Chapter 37: Chapter 37: Orders
For a heartbeat nobody moved. The only sound was the sea outside, a low hiss through the broken curtain.
The woman’s chin lifted a fraction. "Oh, my, oh my. What a surprise. A king in my boyfriend’s apartment. He really aimed higher than me." She flicked her hair back with one hand and gave a little huff. "Either he’s dead or in your bed."
Dax didn’t answer. He stepped once into the room and let the door ease shut behind him. Tyler stayed outside; at the smallest flick of Dax’s fingers, the guards melted back into the stairwell, leaving only the sound of the latch clicking into place.
Clara gave a small, breathless laugh. "Oh, I think he’s in your bed. Poor thing never knew what to do with someone like me. Never even touched me properly." She tilted her head, eyes glittering. "Maybe he can’t. Maybe that’s why he hides behind all those contracts and his pretty drawings. He’s good at building walls, not much else."
Dax’s mouth curved, but the smile never reached his eyes. He took another step until the salt smell of his coat drowned out her perfume. "So he never touched you," he said softly, as if turning the idea over. "Never once?"
"Not the way a real man would," she said quickly, mistaking the softness for sympathy. "He isn’t what he pretends to be. You’d be better off with someone who knows how to handle you."
For a heartbeat his expression stayed the same, the faint smile, the tilted head, but the air in the room shifted. It was like watching a tide reverse. The warmth slid out of his eyes, leaving only the cold.
"Interesting," he murmured. "And you are?"
Clara’s lips parted, a slow smile spreading. She took the question for interest, for invitation. Her shoulders rolled back, and the faint shimmer of her scent slid into the air like syrup, sweet and heavy, the tell-tale pulse of omega pheromones she’d learned to weaponize. She stepped closer, satin whispering at her thighs. "Clara Beaumont," she said, her voice going low and soft. "And I could be a very good friend to a king."
The sweetness hit him a beat later. Dax’s nostrils flared; what she thought seductive was cloying and sour under the salt and iron. His fingers flexed once at his side, from the temptation of doing something too soon and from disgust, the way a predator reacts to spoiled meat. The violet of his eyes darkened.
"Ah," he said softly, voice gone flat. "So that’s what you’re trying."
Dax leaned his shoulder against the doorframe with lazy ease, crossing his arms over his chest. He let her come closer, let her believe for one more heartbeat that she was winning.
"Well..." she said, licking her lips while her eyes travelled over the breadth of him. "Can you blame me?"
Dax raised a brow but stayed silent. The apartment smelled of dust and her perfume; his gaze drifted past her to the overturned drawers, the shattered frame, and the orange pill bottles rolling near the skirting board. Chris’s life was laid bare and pawed through. His jaw flexed once.
Clara mistook his silence for negotiation. "We can come to an agreement," she drawled, voice dripping with self-satisfaction. "And I’ll keep my mouth shut. Otherwise..." she tilted her head, smile turning sharp, "...one post and your little toy’s life is destroyed. His reputation, his work... gone." She said this while spraying her hands to emphasize it, as if it were a poorly executed illusion. "All it takes is me."
The quiet that followed was almost physical. Dax’s eyes left the pill bottles and returned to hers. Whatever trace of amusement had been in his face drained away, leaving something clean and cold behind. He straightened off the doorframe, uncrossing his arms, each movement deliberate.
"You just threatened my mate," he said softly. "In his own home."
Clara opened her mouth, still smiling, but never got another word out. Dax’s hand shot out, closing around her throat in a single, unbroken motion. The click of her heels leaving the parquet was louder than her strangled gasp. His fingers spanned almost the whole of her neck; up close his eyes were nothing but violet ice.
"You are asking for it," he murmured.
Her nails skittered at his wrist, satin tearing under her grip. There was a short, terrible crack. Then silence, except for the hiss of the sea outside. Dax exhaled once, slowly, and set her down on the floor as though laying aside an empty glass. The salt wind lifted the torn curtain; by the time Tyler pushed the door open a heartbeat later, Dax’s expression was already the calm one Chris knew, the mask back in place over something far more lethal.
"Dispose of her, quietly."
Tyler’s exhale was a thin, almost inaudible hiss through his teeth. He’d been with Dax long enough to know what the order meant, but the sight of a body on the parquet still hit something at the back of his throat. He nodded once, clipped. "Yes, Your Majesty."
At his gesture, two men in plain clothes moved in from the stairwell. They didn’t speak; they simply crossed the room, lifted Clara’s slack weight as if it were a bundle of laundry, and carried her out past the door. The soft thud of their boots faded down the stairs, swallowed by the hiss of the sea.
Tyler stayed just long enough to take one last look at Dax. "I’ll see to it. And I’ll have a team come up for the apartment."
"Good," Dax said without looking at him. His voice was back to its low, unhurried register. "Have them clear everything she touched. Anything personal, pack and send to Saha. Label it for my wing. The pills..." His eyes had drifted back to the orange bottles on the floor. "I want them analyzed in our labs. Discreetly."
"Yes, Your Majesty." Tyler hesitated a moment longer, then withdrew, closing the door behind him.
The apartment fell silent again. Only the hiss of the wind through the broken curtain, the smell of salt and perfume, and the faint rattle of a bottle rolling across the floor remained. Dax stooped and picked it up between two fingers. Suppressants. He turned the label toward the light, reading the dosage without expression, before slipping the bottle into his coat pocket.
He began to walk through the rooms one by one. Drawers half open, a chair tipped on its side, and Chris’s handwriting on a scrap of paper under the couch. A mug left on the counter. Small, ordinary things that made up a life someone had tried to pick apart. His thumb brushed once over the edge of a sketch rolled up on the desk, a bridge design in graphite and ink, before setting it back exactly where it had been.