Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig hostnexus.com. NS
Answer
hostnexus.com. 5 NS ns2.hostnexus.com.
hostnexus.com. 5 NS ns.hostnexus.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns.hostnexus.com. 5 A 108.170.61.102
ns2.hostnexus.com. 5 A 108.170.61.98
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0