Caught by the Mad Alpha King-Chapter 450: Ash

A few more days passed, and time turned into something ugly.

Not measured in hours anymore, but in monitor alarms, lab results, dose schedules, and the way everyone’s eyes kept flicking toward the same doors as if staring hard enough could make them open with good news.

The treatment had started.

Hormones. Aggressive induction. A controlled assault on an eight-year-old’s body in the hope that it would awaken fast enough to defend itself.

Arion remained mostly sedated because waking meant fear, and fear meant volatility, which was the one variable that even the best doctors detested.

But the sedation didn’t make the tension go away.

It just trapped it in the halls.

Otto tried to work.

He didn’t do it because he cared about paperwork. He did it because if he sat in that corridor and stared at the isolation room long enough, he would become someone his empire couldn’t afford. So he took meetings in the hospital’s secured office wing. He signed documents with hands that didn’t shake. He gave orders with a voice that didn’t crack.

Then, when no one was watching, he would stand at the glass for ten minutes and count Arion’s breaths.

Dax didn’t take meetings.

He moved when he had to: screenings, briefings, containment updates, and the quiet legal arrangements that followed a death in a royal household. But most of the time, he existed in a disciplined, controlled quiet that made people speak softly around him without knowing why.

Chris stayed by his side every moment.

Chris wasn’t always touching, but he was always close and within reach, as if proximity were the only language that mattered when everything else was broken.

When Killian’s remains arrived, they arrived about a week later.

Dax took it in his hands as if he didn’t trust anyone else not to drop it.

The box was warm from transit, smooth beneath his palms, heavier than it should have been for ash.

Chris dismissed the courier with one look.

Then he closed the door.

The suite went quiet in a different way.

Dax stared at the box for a long time, standing very still, as if he moved too quickly, something inside him would split.

Chris didn’t speak.

He approached Dax slowly, placing one hand lightly on his back, just enough pressure to say, "I’m here."

Dax’s breathing went shallow.

His shoulders shuddered once.

His eyes went wet.

And then tears slid down his face without sound, without warning, without permission.

A king crying quietly over a small box.

Chris wrapped his arms around Dax from behind, holding him tight, his cheek resting briefly against Dax’s shoulder blade. He didn’t try to stop the tears. He didn’t try to fix it.

He just held him, the way he always did when Dax came home cracked.

Dax’s hands tightened around the box. He closed his eyes, forehead tipping forward as if he couldn’t hold his own head up anymore. The tears kept falling, silent, relentless.

Chris stayed.

Minutes passed like that.

Then Dax inhaled slowly and deliberately, forcing the breath into a shape he could reuse. His tears stopped, but the grief didn’t. It simply folded back into him, pressed flat under duty because that was what he did.

He handed the box to Chris for a moment so he could wipe his face with the heel of his hand like it offended him to be seen as human.

Chris didn’t flinch at the ashbox in his palms. He treated it like it was precious, because it was.

When Dax took it back, he held it to his chest for one long second, then turned his head slightly, eyes unfocused.

"Later," Chris murmured. "We do it properly."

Dax nodded once.

"Properly," he echoed, voice low.

A knock came at the door not long after.

Chris opened it.

Rowan stood in the doorway with Hale beside him.

Rowan looked... wrong. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Exhausted in a way that made him seem older. His shoulders were tight, his eyes shadowed, and there was a hollowness to his face that said he’d finally slept and it hadn’t helped.

Hale looked worse.

Stunned didn’t begin to cover it. He had the stiff posture of someone who had spent days handling details no one wanted to name out loud - transfer documents, security reports, body transport clearances, and funeral protocols.

His gaze flicked once to the box in Dax’s hands.

Then away, quickly, as if looking too long would make something inside him snap.

Rowan cleared his throat. "Your Majesties."

His voice was steady, but it took effort. It sat too high in his chest, as if his body still expected alarms.

Chris inclined his head once, giving him permission to speak. Dax didn’t move at all. He stood with the ashbox cradled against him like it had weight beyond physics, his face composed again in that cold, controlled way that came after the crying stopped.

For a moment, nobody spoke.

The suite held the silence with the same care that it had held everything else lately, as if one wrong sound would crack the entire structure.

Then Dax breathed in, long and deliberately.

He crossed the suite in three quiet steps and set the ornate box down on the low table near the window. He placed it gently, precisely, as if it mattered that the wood didn’t scrape, as if the world still had rules he could enforce.

His gloved fingertips lingered on the lid for a heartbeat.

Then he withdrew his hand and turned back to them.

Rowan and Hale were watching him too closely, like men waiting for a verdict.

Dax’s gaze swept over them - Rowan’s hollowed exhaustion and Hale’s stiff shock, the two of them standing side by side like the palace had already begun rearranging itself around the hole Killian left.

Chris stayed silent.

He let Dax do this.

Because some announcements belonged to the king.

"Close the door," Dax said.

Hale obeyed immediately, shutting it with controlled care. The click sounded final.

Dax’s voice remained low, calm, and sharp enough to cut. "I’ve called you here as the palace needs a new steward."