CHAPTER 282: CHAPTER 282: MADNESS

The palace windows stretched wide, glass panes catching the dying gold of Altera’s evening lights. From the royal office, the capital seemed alive, sprawling like a furnace that refused to dim, its towers glowing, its streets humming far below. Yet behind the desk, the king stood motionless, broad shoulders framed against the horizon, violet eyes unblinking.

Dax hadn’t moved in hours. Not since the silence.

The collar had been meant to anchor Christopher, to bind him in a way words and crowns could not. Instead, the quiet that followed had pressed against the walls like smoke, thick enough to suffocate. He had scented it on him earlier, anger, sharp and wild, but alive. And now? Nothing. Just silence.

His jaw tightened, the weight of his pheromones slipping into the room unchecked, a storm he hadn’t realized he was unleashing. Heavy, iron-rich, searing at the edges like heat rolling off black stone. The air carried it, thick enough that the servants had fled long ago.

The door creaked open.

Killian stepped inside and immediately stilled, his spine straightening under the invisible crush of the king’s presence. His lungs seized on the first breath, chest tightening as if the atmosphere itself rebelled against him.

"Your Majesty," Killian said, voice low, careful. His hand pressed briefly against the doorframe before he forced himself forward, one step, then another. "Your pheromones..."

"Leave them," Dax cut in, voice deep, threaded with something darker than command. He hadn’t turned from the window, but every syllable seemed to reverberate against the glass. "Let the city feel them."

Killian swallowed, the weight pressing harder the closer he came. "The entire palace already does."

"I know." Dax’s hand curled into a fist at his side, then loosened again. "Let them remember their king is not patient. Let them remember what happens when something of mine is broken."

Only then did he turn, violet eyes burning in the dim light, cold as forged steel. His suit was immaculate, black threaded with subtle gold, but the air around him was feral, heavy enough to force the beta’s knees to weaken.

Killian bowed, sharp and forced against the pressure. "Then Christopher...?"

Dax’s jaw flexed, the faintest twitch betraying the storm he otherwise held locked beneath the surface. "He stopped fighting." The words left him like a curse. "He told me to go to hell."

For a heartbeat, silence filled the office, thicker even than the pheromones crushing the air.

And then Dax exhaled, slow, measured, but his voice dropped lower, dangerous in its restraint.

"Hell is nothing compared to what happens if he stays like this."

—

Trevor had seen men break before. Generals, even kings, powerful men who thought themselves unshakable until the wrong piece was stripped from their hands. But Dax was different.

If Christopher stayed silent, if the wolf in him gave up his teeth, the King of Saha wouldn’t just grieve. He would collapse. And when a man like Dax unraveled, it wasn’t in private, it was in fire, in armies, in the kind of brute force that swallowed cities whole.

Trevor could kneel a room with nothing but his pheromones and could break men into obedience with a whisper. But Dax? Dax could bend battalions. He could unmake nations with his rage. That was the scale they were dealing with now, an alpha whose madness wouldn’t stay in palaces and bedrooms but would bleed into the streets of Altera until the world remembered that Saha had once been built on conquest.

The phone in Trevor’s hand buzzed, still flashing with Mia’s frantic texts. He ignored them, his thumb steady as he scrolled past the noise, past the panic, and pulled up a secure line instead.

He hesitated only once, just long enough to exhale, violet eyes narrowing. He hated this. Hated being forced to call another man about the omega who had once sat in his parlor laughing, who had once been safe under their roof. But there was no choice.

If Dax lost Christopher, the rest of them would lose more than a friend. They’d lose the stability of a king.

Trevor pressed the call.

The line clicked, heavy silence on the other end. And then, no words, just the weight of pheromones bleeding through distance as if they were carried across wires. Even filtered, even dulled by technology, the oppressive press of Dax’s presence made the air feel heavier.

Trevor pinched the bridge of his nose, his voice flat, dangerous. "Dax, I thought you were a better strategist than me. How the fuck didn’t you tell Christopher what the collar meant?"

"What are you talking about?" Dax’s voice came rough, threaded with disbelief and fury. "He was informed by staff while I was in Rohan."

Trevor’s laugh was low, humorless. "Staff? You left your omega to palace handlers and thought that counted? He’s part of a group Lucas put together; he told everyone you just forced it on him. And not only that, you’ve been forcing him into Sahan silks like he’s some trained pet. Dax, I knew you were unhinged, but give that man a pause to fucking breathe."

The rumble on the other end wasn’t static; it was Dax’s growl, restrained but lethal. "I never gave such orders. He could do whatever the hell he wanted, only to remain here."

Trevor’s violet eyes narrowed, his tone slicing like a blade. "Then someone failed. Christopher doesn’t know what the collar is. All he knows is that it’s locked and reeks of you. He thinks it’s a leash."

The silence that followed was heavy, dragged out until Trevor almost heard the weight of Dax’s breathing grind through the line.

When the king spoke again, his voice was lower and rougher, as though admitting the word itself tasted like ash. "So, no one told him."

The sound that came through the line was not amusement. It was jagged, hollow, a scrape of sound that made the fine hairs at Trevor’s nape lift. Dax was laughing, but it was the laugh of a man who had just realized he’d been bleeding and decided to sharpen the knife himself.

"Well," the king drawled, his voice pitched low, dark. "That does clear out his reaction."

Trevor closed his eyes briefly, his jaw tightening. Someone will die tonight. He could hear it in the edges of that laugh, the kind that promised retribution, not reflection.

"Dax," Trevor said evenly, his voice cutting through the storm like steel drawn across stone. "If you punish your staff, if you burn through them to cover your own mistake, you’ll only prove Christopher right. He already thinks you’re a man who cages and consumes. Don’t give him the proof."

The line crackled with silence again.

Then Dax’s voice returned, quieter now, but dangerous in its restraint. "You think you can tell me how to keep what’s mine?"

Trevor didn’t flinch. "No. I’m telling you how not to lose him." His violet eyes hardened, his tone clipped. "You can raze armies, Dax. Bend them to your will. But Christopher isn’t an army. He won’t march when ordered. He’ll turn his back and you’ll be left with an empty palace and a collar choking dust."

There was a sharp inhale, the kind that carried through even the secure line, and Trevor imagined those violet eyes narrowing over Altera’s skyline.

"You’re lucky," Dax finally muttered, his voice hoarse, "that I still have three Temples to raid. I need something to get my rage on."

Trevor’s fingers tightened on the phone. "Three Temples?" His voice dropped, sharp as broken glass. "You think sating yourself on priests is going to fix this?"

Dax’s low laugh rumbled across the line, rough and humorless. "It will keep me from tearing down my own palace. From snapping the necks of the men who failed to speak when I wasn’t here. I need blood, Fitzgeralt. Better theirs than mine."

Trevor exhaled slowly, jaw taut. ’Madness. He’s already circling it.’