Pryna’s fingers dug into her midsection, the sharp pain blossoming from her stomach and radiating outwards. Her vision blurred, the faces of Inspector Varr, Daxen, and the tethered, upside-down Gorzav swimming before her. A whimper escaped her lips. This was it. Early labor. She hadn't even finished her juice. “Pryna!” Daxen’s voice, usually a measured baritone, cracked with raw alarm. He was beside her in an instant, his hands hovering, unsure where to touch without causing more distress. His face, which had held such cool composure through the invasion, was now a mask of pure, unadulterated terror. “What is it? The baby? The child is coming too soon?” Varr's stern mouth slackened. Even Gorzav, still suspended from the ceiling, managed a choked gurgle, though whether it was pain or genuine shock was hard to tell. “It… it hurts,” Pryna managed, a strangled cry catching in her throat. She sank to her knees, head bowed, the metallic tang of fear coating her tongue. This was much worse than a scraped knee or a missed nap. Daxen was already activating his personal commlink, his voice snapping with a sudden, chilling authority. “Activate full emergency protocol Alpha-Naught-Seven! Scramble the Vexlan medical fleet! I want a full-spectrum gravid-response team here in sixty seconds. Prepare the sterile birthing suite, double the atmospheric pressure in the main dome for zero-G transport, and ensure a direct neural interface for real-time fetal monitoring! Move!” The air around them thrummed with the sudden surge of the penthouse’s internal systems, indicators flashing red across unseen panels. The distant whine of ascending hover-vehicles already sounded in the air. Inspector Varr looked utterly overwhelmed, glancing between the frantic CEO and the doubled-over Pryna. “Wait, Mr. Vexlan, is this truly necessary? Perhaps standard medical—” the officer began, but Daxen cut him off with a stare flat enough to kill conversation. “My wife is in distress. Nothing is ‘standard’ when it concerns her or our heir.” Daxen gently tried to lift Pryna, his movements surprisingly tender. “Where is the pain, my love? Tell me, exactly.” Pryna groaned, clutching her stomach tighter. “It’s… deep. And… bubbly. Oh, it’s like a thousand tiny knives doing a dance party in my gut!” “Bubbly?” Daxen paused, a faint, almost imperceptible furrow forming between his brows. He ran a diagnostic scan with his wrist-mounted chronometer, its micro-emitters sweeping over Pryna’s abdomen. His expression shifted from extreme panic to… confusion. Then, a peculiar twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Indeed,” Daxen murmured, his voice strangely flat. “The internal readings indicate… a significant accumulation of digestive gases. Specifically, high levels of unfermented fructans. And a remarkable volume of undigested cellulose.” He blinked. “You consumed the entire crate of Xylosian blue-berries, didn’t you?” Pryna slowly lifted her head, her face pale, a wobbly pout on her lips. “They were so good. And I was hungry after… all the running. And the plasma-torch. And the panic room. I deserved a treat.” Daxen stared at her, then at the chronometer, then back at Pryna. His rigid shoulders began to shake. A sound, low and unfamiliar, rumbled in his chest. It started as a faint tremor, then blossomed into a full, resonant peal. A genuine, unadulterated laugh, rich and utterly foreign, erupted from Daxen Vexlan. He threw his head back, his laughter echoing through the damaged penthouse, bright and shocking. The officer and the security guards exchanged bewildered glances. Gorzav, still dangling, could only stare, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and disbelief. “Cancel all emergency protocols,” Daxen choked out, still laughing, tears of mirth welling in his eyes. “Tell the medical fleet to stand down. Inform them… the surrogate merely has an acute case of strawberry-induced flatulence.” Pryna felt her cheeks flush crimson. Of all the ways to cause a scene, this was truly mortifying. She wanted nothing more than to curl into a tiny ball and sleep for a century. The aftermath was swift and decisive. Gorzav Mynor, stripped of his wardship rights and exposed for multiple counts of espionage, attempted abduction, and domestic terrorism, found himself facing a life sentence. The irony was sweet: he was shipped off-world to the penal colony of Xylos-V, the very off-world labor colony he had intended for Pryna. Matriarch Zylas, her financial manipulations and collusion with Gorzav laid bare by Bexali’s data-dump, was socially exiled, her Vexlan shares permanently rescinded. She vanished from the public eye, relegated to a forgotten footnote in the family records. Bexali, having masterminded the information warfare that brought down Zylas and Gorzav, emerged as the undisputed queen of the Kytheris information brokerage, her network now running with unprecedented reach and legality. She even sent Pryna a congratulatory message, a single emoji of a winking face and a credit transfer for a small, island nation. Pryna, finally emancipated, found her trapped trust fund released, a sum so vast it could fund her permanent retirement to a life of uninterrupted naps on a private orbital habitat. But she didn’t leave. Not when Daxen, now her fiercely devoted husband, had built her a sanctuary. The Zenith Penthouse, once sterile, was now a haven of cloud-soft furnishings, silent zones, and automated comfort systems designed to anticipate her every yawn. Daxen, the glacial CEO, had morphed into a man whose primary obsession was Pryna’s optimal sleep cycles and nutritional intake. Months later, the Vexlan corporate board meeting was a tense affair. Holographic projections of quarterly reports pulsed across the massive table, the room stiff with quiet dread about market fluctuations and hostile takeovers. Daxen sat at the head, his gaze sharp, his posture impeccable. Then, his eyes softened, almost imperceptibly. Pryna, eight months pregnant and radiant, had fallen asleep on his lap. Her head rested against his thigh, a soft, contented snore escaping her lips. Daxen reached down, his fingers gently adjusting a stray strand of her hair from her face. He didn’t miss a beat in the meeting, his voice unwavering as he dismantled a rival’s proposal, but his other hand was discreetly tapping commands into his datapad. On the glowing screen, blueprints for a “Vexlan Zenith Hover-Crib Mk II” scrolled into view, detailing plans for 400 layers of adaptive memory foam, a self-adjusting thermal regulator, and a silent, anti-grav levitation system. He shot a withering glare at an executive who had dared to clear his throat too loudly. Total silence was now the Vexlan standard, especially when his wife was taking her ultimate nap.

The Ultimate Nap