Chapter 38: Chapter 38: Peace
He reached the last door and paused. The white paint was scuffed near the handle, as though someone had shut it too hard too many times. He turned it quietly and pushed.
Chris’s bedroom was small and spare, almost austere compared to the wreckage outside. The bed was neatly made, a navy blanket smoothed tight over clean sheets. A stack of books sat on the nightstand, spines creased from being read over and over. A slim laptop sat closed on the desk beside a graphics tablet, its stylus balanced across the top; the power light still glowed a faint blue in the dimness. A phone charger trailed from the wall socket, empty. The window was cracked open; cold air spilled in, carrying salt and rain and the faintest trace of Chris’s scent.
Dax stepped inside, boots silent on the worn floorboards. He didn’t touch anything at first. His eyes travelled over the space, the closet door ajar, a shirt hanging from a hook, a worn leather satchel propped against the wall. Ordinary things, but all of them chosen, arranged, and lived in by the man he had just left sleeping. The tension under Dax’s skin eased fractionally, the way it did at the first touch of calm after a fight.
A faint draft stirred the room; the laptop’s blue sleep light blinked once, steady as a heartbeat. Dax’s gaze drifted from the nightstand to the desk. A chair had been pulled half-out, a soft grey shirt draped over the back as if Chris had shed it there in a hurry. The fabric still held the shape of a body, a faint crease where a shoulder had rested.
He reached for it before he could stop himself.
He kept the shirt in his hands a moment longer. The cotton was cool and a little rough from salt air, but the scent that clung to it was steady, clean, and alive. Rain and warm skin.
’One night beside him and I slept without waking,’ he thought. ’No noise. No blood. No hunting thoughts until that stupid girl.’
The corner of his mouth twitched at the memory, the expression more a ghost of a smile than anything soft.He pressed the shirt to his face briefly, breathing in until the edge under his skin dulled. Peace. I’d forgotten what that feels like. The word sounded strange even inside his head. He wasn’t used to it.
When he lowered the shirt again, his eyes had sharpened. The decision was already there, clean and cold, without needing to be spoken: Chris would not come back to this place alone. He would be moved, protected, and brought into Dax’s reach, where no scavenger family, no Clara, no one could claw at him.
Dax folded the shirt once with a care that didn’t match his hands and laid it over the chair.
He straightened, letting his gaze travel once more around the room. Laptop light, tablet, books, satchel. A life built piece by piece, orderly even under siege. He shut the window with a soft click, more to keep the scent inside than to bar the cold, and walked back through the flat. In the living room Tyler’s men had already erased the traces of Clara’s intrusion; the frame shards were gone, the curtain rehung, and the air scrubbed with something sharp and clean.
Dax stepped out into the stairwell. The sea hissed below, steady as a breath. By the time he reached the car, Tyler had the door open and the engine running. Neither of them spoke.
Inside, the leather seat was cool against his palms. He pulled his phone from his coat pocket with the same unhurried precision he used for a weapon. The screen lit, already linked to the villa’s security feed. A live image filled the display: Chris at the table in the sitting room, hair rumpled, a latte steaming in his hand as he talked into his phone, expression intent. Unaware of the chaos that had just been erased from his apartment.
Dax watched for a heartbeat longer than necessary, the tension under his skin easing in small increments. Then he closed the feed with a flick of his thumb and tapped another number.
"John," he said when the line picked up, voice low. "We’re leaving for Saha the day after tomorrow. I want a full work-up ready for Christopher when we return to the palace. Quiet. No one outside my wing. The suppressants I sent down, trace them, analyze them, and tell me exactly what he’s been dosed with."
"Yes, Your Majesty," came the calm reply.
"Good." Dax ended the call without waiting for anything more and slipped the phone back into his coat.
"Tyler," he said without looking away from the passing coastline, "make sure there are no media within a two-hundred-meter radius when we arrive in Saha. Keep Christopher a secret for now."
"Yes, Your Majesty," Tyler answered at once. His thumbs were already moving over his tablet, firing off encrypted messages to the security detail and the palace press office. "I’ll reroute staff and set up a secure perimeter at the landing point. Anyone without clearance will be moved."
Dax gave a small nod. Beyond the window the sea was a steel-grey sheet, whitecaps breaking like glass along the breakwater. He loosened his fingers against his knee, letting the rhythm of the tires on wet stone steady his thoughts.
’One more day and he’ll be out of here,’ he thought. ’Soon we will be home.’
The phone in his coat vibrated once, a calendar reminder. He slid it out and flicked a glance at the screen. Blocks of color filled the week ahead: meetings, state dinners, and security briefings. The two-week delegation to Rohan sat in the middle of it like a slab of concrete, immovable. Departure in seven days. Return not until the month turned.
His jaw flexed once. ’That’s all I get for now. A handful of days. Then they’ll drag me halfway across the continent to smile at ministers who don’t matter.’ He closed the calendar with a flick of his thumb. ’But after that... nothing is in the way. No tours, nor speeches. Time enough to pull him into my world properly.’
He set the phone face-down on his thigh and watched the coastline slide by, the salt-streaked balconies and damp stone receding into mist. In his head the plan unrolled as cleanly as a blueprint: get Chris out, get him settled, build the perimeter, then build the rest, slowly, carefully, until the feisty omega stopped seeing a king and started seeing him.
The tires whispered over the wet road. Dax leaned back against the seat, eyes on the horizon, counting the miles.