Caught by the Mad Alpha King-Chapter 374: Moving time.

In another year, everything had settled... at least in the way storms ’settled’ when the sky stopped throwing lightning but the air still tasted like metal.

Dax lost his patience once... publicly.

It happened in a room full of polished diplomacy and carefully chosen titles, with Caelan sitting on his own authority like it was unmovable, and Chris standing just a fraction too still beside him, because he’d learned that the only safe way to exist around emperors was to become unreadable.

Caelan said something. Caelan’s preferred form of cruelty was always delivered in a tone that suggested everyone should accept it as normal.

And Chris... Chris didn’t react.

He didn’t flinch, didn’t snap, and didn’t give Caelan the satisfaction of visible emotion.

But Dax felt it through the bond anyway, that tiny spike of stress under Chris’s ribs, the sharp inhale that never made it to the face. The kind of invisible damage that built up over months until it became a crack.

Dax stood.

The sound of his chair scraping back was quiet, but it cut through the chamber like thunder. A dominant alpha with the height of a tower and the calm of a predator who had decided the hunt was over.

Caelan had time to blink.

Then Dax’s hand was on his collar.

There was a collective inhale around the table, with guards stiffening, advisers going pale, and someone very faintly making the mistake of shifting forward before thinking better of it.

Dax lifted him like Caelan weighed nothing.

"Do not," Dax said softly, close enough that Caelan could hear and no one else needed to, "stress my mate."

Caelan’s feet barely skimmed the floor.

For a moment, the Emperor looked like what he really was under the titles: a man realizing that his usual tools - protocol, rank, and expectation - had just been taken away.

Then Aysha’s voice cut in, smooth as silk but sharp as an ultimatum. "Put him down," she said, like she was addressing a business partner who had overreached. Not because she was defending Caelan’s dignity, but to ensure the stability of her empire.

Dax didn’t argue.

He set Caelan back in his chair with the same care you might use when throwing something disgusting into the trash.

Caelan adjusted his collar, slowly, and smiled like it hadn’t happened.

But something in him had changed.

After that, the court learned a new rule: Caelan could still play his games, but he couldn’t pretend Saha would watch politely.

— 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

Some things were still unresolved.

Special troops were still trying to find Adonis - if he was alive, if he was dead, if ’Adonis’ even existed in one complete piece anymore. But it didn’t take long to discover that the reason he’d been able to keep running, the reason he’d stayed one step out of reach for so long, wasn’t luck.

It was money.

And that money traced back to Palatine.

To Caelan, because the man chose the pettiest form of revenge.

When the report landed in Chris’s hands, he stared at it until the letters stopped meaning anything and only the shape of the betrayal remained. Caelan had funded the extended run from Dax’s people like it was a petty hobby - like keeping a dangerous man loose in the world was worth it if it made Chris’s life harder.

Dax read the same report and went quiet, implying that violence had become a choice rather than an impulse.

And then, eventually, the political storm shifted in Caelan’s disadvantage, leaving him with less power than he would ever admit.

Now, under the autumn sun, Chris and Dax were in a remote part of Draxil.

It wasn’t the kind of place courtiers wrote poems about. The land was wide and rough, the air crisp enough to bite, the trees gone bronze and red like the world had decided to burn beautifully rather than freeze.

Dax’s men moved through the area with quiet competence. They’d tracked a name through old records, old ledgers, and whispers that had survived because people liked to talk when they thought nobody important would ever listen.

Elara.

Chris’s great-aunt. The omega was sold by the Malek family like she was a debt to be paid, like her life was collateral.

He’d expected a cottage. A modest estate. A grave that would hurt in a quiet, ordinary way.

He hadn’t expected a palace.

The road narrowed into something older, to stone beneath the dirt, half swallowed by moss and time. The trees thickened, their branches knitting overhead like a roof, and then the land opened with the abruptness of a held breath finally released.

A palace sat in the hollow of the hills, catching the autumn sun like it still believed it belonged to someone important. Not Palatine-imperial in symmetry, but undeniably rich: broad terraces cut into the slope, tall windows that flared gold in the light, and carved balconies softened by ivy and age.

Dax’s men slowed without being told, the convoy compressing into a tighter formation. The lead vehicle stopped at a distance that made sense for caution and for respect.

Chris stared through the windshield, the inside of his chest going tight and hollow at the same time.

"She was kept here," he said, voice low, more statement than question.

"She lived here," Dax replied.

Chris’s jaw tightened.

They hadn’t even stepped out before the doors opened. Staff appeared first, disciplined and quiet, and then she stepped into view like the palace itself had decided to become a person and look down on them.

Elara’s daughter, Claudia.

A dominant omega with hair gone fully silver and posture so perfect it was almost insulting. She wore mourning black, but the fabric was too fine to be simple, and the jewelry at her throat was a collar similar to what Dax had gifted to Chris in their first year, but more... crass and ostentatious, if that was even possible.

Chris felt Dax shift beside him, his pheromones already seeping in every crack.

The omega descended the steps slowly, letting them watch her do it.

Her gaze landed on Dax first because dominant omegas were not stupid, and Dax was the kind of dominant alpha you acknowledged before you decided whether to be polite. Then her attention slid to Chris, and her eyes sharpened like she was taking inventory.

"You took your time," she said, and it wasn’t a greeting.