Caught by the Mad Alpha King Chapter 82: The couch is nice

Nadia didn’t look up from her tablet. "No. Just vitals: heart rate, temperature, hormone fluctuation, and stress spikes. It’s not a leash."

Rowan snorted quietly from the doorway. "That’s generous. I’ve seen leashes with fewer tracking points."

Chris gave him a flat look. "You say that like it’s funny."

Rowan’s mouth curved. "If you try to bolt, I have ten alphas who can scent-track a heartbeat through three kiloters of city traffic. So yes, a little."

"Comforting," Chris said, voice bone-dry. "I’ll add that to my list of reasons to stay indoors, right under emotional stability and risking making the king with a history of violence mad."

Rowan gave a soft snort, the kind that sounded halfway between amusent and warning. "Smart man."

Chris leaned back against the couch, squinting at him. "No, just tired of dying dramatically. I’d rather do it in comfort this ti, maybe with air-conditioning."

"That can be arranged," Rowan said, folding his arms, every inch the immovable wall he was trained to be. His posture scread bodyguard, but his eyes carried that particular brand of quiet fondness that made it hard to stay annoyed. "Still, don’t test . The last ti soone under my watch decided to ’get fresh air,’ I had to pull three units off a security drill to find them."

Chris tilted his head. "And what happened to them?"

"They’re fine," Rowan said. "The wall they tried to climb, not so much."

"Noted," Chris muttered. "I’ll schedule my rebellion for when your team’s off duty."

"Good luck finding a ti," Rowan replied, already heading for the door. "We rotate in shifts. Soone’s always watching."

Chris arched a brow. "Creepy."

"Efficient," Rowan corrected, and left before Chris could argue.

The silence that followed felt too clean, too sterile. The patch on his arm blinked a steady violet, the world humd at the edge of hearing, and every nerve in his body still felt like a new instrunt no one had taught him how to play.

He looked at the door Rowan had just walked through and exhaled softly. "Right," he muttered to the empty room. "Indoors it is. Emotional stability, check. Making the king mad, check. Prison chic, double-check."

The patch blinked again, steady, unimpressed.

Chris slouched deeper into the couch and sighed. "At least the couch is nice."

—

Rowan ca back just as the light outside began to slip into gold, that in-between hour when the palace looked like a painting and Chris felt like a badly drawn sketch on top of it.

The door opened quietly, his head of security stepping in with his usual soundless authority, though the faint scent of apple cinnamon pie gave him away before the hinges did. The man could command ten ard alphas through a riot and still manage to make a room look smaller just by walking into it.

He stopped halfway through the sitting room, eyes flicking from the untouched food tray on the low table to the faint glow of the laptop screen still playing so kind of structural engineering lecture. The narrator’s voice droned on about load distribution and stress coefficients, calm, unbothered, and completely ignored by its audience.

Chris hadn’t moved since early afternoon.

He was still on the couch, blanket half-pulled around him, one arm hanging over the edge, and the IV line tucked neatly under a sleeve that Nadia had rolled up earlier. The slow drip of fluid was the only thing that looked remotely productive in the room.

Rowan raised an eyebrow. "That’s new," he said, tone light but with enough weight to make Nadia look up from the notes she was writing.

She didn’t flinch. "He wouldn’t eat," she said simply. "And if I had to listen to him argue for another half hour, I was going to sedate myself."

Chris cracked one eye open. "It’s not my fault everything slls like a chemical spill." His voice ca out rasped, drowsy, halfway between irritation and exhaustion. "And before you start lecturing , no, I didn’t touch the food, yes, I tried the water; and no, I don’t need a babysitter."

Rowan folded his arms, looking unconvinced. "You have at least eleven."

"Tragic," Chris murmured, closing his eyes again. "That’s eleven more than necessary."

"Necessary is keeping you alive until dinner," Nadia said, unfazed. "The IV’s just glucose, saline, and vitamins. You’ll feel better in an hour."

"Liar."

"I prefer ’professional optimist.’"

Rowan looked at the physician who’d joined her, a quiet man in his fifties, clean-shaven, the kind who radiated gentle exasperation at both patients and staff alike. "He’s stable?"

"Physically," the physician replied, checking the monitor wirelessly connected to Chris’s patch. "But his sensory threshold is still in chaos. If he stands too fast, he’ll pass out. If he skips another al, he’ll crash." He paused, glancing toward the couch. "And if His Majesty sees him like this before dinner, he will have our heads."

"Fair point," Rowan said.

Chris cracked an eye open again. "You’re all so dramatic. It’s a vitamin drip, not my last rites."

"You say that," Nadia said, "but your blood sugar says otherwise." She adjusted the IV line with the kind of smooth competence that brooked no argunt. "I’ll give you sothing mild to settle the overreaction in your system. You’ll still feel everything, just... less like the world’s screaming in your ear."

"That’s impossible," Chris said. "You’re here. Rowan’s here. Existing counts as noise."

Rowan smirked faintly. "Good to know I make the list."

"Top three," Chris said weakly, closing his eyes again. "Right under gravity and consciousness."

The physician didn’t bother responding. He simply set up the secondary injection, a clear liquid that slid into the line without ceremony. "This will help," he said. "You’ll still be tired, but you’ll be able to shower and eat sothing."

Chris muttered, "Define sothing."

"Soup," Nadia said. "Plain. No spices, no seasoning."

"So, sadness in a bowl."

"That’s one way to put it," Rowan said dryly.

The silence that followed was easy, the kind that ca from everyone knowing exactly how fragile the balance was and pretending it wasn’t. The palace lights dimd automatically as the sun dipped lower, casting the room in amber tones. The sound of water running faintly in the distance reached them, Dax’s shower, no doubt.

Chris heard it too. His fingers twitched against the blanket, restless. "Tell him I’m not hungry," he said after a mont, voice quieter now, tired and trying not to show it.

Rowan looked down at him, sothing softer slipping through the usual professionalism. "You can tell him yourself," he said.

Chris made a face. "Great. He can add that to the long list of things he’s already ignoring."

"Probably," Rowan said, amused.

Nadia gave the IV line one last check and stepped back, satisfied. "You’ll start to feel lighter in a few minutes. Take it slow when you stand."

"Can’t promise anything," Chris muttered.

"We’ll take what we can get," she replied.

Rowan glanced toward the corridor leading to the private bath, where faint steam was beginning to drift through the open door. "He’ll be out soon," he said, aning Dax.

Chris kept his eyes shut, voice muffled against the pillow. "Fantastic. I’ll look my best, like a half-dead lab rat in couture."

Rowan chuckled, low and brief. "You’re not dying, Chris."

"Not yet," he said, and exhaled softly, the faintest twitch of humor still lingering under the exhaustion.

He could already feel the dication working, the world softening around the edges, and the sharpness fading into sothing muted and tolerable. Still loud, but less like static under his skin. The first deep breath he managed didn’t hurt.

Nadia was right. It helped.

He’d never admit it out loud, but for the first ti in two days, he didn’t hate the air he was breathing.

And if the faint scent of spice and smoke began to drift down the hallway as the shower stopped, if his pulse stuttered without warning at the proof that Dax was near, well, no one ntioned it.

Rowan only glanced once at the IV line and at the way the oga’s fingers twitched under the blanket and shook his head. "He’ll live," he murmured.

Nadia smiled faintly. "Eventually."