Caught by the Mad Alpha King-Chapter 373: What a year.

A year later, after too many overlapping crises and too many nights where Chris’s sleep was measured in minutes instead of hours, Chris had become exactly what he’d threatened to become.

The godfather.

Ethan’s son was born loud, furious, and healthy - an alpha baby with strong lungs and an even stronger grip, no trace of ’anomaly,’ no shadow of the word ’experiment,’ nothing that matched the imperial poison Caelan had tried to drip into the world. If anything, the child looked like a rebuttal made flesh: living proof that the Emperor’s cruelty had been nothing but a man trying to control what he couldn’t own.

Of course, Caelan tried to use the newborn the moment it was born.

It had been almost impressive, in the way a snake was impressive: fast, silent, and absolutely convinced the room belonged to him.

He walked into the recovery suite with authority that didn’t ask if it was welcome, already speaking in the plural - our heir, continuity, future - as if Ethan’s body and Sirius’ terror were just extensions of the imperial brand.

Aysha arrived minutes later.

Not because she was late, but because she wanted Caelan to believe he had momentum before she stepped in front of him.

She didn’t raise her voice. She wore her crown like a signature, and her smile was the kind that made courtiers suddenly remember appointments elsewhere.

"Caelan," she said, pleasantly. "If you name that child over his parents’ objections, I will make a scandal that will survive a hundred years of archives."

The air went very still.

Caelan’s smile faltered for the first time that day, reflecting his permanent irritation that Sirius chose Ethan over whatever he wanted. Aysha was his partner. A business partner, more than a wife, and she’d never been sentimental about how power should behave.

Sirius hadn’t moved from Ethan’s bedside. He had Ethan’s hand in both of his, like he could keep the world from taking anything else if he just held tight enough. His eyes were bloodshot, his posture too controlled, and the mark of the c-section on Ethan’s skin still fresh and visible in the way Caelan pretended not to look at it but knew.

Chris was in Saha, trapped in his own obligations, watching the crisis through delayed reports and frantic calls and Rowan’s security updates, feeling useless in a way that made him want to peel his own skin off.

He got the first photo of the baby at three in the morning. Grainy. Too bright. Ethan’s hand in frame, pale and shaking, the tiny fist latched around one finger like a threat.

Chris stared at it for a long time, and then he wrote back, ’He’s perfect. Don’t let them touch him.’

Ethan replied, ’They’re trying.’

That had been the first month.

By the second month, Caelan had stopped pretending. He shifted from claiming the newborn publicly to undermining Sirius privately through small humiliations, strategic delays, and council ’corrections. The slow drip of authority was meant to remind Sirius that fatherhood didn’t grant power and love didn’t earn respect.

And by the third month, Sirius made his move.

He scheduled the naming and godparent ceremony as a public event, wrapped in tradition so tightly Caelan couldn’t tear it without exposing his own hands. Sirius was establishing a protected circle around the child that the court would recognize as legitimate.

Chris flew in under heavy security.

Not a royal parade, nothing that could be used for propaganda. Just a controlled arrival, quiet enough to avoid headlines but visible enough to be obvious. He walked into Palatine’s cathedral with Dax’s presence hovering in every guard and every protocol and every cold glance from the foreign delegation.

Ethan looked exhausted, wrung out from three months of being watched like a resource.

Sirius looked like a man who had learned that restraint was not the same as surrender.

And the baby - three months old, already stubborn - was dressed in ceremonial white that made him look innocent in a way that felt like a lie, because the moment Ethan shifted him, the child grabbed at Sirius’s collar with a tiny, furious hand like he was claiming what was his.

When the officiant spoke Chris’s name, the room changed because Saha was now written into the child’s life in ink that couldn’t be washed away.

It meant Caelan couldn’t isolate Ethan without making it obvious.

It meant every time someone tried to speak about the baby as a tool, Chris had the right - by religion, by tradition, by court record - to step in and say, ’No. That’s my godson. Say it again and see what happens.’

Chris didn’t look at Caelan during the blessing.

Aysha stood on the other side of the aisle, perfectly composed, her gaze briefly meeting Chris’s in agreement. A silent acknowledgment that whatever Caelan was planning, she was not going to let him do it cleanly.

The child was healthy. Perfect. Alpha. Loud. Unbothered by the politics trying to eat him.

Caelan had to change his strategy.

He couldn’t smear the baby as an anomaly, not when the infant was thriving and the physicians had nothing to whisper. So he focused on the next easiest target: Sirius’s authority.

He tried to undermine every move Sirius made, mostly out of spite and control. He kept pressing because Lucius - the second son, next in line after Sirius and the child - made the court less pliable by refusing to play the traditional role of rival.

Lucius declared his support publicly. He showed up beside Sirius in council and didn’t flinch. He made it clear he had no intention of taking the throne from his brother.

It should have stabilized the Empire.

Instead, it made Caelan more dangerous.

Because a united family was harder to manipulate. Because if Caelan wanted obedience, he would have to enforce it.

Sirius had Saha, Fitzgeralt, and Rohan behind him, and that kept him from being in mortal danger in the way heirs sometimes were when emperors got desperate.

But Caelan still tried.

He tried to assassinate Sirius and Ethan with plausible deniability wrapped around poison and ’accidents’ and staff rotations that didn’t match the roster.

Chris learned about the attempt back in Saha, through Rowan’s clipped report and Dax’s very calm silence.

And something in him went cold with understanding.

Spite had gotten him the title.

Distance had delayed it.

But now the title was inked into Palatine’s archives, and Caelan had just proven he was willing to kill his own son’s family to win control back. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Chris stared at the report until the words blurred, then reached for his phone.

He called Dax first because he was done treating Palatine’s rot like it was someone else’s problem.