Chapter 31: Chapter 31: Warm morning

A soft knock at the outer door broke the quiet. Dax crossed the suite in three long strides, accepted the leather case from the shadow who offered it without a word, and dismissed them with a flick of his fingers. The door clicked shut again, sealing the room back into silence.

He returned to the bed and crouched at the foot. Chris lay as he’d left him, one arm flung loosely across his stomach, lashes still against his cheeks. The faint warmth of his pheromones drifted out from under the blankets, clean and subtle after the shower but enough to snag at something deep inside Dax. His fingers tightened once on the case before he forced them steady.

Gently, he lifted the hem of the sleep trousers to bare Chris’s heels. The blisters were raw crescents, angry against the pale skin. He hissed softly but kept his touch light. Antiseptic, balm, gauze: his hands moved with surprising care for a man used to war. Chris stirred once, a sleepy murmur, then settled again.

When he finished, he smoothed the fabric back down over the bandages and set the kit aside. For a moment he just stood there, robe sliding off his shoulders, violet eyes dark, the edge of his madness muted under the pull of that scent.

The mattress dipped as he slid in beside Chris. Instead of keeping a polite distance, he rolled the omega gently toward him until Chris’s head rested against his chest and his legs were caught against his own. One arm wrapped around Chris’s waist, the other curved under his shoulders, holding him as if he were a body pillow he’d been waiting for all his life.

Chris shifted instinctively, face nuzzling into the hollow of Dax’s throat. The faint wash of his pheromones rose again, and Dax inhaled deeply, eyes closing.

For a heartbeat Dax simply breathed, nose buried in the damp hair at Chris’s temple, letting the scent fill his lungs. It was clean, faintly sweet from the wine, and threaded through with something uniquely the omega’s own. Each inhale dragged the shadows a little further from the edge of his vision until, for the first time in days, they felt like distant smoke instead of claws.

Almost without thinking, he let his own pheromones slip. It wasn’t a surge, not the overwhelming press he could use on a room full of people, but a slow exhale of warmth and steadiness, the way a tide creeps in around bare ankles. The scent curled around Chris like a blanket, subtle but inexorable. The faint furrow in the omega’s brow smoothed out; his breathing deepened, shoulders going slack against Dax’s chest.

“That’s it,” Dax murmured, voice low and rough against the crown of his head. “Sleep.”

Chris made a small sound, half-sigh, half-murmur, and burrowed closer, palm sliding against Dax’s ribs until it came to rest just above his heart. Dax held still, letting him settle, one big hand spanning his narrow back, thumb drawing slow circles against the cotton.

With each breath the edge of Dax’s madness dulled a little more. The ghosts and whispers that dogged him at the periphery blurred, losing their teeth. All that was left was the steady weight of the omega in his arms. He tucked his chin, nose brushing the skin at Chris’s neck again, another deep inhale. A quiet, unguarded sound escaped him, a man exhaling into a pocket of peace he hadn’t expected to find.

He didn’t know how long they lay like that. Minutes, maybe. But by the time he opened his eyes again, the room was utterly still, the soft lamplight gilding the sheets, Chris breathing deep and even against his chest, his own pheromones still drifting lazily over both of them. For the first time in weeks, Dax’s body relaxed into the mattress, his grip around Chris shifting from careful to instinctive possession as he finally let his own eyes close.

—

Chris woke to heat.

A dense, enveloping heat that clung to his skin and made the cotton of his shirt feel too heavy. He groaned, trying to peel an eyelid open. The room was dim, with no light but a sliver of dawn through the heavy drapes, and his head felt stuffed with cotton. “Gods,” he muttered, voice rasping, “I must’ve left the heat on…”

He tried to roll over and found himself pinned…

By an arm. A heavy, solid arm draped across his waist, palm splayed against his back like he was some sort of body pillow. His foggy brain stuttered. His cheek was pressed against something warm and hard that rose and fell with slow breaths. There was a faint scent of dark silk and something richer underneath, not the neutral detergent of his borrowed clothes but the faint musk of another person.

He blinked up into a broad chest.

A broad, bare chest.

Memory lurched into place. The bath. The wine. The sofa. Dax.

“Oh, for…” Chris squeezed his eyes shut, muttering, “Why the fuck are we in the same bed?”

The chest under his cheek vibrated with a low sound. At first Chris thought he was imagining it; then it resolved into a quiet, unmistakably awake chuckle.

“I see you’ve discovered the heating system,” Dax murmured above him, voice rough from sleep but laced with amusement. His arm flexed lazily across Chris’s back, keeping him where he’d already drifted. “Good morning.”

Chris tilted his head back, black eyes wide, hair sticking up in damp tufts. “You’re awake? And you didn’t think to mention we’d be… what, bunking like campmates?”

Dax’s smile grew, slow and wolfish, violet eyes glinting under half-lowered lids. “You looked exhausted. I thought about explaining. Then you fell asleep on me and…” he gave a small shrug that made his arm tighten fractionally, “…I decided not to wake you.”

“This is basically a palace,” Chris muttered, pressing a palm to his forehead. “You own an entire wing. You could’ve slept in another bed.”

“I could have,” Dax agreed, tone perfectly easy. “But then I wouldn’t have woken up with a very warm, very soft omega in my arms. I like my mornings warm.”

Chris groaned, face heating for reasons that had nothing to do with the temperature.

Chris shifted under the weight of the arm, still half-tempted to wriggle free but too groggy to commit. “You really are impossible,” he muttered again, voice muffled against Dax’s chest.

The arm around him moved in a slow stroke, more reassuring than restraining. “And yet you’re still here,” Dax said softly. “I’m taking that as a victory.”

A soft chime cut across the room, low and discreet, the kind of sound that meant only one thing in Dax’s suite. He didn’t move at first, violet eyes narrowing slightly, then reached out for his phone with his free hand. The screen lit up with a single line of text.

“Trevor,” Dax said under his breath. A quick scan, another flick of his thumb across the glass. The message scrolled out in muted blue, something that Chris couldn’t read from where Dax was smothering him.

For a moment he stayed where he was, his arm still around Chris, jaw tightening imperceptibly. Then he exhaled, the mask of the king settling back over his face. “Duty calls,” he murmured.

Chris blinked up at him, still drowsy. “What?”

Dax smoothed a hand once down his back, the gesture both fond and possessive. “I have to step out for a few hours,” he said, his voice returning to its easy register. “I’ll be back for dinner.”

Chris made a small noise, somewhere between relief and a snort. “Good. Maybe by then I’ll have figured out how to escape your bed.”

Dax’s mouth curved, amused despite himself. He brushed a thumb over the edge of Chris’s jaw, then slipped out from under him with a fluid movement. “Don’t go far,” he said lightly. “You’re warm, and I like my dinners with company.”

He crossed to the bathroom, already scanning the next message flickering across his phone, the faintest trace of Chris’s scent still clinging to his skin as he prepared to leave.

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