Chapter 279: Chapter 279: Emotionally feral

The refusal hit the room like a physical force.

“NO!” the two alphas roared together, the sound overlapping so perfectly that for one surreal second Chris was convinced some higher-power conductor had lifted a baton and commanded unity.

Marianne surged half out of her chair.

Dax straightened like a weapon, remembering what it was made for.

It would have been funny, if not for the fact that both of them radiated enough offended dominance to make the air itself flinch.

“No,” Marianne snapped again, planting her feet firmly back on the ground. “Absolutely not. I will fake diplomacy. I will endure royal stupidity. I will smile politely at international tragedy disguised as policy. I will not, under any circumstance, pretend to flutter my eyelashes at him.”

“Nor will she,” Dax said darkly, as if Marianne were a toddler threatening to touch fire. “This discussion ends now.”

Chris simply rested his chin on his hand and regarded the two of them with polite curiosity, as if they were both missing the point and he was graciously waiting for them to catch up.

“You’re both being dramatic,” he said calmly. “And that’s impressive, given who is in this room.”

Marianne pointed at him. “I am not faking infatuation with that man.”

“You couldn’t if you tried,” Chris replied mildly.

Dax shot him a look. “Christopher.”

Chris tilted his head slightly and sighed like a man questioning his life.

“I am not asking you to seduce him,” he said. “Neither of you would survive that level of humiliation with your pride intact and I do not have the emotional energy to manage the aftermath.”

Dax did not deny it.

“I’m asking you,” Chris continued gently, “to let the Maleks believe you are trying.”

Silence stretched.

Marianne stared at him for a beat, then exhaled slowly and lowered herself back into her chair, posture settling once more into something composed, calculating, and almost resigned to the fact that common sense had officially left the room.

“You want me to confirm their fantasy,” she said, voice low.

“I want you to weaponize it,” Chris corrected gently. “And before you start panicking about seduction, drama, or theatrics worthy of a bad court romance… no. All you two have to do is exist in the same space. Publicly. Close enough that someone desperate can take a picture, draw a conclusion, and start writing speeches about opportunity.”

He lifted one shoulder in a mild shrug.

“Preferably while I’m not there.”

Marianne’s expression went blank in that way only soldiers mastered, one that meant she was running calculations in her head so fast they could have powered a city.

“That’s it?” she asked slowly. “No whispered conversations in shadowed hallways? No lingering touches? No tragic glances across candlelight with a string quartet in the background?”

Dax made a disgusted sound.

“Absolutely not.”

Chris’s mouth curved, amused by how violently both of them rejected the mental image. One would think that ancient little crush of hers might have softened the blow. Instead, watching the two most notoriously terrifying alphas in the region recoil like someone had suggested they lick a live electrical panel was, if he was honest, deeply entertaining.

It also clarified something.

Perhaps Marianne had never been infatuated with Dax the man. Not the one who prowled rooms, broke nations, and collected enemies with the same casual inevitability as gravity collected falling objects. Perhaps she’d once been taken with the idea of him. The myth. The legend. The controlled, public perfection of the king who never bent.

Not this… not the absolute menace currently glaring at the concept of political flirting like it was a personal insult.

“Relax,” Chris said softly, and the word held nothing of condescension, only an easy confidence that made both of them instinctively pay attention. “Nobody with a functioning brain would actually believe you could seduce him.”

Marianne opened her mouth, possibly to argue, possibly to be offended on principle, before realizing that, actually, she agreed.

Chris turned his head toward Dax, his smile turning dangerous.

“Even the opposition,” he continued, “knows how obsessed he is with me.”

Dax did not look ashamed.

He didn’t deny it.

If anything, something fiercely pleased slid through his posture, amusement shading the edges of his mouth while his gaze remained entirely, unapologetically fixed on Chris.

Marianne stared at the two of them and then let out the slowest, most exasperated breath imaginable.

“Yes,” she muttered. “Yes. That would… complicate my seduction attempt, wouldn’t it?”

She paused for a fatal heartbeat, then apparently decided life was already miserable enough.

“It would be easier to flirt with Christopher.”

She did not quite get to finish breathing.

The air thickened as if the room suddenly discovered gravity had a premium subscription. The windows hummed. The walls went politely silent. Somewhere in the building, a chandelier developed anxiety.

“Do not,” Dax said, voice low and terrifyingly calm, “finish that thought.”

It was the voice history books used italics for.

Marianne’s instincts very helpfully reminded her she enjoyed living. She went still in the extremely respectful way prey animals did when a predator politely suggested reconsidering life choices.

Chris closed his eyes and counted to three like a man who had loved this creature long enough to be impossibly fond and chronically tired.

“It was a joke,” he said gently.

“It will never,” Dax replied, “be a joke.”

He didn’t even look at Marianne. His focus stayed on Chris like someone had written DO NOT SHARE on him in permanent ink.

“No one flirts with you. No one imagines flirting with you. No one dreams about flirting with you.” He tilted his head slightly. “If they do, they stop.”

Chris sighed the way people sigh when the love of their life is also an international incident with legs.

“Sit,” he said.

Dax did not sit.

He did, however, reluctantly dial himself down from a homicidal volcano to a mildly offended god. The pressure in the room eased. Oxygen cautiously returned to work.

Marianne released a slow breath. “Noted. Attempted humor rescinded. My apologies to everyone, including the floor.”

Chris hid his smile behind his cup like a man politely refusing to comment on the weather while the weather was actively throwing knives.

Dax finally leaned back against the desk again, not relaxed, just… coiled neatly. His hand brushed Chris’s shoulder like punctuation. Territorial punctuation.

Once survival felt probable again, Chris turned to Marianne with bright academic curiosity, like the past minute had been a science demonstration rather than a near-declaration of war.

“So,” he said, as if asking about tea, “I’ve been wondering why you’re… stable.”

Marianne stared. “Excuse me?”

“You’re a dominant alpha,” Chris continued, unbothered. “And yet you function like a normal person. You’re not…” he waved vaguely toward Dax, “whatever that is.”

Dax looked personally offended on behalf of himself.

Marianne considered this, then nodded. “Ah. Yes. The ’why am I not emotionally feral’ question.”

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