Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig second-ns.com. NS
Answer
second-ns.com. 5 NS ns1.your-server.de.
second-ns.com. 5 NS ns.second-ns.com.
second-ns.com. 5 NS ns3.second-ns.de.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns.second-ns.com. 5 A 213.239.204.242
ns.second-ns.com. 5 AAAA 2a01:4f8:0:a101:0:0:b:1
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0