Chapter 112: Chapter 112: Refused Audience

Felix Canmore did not rage like lesser men.

Lesser men shouted, threw glasses, overturned chairs, slammed fists against desks, and mistook noise for consequence. They allowed servants to see flushed faces and trembling hands. They gave witnesses details to repeat.

Felix had never cared for such vulgarity.

His rage was quiet.

It sat inside his private office like a killing frost.

Three secretaries had already left the room pale. One legal aide had forgotten the same document twice and was now standing near the side table with the bloodless expression of a man who had begun to question whether his ancestors had committed unforgivable sins. The household communication officer had not looked up from her terminal in twenty minutes, which was wise. The chief financial clerk had made the mistake of breathing too loudly during the first hour and had since developed the stiff posture of someone trying to exist in a way that did not disturb air.

Felix sat behind the old blackwood desk in the western wing of Canmore Manor, one hand resting lightly over a stack of reports, the other holding a silver pen he had not used in several minutes.

The pen snapped.

No one moved.

Ink spread across his fingers in a thin black line.

Felix looked at it.

Then he looked at the aide nearest the desk.

The young man stepped forward at once with a folded cloth, face carefully empty, hands only trembling once.

Felix allowed him to wipe the ink from his fingers.

"Again," he said.

The room tightened.

The communication officer swallowed.

"His Majesty’s office has refused the request, Lord Canmore."

Felix’s pale eyes lifted.

"His Majesty’s office," he repeated, his tone cold enough to freeze anyone around him.

"Yes, my lord."

"Not His Majesty."

The woman’s hands stilled above the terminal for a fraction of a second.

"No, my lord. The response came through the king’s secretary."

Felix smiled.

The aide with the cloth looked as if he wished to become furniture.

George.

That stupid, grasping, ungrateful little king.

For years, George had been useful precisely because he understood his position: a crown balanced on a hollow head, a throne maintained by someone else’s power, a public symbol kept upright because Felix preferred blame to have a face other than his own.

George had always wanted more than he deserved.

That was tolerable. Ambition could be measured. Hunger could be redirected. Greed could be fed just enough to make a man feel clever while the leash remained snug around his throat.

But now George was refusing meetings or, more directly said, he was refusing Felix.

After using the Canmore name, Canmore blood, Canmore leverage, and Liam... Liam... to throw a royal announcement into the world like a butcher tossing bait into a river full of knives.

Felix’s fingers flexed once against the desk.

The legal aide flinched.

Felix looked at him.

The flinching stopped.

"Leave," Felix said.

The aide bowed too quickly and fled with enough haste to make the door whisper shut behind him.

Useless. All of them.

Not because they lacked skill, necessarily. Some were quite competent when fear sharpened their skills. But none of them understood the scale of what had been lost.

Felix had gambled.

George, for all his idiocy, had stumbled into something useful when he announced Liam Sienna Canmore’s engagement to Arik Oberon Lyon. Publicly, with royal stationery, with enough bureaucratic arrogance to make the declaration difficult to ignore without creating insult.

Felix had allowed it because the move should have cornered Agaron.

Damian Lyon was no sentimental fool.

Gabriel Lyon was worse.

The Emperor and his consort should have rejected the announcement immediately, if not out of outrage, then out of strategy. Agaron had no reason to accept Wrohan’s attempt to fasten a Canmore omega to its Crown Prince through public presumption. They should have denied the arrangement, humiliated George, and reopened negotiations with Wrohan, desperate and exposed.

That had been the wager.

Even if Arik played along temporarily, his parents should have cut the thread.

Instead, they had accepted it ruining whatever plans Felix had prepared for the fallout.

Felix’s purple gaze moved to the main projection suspended above the desk.

The report remained there, glowing in clean white script.

’Agaron imperial household confirms no objection to the Crown Prince’s private marital arrangements. Further commentary deemed unnecessary.’

Felix had read Gabriel Lyon’s response three times and had grown to dislike it more with every pass.

Gabriel remained infuriatingly controlled even through written correspondence. The omega was intelligent enough to see several moves ahead, patient enough to wait for the board to shift, and dangerous in the quiet, deliberate way that made other men underestimate him until it was too late.

Felix hated him for it.

Gabriel and Damian had destroyed Hadeon before Felix could finish what should have been his revenge. They had torn through the remnants of Nuria, burned out Olivier’s surviving influence, dismantled decades of carefully buried structures, and then somehow emerged stronger from it.

Together.

The serpent omega and the emperor who followed him into ruin like a willing weapon.

Felix’s fingers tightened around the head of his cane.

He wanted Gabriel dead.

He wanted that cold composure shattered long enough for the omega to understand what it felt like to lose something he could not control.

Instead, Gabriel sat safely inside Agaron’s palace while his son walked through Wrohan with golden ether wrapped around him like a crown inherited from ghosts.

And Liam...

Felix’s expression cooled further.

Liam had become attached to the prince too quickly.

That was the true complication beneath everything else.

If the engagement had remained a scandal, Felix could have maneuvered around it. If Damian and Gabriel had rejected the announcement, Liam would have been dragged back into Wrohan’s internal structure before Arik could stabilize his position around him.

But Agaron had accepted.

Worse, Arik had accepted publicly and personally.

Felix had seen the reports from the palace corridors, from the diplomatic wing, and from the media drones hovering outside the estate walls. Arik was not behaving like a prince entertaining temporary interest.

He was behaving like a man who had already chosen.

That made him dangerous.

Felix rose slowly from the desk.

The room quieted immediately.

Cain was near the window, posture straight and expression unreadable. The communication officer lowered her gaze. Two security aides near the inner doors stiffened instinctively.

Felix walked toward the glass overlooking the city.

Blue etherlights stretched across Wrohan beneath the night haze, elegant enough to hide the rot underneath.

George had always mistaken appearances for power.

Now he was hiding inside the royal palace refusing meetings like a frightened child barricading himself from consequences he no longer understood.

Felix had tolerated the king’s incompetence because fear made him obedient.

But fear had become panic.

And panic made rulers unstable.

"Cain," Felix said quietly.

"Yes, Father."

"George cannot remain alive."

No one in the room reacted visibly.

Cain approached slowly. "You want it done immediately?"

"I want it done correctly."

Felix turned from the window.

The office lighting carved sharp shadows across his face, turning his expression colder, older, and almost skeletal in its composure.

"George announced the engagement publicly. Agaron accepted. Political tension escalates. Then the king dies." Felix’s gaze settled on the suspended projection again. "Wrohan will demand an enemy."

Cain understood immediately.

"Agaron."

"Yes."