Caught by the Mad Alpha King-Chapter 233: I didn’t know!

The sixth day felt unreal to Chris, as if someone had unplugged the world and plugged it back in, but slightly crooked. The royal wing no longer vibrated with pheromones strong enough to melt paint. The air was no longer thick and heavy. Staff voices drifted from the hall again. The palace was acting like everything was normal.

Chris was absolutely not normal.

He sat on the bed wearing Dax’s hoodie, one he didn’t remember stealing, let alone putting on. It hung all the way to mid-thigh, soft, warm, and smelling stupidly good. Underneath, he had boxers, and under that, he was still leaking. Every shift made the slick roll down his thigh, and every time it happened, he reevaluated his entire life.

His body ached so sharply he wondered if he’d been used as a training dummy for a military unit instead of... whatever had actually happened. Bites speckled his skin like a constellation drawn by a drunk god. His hips throbbed, his back protested, and his thighs were in open revolt.

He looked down at one particularly dramatic bite on his sternum and groaned. "When did I become edible to you?" he muttered at the air, because the alternative was admitting to Dax out loud that he’d been chewed on like fresh prey.

There were also positions. Positions that defied physics. Positions that should be illegal unless supervised by a structural engineer. Chris could still feel the phantom echo of being upside-down, braced against a wall, wondering if gravity quit its job for the night.

It clicked, painfully slowly, through the haze of memory. Dax had once mentioned that he’d used three different omegas during past ruts. At the time, Chris assumed the king was exaggerating for intimidation or reputation.

Now he understood those poor souls. He would send them fruit baskets. Sympathy cards. Therapy vouchers.

He buried his face in his hands. "I get it now," he whispered. "You’re not normal. You are a wildlife event."

A warm breath brushed the back of his neck.

"I take offense to that," Dax murmured, clearly amused.

Chris flinched so hard his sore muscles spasmed. "Why are you awake?" he hissed. "Go back to sleep before you break something else."

Dax slid an arm around him, dragging him into his chest with that slow, heavy strength Chris no longer had the energy to fight. "I didn’t break you."

"You left teeth marks on my soul."

Dax chuckled against his shoulder and nosed at the hoodie collar. "If I broke anything, you wouldn’t be sitting upright." His hand dipped lower, brushing the inside of Chris’s thigh where slick still clung. "And you wouldn’t still be leaking for me."

Chris made the kind of strangled sound that would haunt him forever. "Stop narrating it," he begged, mortified.

"You’re the one who went into heat," Dax said, maddeningly calm, as if he were discussing weather patterns.

Chris whipped around... well, attempted to. His spine disagreed and left him half-turned like a broken hinge. "You can’t just drop that casually! I didn’t go into heat! I..."

"Yes," Dax interrupted, placing a hand on his lower back to steady him. "You did. Full heat. Induction treatments worked. Your body reacted to me the same way mine reacted to you."

Chris stared at him, wide-eyed, hoodie hood sliding forward until it shadowed his face. "Will the next heat be the same?"

Dax’s voice stayed low, warm, and annoyingly steady while Chris tried to remember how to breathe like a normal person. "Yours was worse this time because of the suppressants," he said. "Your body’s been fighting itself for years. All that resistance has to go somewhere. It hit you hard once you finally stopped blocking it."

Chris blinked slowly. "So this was... my body throwing a tantrum?"

"An extended one," Dax said, brushing his thumb along the back of Chris’s neck. "Next heats won’t be like this. They won’t flip you inside out."

"That’s comforting," Chris muttered, even though he didn’t sound comforted at all.

"Your body will adjust. It’ll learn me and stabilize."

Dax paused, then added, "Heat after this one will feel like the fourth day. Intense, but not... catastrophic." 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

Chris nodded, then turned to snap something sarcastic, only to freeze.

Dax was just standing there. Bare-chested. Bare everything except the dark slacks hanging low on his hips.

And Dax’s body, his entire upper body, looked like it had gone through the same hell Chris did.

Bites everywhere. Deep, shallow, and some still healing. His shoulders, his collarbones, and his ribs were all marked up in matching patterns like they’d battled each other in some ancient ritual of mutual destruction.

Chris’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

Dax lifted a brow. "Yes?"

"You..." Chris pointed vaguely at Dax’s chest, then his own chest, then the air. "You look like you got attacked by a pack of wild... me."

Dax laughed quietly, the sound warm enough to melt bone. "You did. Quite thoroughly."

Chris covered his face, groaning. "No. No, I didn’t. I refuse. I am erasing that."

"You bit me every time you came," Dax said, not even pretending to be ashamed. "Hard. You nearly dislocated my shoulder once."

Chris made a sound between a gasp and a tiny scream. "Why are you saying these things?!"

"Because they’re true," Dax said, leaning down until his forehead pressed to Chris’s temple. "And because you need to know you weren’t just... overwhelmed. You matched me."

Chris stayed frozen, breath shaky. His fingers curled in the hoodie fabric, grounding himself.

Dax’s voice softened. "You should’ve gone into heat years ago. But you didn’t feel safe. Your body never let itself." His hand slid along Chris’s side, warm and steady. "This time... you did."

It took Chris a moment, like a loose thought finally clicking into place. "You said it would be like the fourth day? Mild temperature spike, slightly horny, unhinged, maybe... a little hazy?"

"Yes."

Chris blinked. "Fuck."

"Language, my moon," Dax murmured, reaching for him.

Chris slapped his hand away on instinct, too busy thinking to notice the little wounded dip in Dax’s expression. "Then... I was in heat before."

Dax stilled. Completely.

"When?" he asked, voice suddenly too calm.

Chris stared ahead, brain scrambling through old memories. "Not often. Once a year. Twice if the universe was trying to kill me. I always thought it was just... I don’t know. Bad food. A random fever. Exhaustion."

Dax’s eyes sharpened. "Describe it."

Chris inhaled quickly, pulling the oversized hoodie tighter around himself. "Warm. Uncomfortable. Everything felt off. Like my body wasn’t mine. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t sit still. I’d get really cranky for no reason. And hungry. And irritated at everything that breathed near me."

Dax stared at him like he was hearing the confession of a criminal mastermind who had no idea he was a criminal. His expression wavered somewhere between amused and exasperated.

"So let me get this straight," Dax said, voice dry enough to sand wood. "We thought you never had a heat until now. But you did have them. And you," he gestured loosely at Chris, at the hoodie, at the existential disaster huddled in his lap, "you cataloged them as colds?"

Chris blinked. "Well, yeah. They felt like fevers. "

"Chris," Dax said, his tone sliding into this soft, incredulous disbelief that made Chris want to sink straight into the mattress and never return, "those weren’t fevers. They were heats."