The city below Altera’s windows burned with its usual, dostic heat, lamps glowing in the fog, glass towers pulsing faintly with the breath of generators, and the slow machinery of a capital that never slept. From the royal office, the streets looked tidy, almost serene, like a ledger that had finally balanced. Bridges repaired, markets full, laws enforced. From where Dax stood, dressed and newly washed, it looked instead like an equation written in blood and traded favors. Every solution had a price, and he had paid for most of them himself.
He hadn’t moved in hours. His hair was still damp, the whiskey on the desk half gone. The water had stripped the scent of smoke and blood from his skin but hadn’t taken the heaviness from his chest. Christopher’s voice lingered there with that gut-wrenching tone.
’Go to hell.’
The words kept replaying behind his teeth. He’d heard plenty of anger before: betrayal, defiance, even hatred. But not like this. There had been no tremor, no plea, and no room for negotiation. Just the blunt end of sothing that had once been alive between them. The silence that followed had pressed in around him like smoke, and he carried it now like a wound he couldn’t close.
His pheromones rose again without thought, a low and electric thrum of ozone and spice. The scent of it rolled against the glass walls of the office, too heavy for the vents to handle. He could feel the entire palace sensing him, from the staff holding their breath to the guards stiffening at the end of the corridor.
He let them.
He wanted them to rember what kind of man ruled them when peace slipped out of reach.
The door opened with a soft creak. Killian entered, slower this ti, but he didn’t stop at the threshold. He crossed halfway before the air thickened enough to make him pause.
"Your Majesty," he said carefully, "your pheromones..."
"Leave them," Dax murmured, eyes still on the city beyond the glass. His voice was quieter than before but edged with sothing darker than anger. "Let the city feel them."
Killian hesitated. "The entire palace already does."
"I know." Dax’s hand flexed against the edge of the desk. "Let them rember their king is not patient. Let them rember what happens when sothing of mine is broken."
When he turned, the dim light caught his eyes, a storm of violet and gold, bright enough to wound. The suit he’d put on after bathing was simple: black silk trimd with a faint shimr of gold thread, perfectly pressed and hugging the king’s massive fra. It only made the feral pulse of his presence sharper.
"What about Christopher then...?" Killian ventured softly, hesitant to ask more about their earlier fight. He thought it would be fun to see the oga angry with Dax, but this was far worse than anything he imagined until now.
Dax’s jaw tightened. "He stopped fighting." The words landed like a verdict. "He told to go to hell."
Silence followed, heavier than the scent that filled the room.
Dax exhaled slowly, forcing composure into the motion. "Hell is nothing," he said, voice low, "compared to what happens if he stays like this."
He wasn’t sure whether he ant it as a threat or a vow.
The communicator on the desk flashed once, a line he’d avoided all evening. Still, he reached for it.
Trevor Fitzgeralt’s voice ca through steady and sharp, a man who didn’t bother with ceremony when war was already on the table. "Dax," he said, anger woven through the syllables, "I thought you were a better strategist than . How the fuck didn’t you tell Christopher what the collar ant?"
Dax blinked, stunned for half a heartbeat. "What are you talking about? He was inford by staff while I was in Rohan."
"Staff?" Trevor’s laugh was dry, humorless. "You left your oga to palace handlers and called that communication? He thinks you forced it on him. That you locked him down and dressed him like a trophy. He’s been telling people you’re trying to train him like a pet, Dax."
The words hit like a blade between the ribs. And a na was ringing in his head. Hanna.
"I never gave such orders," Dax said tightly. "He could do whatever the hell he wanted... except leave the palace."
"Then soone failed," Trevor snapped. "Because Christopher doesn’t know what the collar ans. All he knows is that it’s locked and reeks of you. He thinks it’s a leash."
Dax froze. For a long mont, nothing existed but the hum of the room and the sound of his own breath. Then his voice beca quieter, more controlled, like soone holding a fracture shut. "So no one told him."
He gave a short, hollow laugh. "That explains his reaction."
Trevor didn’t return the sound. His tone shifted to cool and rciless. "If you punish your staff for this, if you make them bleed to cover your mistake, you’ll only prove him right. He already thinks you’re a man who cages what he can’t understand. Don’t hand him the evidence."
Dax’s head bowed slightly, his hand curling into a fist over the desk. When he finally spoke, the voice that ca out was almost calm... almost. "You think you can tell how to keep what’s mine?"
"No," Trevor said. "I’m telling you how not to lose him. You can command armies, Dax. You can burn cities. But he isn’t a war. You try to win him like one, and you’ll have an empire full of smoke and an empty bed."
For a long mont, neither spoke. Then Dax drew in a slow breath that seed to scrape through him. "You’re lucky," he said at last, the faint ghost of dark amusent undercutting the exhaustion, "that I still have three temples left to purge. I need sothing to bleed on."
"Three temples?" Trevor repeated, incredulous. "You think killing priests will fix this?"
"It’ll keep from tearing down my own palace," Dax murmured. "Better their blood than mine. Or anyone else’s."
Trevor’s silence was its own warning. Dax could hear his friend calculating how close to madness his king had gotten.
He could lose himself to it. It would be simple: direct his fury outward, set an example, and let the palace drown in evidence of his divinity and pain. But when he saw Christopher’s face again, the grief, exhaustion, and quiet finality stopped him cold.
The collar had been ant as protection. It had beco humiliation. And that mistake was his.
He set the glass down, half-empty, the whiskey trembling faintly in his hand. If he stayed like this, if he gave in to the need to destroy, he’d beco exactly what Christopher feared.
So he chose sothing harder: restraint. A crueler discipline than violence.
He would wait. He would not touch Hanna tonight, not until the rage settled into sothing usable. He would raid the temples and tear apart the corruption at their roots, but he would not let the palace beco his punishnt ground.
When the line went silent, Dax stood motionless by the window, watching the city lights blur into streaks of gold.
Killian’s voice broke the quiet from the doorway. "Your Majesty, Hanna Osler has been detained. She’ll be kept under guard until morning. Reports will be ready at dawn."
Dax nodded once, not turning. "Good. Bring the nas when the sun rises. The guilty first."
Killian bowed and disappeared into the hall.
Dax refilled his glass. The whiskey burned, grounding him to the present. Beyond the windows, the city went on breathing, oblivious to the storm that had nearly broken over it.
He stood there until the lights blurred, until his reflection was little more than a shadow. And when the night finally settled, he understood sothing he hadn’t before.
Restraint, he thought, was just another form of cruelty.
And tonight, it was the only thing keeping him human.
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