Chapter 137: Chapter 137: Mad (2)

The silence cracked between them. For a long moment, the only sound was the faint hum of wind moving through the terrace vines.

Dax’s breathing was uneven and controlled but on the edge. His fingers flexed once against the table before curling into a fist. Chris didn’t move.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter, but it trembled from his own restraint. “You don’t get to shout at me like that. You don’t get to use that tone when I’m the one you claim to protect.”

Dax exhaled, the sound rough. “You think I don’t hate myself for it?”

“Then stop doing it!” Chris’s chair scraped sharply against the marble as he stood. “Every time I try to talk to you, you turn it into a command. I can’t breathe around you without feeling like you’re going to decide what air I’m allowed to take!”

“Because every time you leave that air, someone tries to kill you!” Dax snapped, the words breaking free before he could stop them. His voice cracked through the calm afternoon like thunder, sharp enough to make the glass tremble in its silver frame.

Chris froze for a heartbeat. Then, something colder and older stirred within him. The air changed. The faint warmth of late summer shifted, thinned, and turned crisp as frost. The temperature seemed to drop by degrees. The faint scent of fresh rain sharpened into something biting, winter-pure.

His pheromones had flared.

Dax felt the sting first, the way the moisture in the air froze against his skin. His instincts roared to answer it, his own alpha presence pushing back, heavier, darker, and laced with heat and power meant to smother that cold into obedience. The collision of scents, spice and storm, frost and fire, sent invisible sparks flying across the terrace.

Chris’s chest heaved. “Don’t do that.”

Dax’s jaw tightened. “Then don’t challenge me like you’re testing what I am.”

“I’m not testing you!” Chris’s voice trembled with rage and something too fragile to name. “I’m trying to remind you that I’m not one of your soldiers or courtiers. You can’t order me to stay alive just because it suits your goddamn legacy!”

Dax’s eyes darkened, pupils flaring wide as if his body were caught between instinct and reason. “You think this is about legacy?”

“Isn’t it?” Chris demanded. His power pressed outward again. The edges of the table’s gold trim glittered with a thin lace of frost. “You’re the king. I’m the omega you want to mark, and everything about me now belongs to you. My title, my name, my choices… what else is left?”

Dax took a step forward before he realized he’d moved. His voice came out low, so low that it made even air obey. “Don’t say that. You are not mine like property.”

“Then what am I, Dax?” Chris asked, too fast, too raw. “Because I used to know. I used to be something. I had work, purpose, and people who didn’t look at me and see a crown’s leash. You burned all of that down to make me safe.”

Dax’s composure cracked, but only for an instant. He could feel the cold biting at his skin now, his pheromones fighting to warm the air, to hold dominance without hurting him. He forced himself to inhale, every instinct screaming to reclaim control the only way an alpha could: through power.

But this wasn’t his staff or a simple member of the royal court. This was his.

Dax stepped closer, voice quieter now, deliberately so. “Chris. Look at me.”

“No.”

“Look at me.”

This time, it wasn’t a command but rather a trembling plea under the weight of restraint.

Chris lifted his eyes, glare like broken glass.

Dax’s pheromones softened, not with the crushing heat of dominance, but with a slow burn, a thawing warmth. “You are not the crown’s leash. You are the reason I still remember I’m human. The reason I haven’t lost the line between power and madness.”

Chris’s breath caught, frost still clinging to the air between them. “Then stop trying to rule me.”

“I’m trying not to,” Dax said, each word like a blade turned inward. “But every instinct I have was built to protect what’s mine. You’re asking me to undo something that’s in my bones.”

Chris’s eyes shimmered, anger fracturing into exhaustion. “And my instinct is to run. We are a merry bunch.”

Dax sighed, trying his best to calm himself down. This wasn’t the right way to talk about their problems, and he wouldn’t have Chris turn cold to him again.

“Chris…” His voice softened, hesitant. “I’m not your enemy.”

“Then stop treating me like one,” Chris replied, not raising his voice, but the quiet was worse. It was the tone of someone who’d run out of ways to be surprised.

Something in Dax snapped cleanly and almost audibly. His patience thinned until only instinct remained.

“You think I want to treat you this way?” His words came sharp and clipped. “You think I enjoy having to calculate every breath you take because one wrong step could get you killed? Because I can’t risk losing you to the same hands that tried four times already?”

Chris’s eyes didn’t waver. “I never said you enjoyed it. I said you chose it.”

“I chose to keep you alive!” Dax’s voice hit the marble hard enough to echo. His restraint broke for the first time, violet eyes burning too bright. “You should have accepted it by now… accepted me. Accepted what Saha is and what I have to be.”

“I have accepted it,” Chris said, anger and exhaustion bleeding into his tone. “I’ve accepted the blood, the politics, the paranoia. I know what you do and why. What I don’t accept is how you let her twist it all into a cage around me.”

The name hung unspoken but heavy: Hanna.

Dax’s mouth tightened. “She’s gone.”

“She’s not gone from my head,” Chris snapped back. “You think I don’t hear her every time you order another guard, another shadow to follow me? You think I don’t remember how she used your silence to make me doubt every word you said?”

“That wasn’t my intention.”

“No,” Chris said coldly, “but it was your fault.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep