Chapter 69: Chapter 69: Will of the King (2)
"Christopher."
The voice cut through the room like a blade through silk. Chris’s head jerked up. Violet eyes fixed on him from across the table, irritated, sharp enough to slice the thin bubble of normality he’d built around the phone.
He blinked once, the device still in his hand. ’There it is,’ he thought. ’The tone he uses right before people loose their jobs.’ Aloud he managed, "Yes?" his voice steadier than he felt.
Dax’s gaze didn’t leave him. "Put the phone down." The words were quiet, but they carried the weight of a command used to being obeyed.
Chris laid the phone face-down beside his mug, heartbeat quickening. ’And there goes my lifeline,’ he thought, fingers curling against his thigh. ’Back to being part of his schedule, not mine.’
"Is there anything that concerns my opinion? I thought Your Majesty and Killian had already decided everything."
Chris kept his tone even, but the edge beneath it was thin and sharp. He could still feel the ghost of his own smile from seconds ago, a small, unguarded thing that had slipped out while he looked at his phone, the kind of expression people around Chris received for free but that Dax himself had always had to coax from him like a secret. The memory of it now made the air heavier.
The sensations he couldn’t dull, the pull of pheromones, and the latent charge in the room pressed against his skin until he wanted to crawl out of it. His appetite had vanished.
Dax’s gaze didn’t flicker. "You don’t have a schedule," he said, the words quiet but precise, like a scalpel. "That’s why I didn’t ask."
It was a perfectly logical point, delivered with the same calm certainty that had built empires, and it made Chris’s blood spike hot. He didn’t answer; he couldn’t without saying something he’d regret. His fingers dug into his thigh under the table.
Dax’s expression didn’t change, but his hand moved in a slow, deliberate arc, a single flick of fingers that spoke the language of command more clearly than any words. Around the perimeter of the room, chairs scraped back and fabric whispered; the staff bowed and withdrew, the soft hiss of the doors closing leaving them in a deeper hush.
For a heartbeat Chris let himself breathe into the silence. ’Alone with him again. No witnesses.’
Dax leaned back slightly, violet eyes still locked on him. "Now," he said, voice dropping an octave, "you can tell me what you really meant."
Chris’s fingers tightened against the linen. "I didn’t mean anything besides the fact that my opinion or choices don’t matter," he said at last, each word measured so it wouldn’t shake. "And for that, I don’t see why I should even be present. I’m sure Rowan would know when to tell me to do what was scheduled."
He thought he sounded cool, but he felt the heat climbing his throat anyway. He saw the flicker, almost an equal smile and warning, move across Dax’s mouth, and something inside him coiled tighter.
Dax’s answer was as dangerous as his aura. "Rowan knows my orders," he said. "He doesn’t know yours. And you have no schedule because I haven’t given you one." His gaze sharpened. "That doesn’t mean you don’t belong here."
The words were maddeningly logical and impossibly possessive at once. Chris’s blood boiled, but his tongue stayed still; if he spoke, he’d say something he couldn’t take back. The silence between them stretched, dense and electric, broken only by the sound of Dax’s thumb idly tapping against the armrest as if marking time.
Dax leaned forward then, elbows on the table, scent rolling out in a slow, deliberate wave. "Try again," he murmured. "Tell me what you want instead of what you don’t."
Chris met that violet stare head-on, jaw set. "I want my suppressants," he said, voice low but clear. "And to leave."
For the space of a heartbeat there was only the hum of the chandelier and the faint tick of Dax’s thumb against the wood. Then: "No."
The single syllable landed heavier than a shout. It wasn’t barked or hissed; it simply was. The sound of a decision already made. Chris’s stomach clenched. He’d known the answer before he spoke, but hearing it out loud again lit a spark behind his ribs anyway. His fingers curled hard against the edge of the chair, nails biting fabric.
He forced himself to breathe through his nose, slow and even. "Then why ask?" he said, not quite able to keep the tremor of anger out of his voice.
Dax’s gaze didn’t waver. "Because I wanted to hear what you’d say," he replied softly. "Because you keep trying to walk away instead of telling me where you want to stand."
Another pulse of scent slid across the table, a steady pressure behind his ribs. Chris’s throat felt tight; every instinct screamed at him to get up, to pace, to do anything but sit still under that look.
"Then don’t ask anymore," he said, the words coming sharper than he intended. "You know, and there is nothing that would change it. It seems you don’t care about the life I left behind or my work that should be finished."
"Your work was outsourced." Dax said it like it was the most normal thing in the world, the same way he might announce the weather or a change in protocol.
Chris blinked, a flare of heat snapping through him. "And where is my contribution to that decision?" His voice dropped into a low, controlled register that was almost more dangerous than a shout. "Your Majesty, just drop the act; you didn’t care about my life before this. You care only to have what was missing from the set of being king."
The words landed in the hush like stones thrown into still water. For a moment Dax didn’t move at all. Then his jaw flexed once, a muscle shifting beneath smooth skin. The violet in his eyes deepened with something Chris couldn’t identify.
He exhaled slowly through his nose, the sound quiet and measured. "You think that’s what this is?" he asked, voice low enough to almost be a growl. "A piece for a crown? A prop for a throne?"
Chris held his stare, heart hammering. "Isn’t it?"
For a long beat Dax didn’t answer. Instead he straightened, pushing his chair back an inch, palms flat on the table. The scent rolling off him shifted, still rich, still potent, but edged now with restraint rather than command. "Careful, Christopher," he said at last, the softness of his tone belying the warning beneath. "You’re angry at the wrong things."