Caught by the Mad Alpha King-Chapter 304: Calming the tyrant

Sahir was beside Dax when Rowan’s voice drifted through the archway.

They had just left a meeting that smelled like dominant alpha pheromones, legal clauses, and the exact type of diplomacy that required teeth. The topic had been Rohan. The princess. The "incident." The uncomfortably strategic possibility that yesterday’s events could be a partnership between Adonis Malek and Varlen. Sahir had been the one to say it aloud in that calm, unwavering way that meant it should not be ignored.

"If this was a test," he had said earlier at the council table, "then it was one of nerve. If it was a message, it was written in blood. And if it was a declaration... then Rohan has decided to involve themselves in Saha’s internal stability in a way that is neither respectful nor deniable."

Dax had been quiet through most of it.

Quiet in that way that meant everyone had spoken carefully, because kings didn’t always shout when they were furious. Sometimes they went very still.

Dax had been quiet when they left the council room. A terrible, controlled quiet.

He was one step, one provocation, one badly worded dispatch away from declaring war. From marching armies over borders. From turning a neighboring kingdom into a province and filing the paperwork after, because if its king was going to be useless, then Saha might as well remove the burden of sovereignty from him.

Sahir saw it.

The guards saw it too. The generals felt it. Even the marble corridors carried it, a pressure like a coming storm, heavy and metallic, thickening the air around him.

No one dared breathe too loudly.

Then Rowan’s voice cut through the tension, drifting from ahead like an unexpected thread back to reality.

"...please don’t do anything political."

Dax paused in the shadow of a towering archway, his steps slowing without conscious decision, his head turning slightly toward the sound. His eyes narrowed with slow focus, the way a predator reacts to something suddenly... interesting.

Sahir stopped beside him instantly.

Two heartbeats later, he lifted a hand.

"Clear the corridor," he said quietly.

The escort dissolved almost immediately, boots withdrawing, backs bowing respectfully, and people fleeing with professional efficiency because when Sahir spoke like that, it meant the king was about to feel things, and it was safer for everyone if there were fewer witnesses.

Only when the palace hallway emptied, leaving only silence and the echo of Rowan’s approaching misery, did Sahir allow his posture to ease by a fraction. He folded his hands lightly behind his back and turned his attention forward, listening.

Dax leaned slightly against a column, his gold shawl stirring in the thin breath of early winter that slipped through the stone corridor. He looked impossibly composed, all height and restrained violence, when the voice he had been unconsciously waiting for reached him.

Chris.

"Do I look like I’m about to start a war in the hallway?"

The king’s lips twitched.

The beginning of one, a gesture that betrayed both irritation and reluctant fondness in the same breath. Sahir didn’t look at him, but he felt the shift beside him. The temperature of danger changed.

From there, the rest unfolded like a play; both men knew how to read without seeing.

Rowan’s patience was fraying.

The nervous hush of the gathered omegas.

That particular silence that only forms when someone commits a breathtaking social mistake and the entire world instinctively recoils.

Chris handled it.

He handled it with the quiet, cutting honesty of someone who had never once doubted who stood beside him... and who belonged to whom.

Sahir listened to that voice, smooth and carefully polite, yet edged with unmistakable possession. He could practically feel the courtyard bending under it. Every gentle correction carried authority. Every calm word drew hard, unmistakable lines around the king and the throne and what was his.

Dax’s posture eased further against the marble, shoulders loosening, jaw unclenching, and something warmer settling into the lines of his face. He had been a step away from burning down a kingdom this morning. Now he stood there, listening to the man who could pull him back from war with nothing but an unhurried sentence and an unapologetic claim.

By the time Chris pointed out, with all the courtesy in the world, that assisting their ambitions was not a national duty but a personal fantasy, Dax actually breathed out softly, a low exhale that carried amusement and something fiercely affectionate beneath it.

Sahir finally allowed himself the smallest nod.

Good.

The king was still dangerous.

But he was no longer alone inside his rage.

They waited. The hushed corridor held its breath with them until footsteps finally approached. Rowan appeared first, carrying the air of a man who had been spiritually battered by etiquette, hope, and repeated exposure to the consort of Saha. Chris walked beside him, far too calm for someone who had just emotionally detonated half the courtyard with a pleasant smile.

Rowan spotted Dax.

He didn’t even flinch.

He only sagged inside his soul a little and decided not to fight fate anymore.

Chris looked up next.

He stopped mid-step.

There was no fear in the way he froze. No panic. Just a brief, sharp moment of recalculation, followed by the quiet, unmistakable curl of satisfaction at the corner of his mouth-like the universe had just proven him right in some private argument he hadn’t voiced yet.

His gaze flicked from Dax to Sahir.

Then to Rowan.

Slowly, Chris pointed at him.

Rowan didn’t look ashamed. He didn’t even pretend to be innocent. He simply lifted his brows in that tired way only a man tasked with preventing systemic collapse could manage.

"Yes," he replied flatly. "Of course I knew."

Chris stared for a beat.

A very long beat.

"You let me do all of that while my husband was listening?"

Rowan exhaled like someone admitting a crime under duress. "I needed proof that Saha is still politically intact. You were... extremely efficient evidence."

Chris blinked at him, deadpan.

"That was emotional manipulation."

"That was crisis management," Rowan corrected, absolutely unapologetic. "Also national risk assessment. Also self-care. Watching you dismantle ambition before lunch prolonged my lifespan by at least three years."

Chris turned slowly back to Dax.

"And you?" he asked, voice soft but pointed, like he already knew the answer and was granting Dax the privilege of saying it.

Dax didn’t hide.

There was no guilt in his eyes. He looked like a man who had spent the morning fighting gods and now remembered there was a reason to keep breathing.

"Every word," he said.

Chris’s lips pressed together, his brows lifting a fraction in prim disapproval.

"So you enjoyed it."

Dax’s smile was like sunlight breaking through a storm.

"Immensely."

Rowan groaned quietly into his hand.

"That’s it," he muttered. "We’re all doomed. The king is soothed, the consort is smug, and I have to live long enough to explain to the Ministry why the courtyard now instinctively flinches at polite conversation."

Sahir’s voice joined them calmly, cutting through the tension without disturbing it.

"On the contrary," he said, with that composed certainty that settled everyone whether they asked for it or not. "I would say the kingdom is safer than it was an hour ago."

Chris inclined his head graciously.

Rowan sighed like a martyr.

Dax just looked at his husband.

And the palace, for the first time that day, finally felt like it might hold together.