bedroom.

Hmm...

Well, why not?

"Alright, let’s use the whole wing!" I decided without hesitation.

What did they say again? That I needed to be greedier?

"Let’s turn one room into a nursery, and the other room for the nanny."

"Nannies," Natha corrected. "You don’t think I’ll only send one person to take care of our child, do you?"

Oh, no--how could I dare to presume so? I rolled my eyes once before laughing. Well...the bedroom was big enough for several beds anyway.

"Right; then...should we turn the room with the shelves into a separate closet?" I stroked my chin. "I think Arta already has a whole store of designs in her book. Books."

Natha chuckled and nodded. "Sure; I’m sure there’ll be a lot of stuff that needs to be rotated too. what about this place then?"

"Playroom!" I threw my hands in the air like Jade would. "We’ll play with Shwa here, have a small library and such. Oh, can we add more windows too? Let’s make this room more sunny! Ah, but it might get too hot and glaring during the summer..."

"Don’t worry," Natha patted my head and knocked on the window frame. "We can just install a formation that controls the amount of sunlight coming in--let’s just install temperature control formation while at it. We have one of the best Formation Masters in the realm after all."

"Oh! I’m going to write to Uncle Sol to ask for help!" I clapped my hands, before realizing that I couldn’t ask for his advice without telling him about the intention behind the reconstruction. "Umm..."

"It’s okay," Natha shrugged. "We used his help in constructing the shed, so he probably had guessed to some extent. Also, I don’t think we need to tell him the details--just say it’s for our future children."

I nodded and clapped my hands again, before belatedly realizing his words. "Children?"

He smiled and suddenly held my waist, hoisting me to the windowsill. "Well, now that I know it’s quite safe..." he whispered against my lips.

"W-w-what?" I stuttered between the burst of heat on my cheeks.

Instead of continuing his words, Natha just tilted his head and smiled, eyes narrowed and deep. "You don’t want to?"

Ugh! So unfair! That charming voice and alluring gaze were so unfair!

"We haven’t even done with this one!" I hissed and smacked him to hide my embarrassment, but he merely laughed and kissed my cheeks, my nose, my neck--

"Your Lordship!" someone called out from the hallway, followed by several hasty footsteps.

Damn it! When I was in the mood too! It was so rare that I didn’t feel repulsed by Natha’s flirtation outside of my ’heat’ period. What is it that was so important they just go and--

"Your Lordship! There’s a conflict at the border!

...oh.