Chapter 80: Chapter 80: Leash
The study was silent save for the scrape of pen on vellum, a heavy line of ink crossing the last curve of a jeweler’s sketch.
Dax sat at his broad desk, silver-blonde hair catching in the light of the desk lamp, violet eyes fixed on the spread of designs before him. The necklace was finished, an unbroken collar of cut diamonds linked by tempered platinum. A symbol.
He had been ready to sign the approval when the secure channel hummed alive. Only one man had that frequency. Dax’s eyes narrowed.
He set the pen down with care, not on the sketch but off to the side, as if refusing to stain the vision before him with what he was about to hear. With a flick of his wrist, the console on the edge of the desk lit up, a single encrypted line spilling Trevor’s words into the room.
The longer Dax read, the stiller he became.
Ten years of betrayal, nested inside Palatine’s core and, even worse, in his sworn brother’s home. Compulsion buried in faith. The priest’s leash wound deep into the marble and gold of the capital’s heart. The Church had played the long game, and now their god had a voice, a prophet, Benedict, and that name had spread like a sickness.
And at the center of it stood Lucas.
Not as a victim this time, but as a symbol. As prophecy. As the soft edge of something that could destroy or save them all.
Dax leaned back in his chair, his shoulders pressed into the leather, violet eyes narrowing against the cold light of the monitor. He remembered the first time he’d seen Lucas, a young dominant omega that married Trevor only to escape from him.
He chuckled at the thought of Serathine and Trevor presenting him as a demon. They weren’t wrong.
Lucas was nineteen now, though his eyes carried something older, older than even Dax wanted to acknowledge. Twenty-six, the kind of metal age you didn’t reach by living once.
He’d wanted a chance, once. A selfish thought buried deep under duty and his kingdom. He’d wanted to know what it would have been like to claim someone so untouched by calculation. Someone bright, fragile, and fierce in all the ways this world wasn’t. But Lucas had chosen differently. And Dax had learned, as he always did, to fold desire into discipline.
Now there was Christopher.
And Christopher was not fragile. He was a storm; he needed more than air. His mind was already full of shadows and his patience was thinning by the hour, but this feisty omega gave him the quiet he needed in just a few days. Dax would never let this one slip his grasp.
He rubbed a hand across his jaw, the faint rasp of stubble grounding him. The reports blurred before his eyes, all numbers and codes and thinly veiled threats. He wasn’t reading words anymore; he was seeing connections: Benedict’s reach through Palatine and Sahan’s clergy, the subverted council funds, and the missing accounts. Every tie that should have belonged to the crown had been redirected to the Church, to the old order that refused to die.
He exhaled slowly. "Not for much longer," he muttered.
He’d spent years letting the Church stand because it was convenient, a structure that pacified the masses, that allowed him to rule with one hand while appearing merciful with the other. But Trevor’s message changed that. The Church wasn’t a tool anymore. It was a knife aimed at his throat, hidden behind an altar.
The line of text blinked once, the last segment encrypted differently. He recognized Trevor’s personal signature in the modulation, a small detail, but one that always marked messages meant for him alone. He tapped the screen.
Lucas again.
Faceless Agatha. The priest’s inner circle, the name that tied together all the sympathizers of Benedict.
He felt the tension in his jaw return. Lucas didn’t belong in that game, not again, not after everything. Trevor’s tone in the report was too controlled, too clinical, the way a man writes when he is terrified and pretending not to be.
Dax shut the console off, the light dying out and leaving only the steady hum of the desk lamp behind. His reflection lingered faintly in the black glass, sharp features, tired purple eyes, and the faint trace of someone who had already decided what had to be done.
He leaned back, elbows resting on the arms of the chair, and stared at the ceiling for a moment, tracing the pattern of light across the plaster. His thoughts slowed until only one remained, clean and certain.
The Church had mistaken his mercy for tolerance and that mistake ended tonight.
He reached for the communicator again, not to send his response yet, but to set the seal beside it. The faint press of the metal against his palm steadied him.
"Burn them," he murmured, almost conversationally. "And salt the ashes."
Dax closed the line, his hand returning to the jeweled sketch. He turned it once, studying it as though already seeing it resting against pale skin, catching light in a way no crown ever could. His violet eyes glinted with something between hunger and certainty.
Dax set the sketch aside at last, rising from the chair with the grace of someone who never needed to rush to be obeyed. His footsteps carried him across the marble floor, every step measured. At the far wall, he pressed his palm to a black-iron symbol to summon his men.
"Killian."
The doors opened on a whisper of hinges, and Killian stepped in as though the palace itself had bent to make space for him. Tall, broad-shouldered, and clad in black tailored so precisely it looked sewn onto his bones, with a purple shawl over his right hand. A loyal man of Dax, his tongue and hands had buried more enemies than weapons ever had.
"My king," he said, voice low, as smooth and dry as old brandy. His storm-grey eyes flicked once to the sketches on the desk, the sharp curve of a diamond collar. "Another gift for your future mate? Or an execution in disguise?"
Dax’s lips twitched. "Both."
"Ah." Killian inclined his head, the faintest edge of sarcasm brushing the single syllable. "Then I should cancel the jeweler’s funeral. Pity, I was looking forward to the flowers."
The secure console still glowed faintly, Trevor’s words hanging in the air like smoke. Dax tapped it once, letting the message replay, each line a thread of betrayal and blood. Killian’s expression didn’t change, though the corner of his mouth sharpened into something humorless.
"Ten years," he drawled. "Priests do have remarkable patience. Shame their god doesn’t share it."
"Purge the Church," Dax said, his tone even, his command absolute. Killian raised one brow, as if Dax had just asked him to set the tea.
"How thorough? Hymn-singers, bell-ringers, or just the ones who bleed too much piety onto their cassocks?"
"All of them," Dax replied. His violet eyes glinted like amethyst catching fire. "Benedict’s leash in Saha ends tonight. Make it... silently. I want him to realize the scope of his loss only when Trevor is at his throat."
Killian tapped the corner of his clipboard against his palm, a faint rhythm of amusement. "A quiet extinction, then. Six months, perhaps less. And when the hymns stop, Benedict will hear the silence as his own requiem."
He paused, his storm-grey gaze sliding back to the sketch of the collar gleaming beneath the lamp. "In the meantime..." His tone shifted, the faintest shade of mockery threading through the dryness. "I confess, I wanted to see Christopher’s reaction to your gift for him. Few men would know whether to thank you or fear you for such a chain."
Dax’s lips curved, his smirk a quiet confirmation. "We both know he would fight me."