CHAPTER 210: CHAPTER 210: FAILED NEGOTIATION

Chris wasn’t sure how long he lay there on the office sofa with Dax wrapped around him like a living, smug weighted blanket. But it was long enough for his heartbeat to stop trying to escape through his throat. Long enough for his brain to remember what language was. Long enough to register that Volume Three had face-planted on the carpet like it was done with life.

Dax, meanwhile, was purring.

Chris tried to lift his arm. His arm said no.

Dax looked down at him with royal satisfaction. "Comfortable?"

Chris stared at the ceiling. "Dax, I swear to God, if you don’t move, I will bite you."

"You say that like it isn’t encouragement."

Chris let out an exasperated moan. "I should have just asked for a pause for 6 months from intimacy as payment. Now I’m full of marks again and leaking because of you."

Dax made a thoughtful hum against his throat. "I would never have accepted it."

"Like you didn’t accept the clemency from useless etiquette?" Chris shot back, even though his voice cracked halfway through "useless" and made him sound like an offended etiquette teacher.

"It’s not useless," Dax said, tightening his hold around him as if Chris were a heated throw pillow he refused to relinquish. "It’s defensive education."

Chris let the silence stretch long enough for his neurons to attempt a comeback tour. His whole body ached in ways that could only be described as "a strategic mistake," but his mouth, his damn mouth, recovered first.

"It’s noble unemployment at its peak," he said, and then a thought flickered through the exhaustion, bright and reckless. "You know... I’m your consort already."

Dax stilled, a dangerous stillness he got right before someone said something profound or did something profoundly stupid.

"Christopher..." Dax warned, his voice low in that you-are-playing-with-godfire tone.

"No, think about it," Chris pushed on, because stopping now would require self-preservation instincts he didn’t currently possess. "I’m already your consort. You marked me. We signed the papers. I have the stupid collar." He gestured vaguely toward the desk, where the diamond collar lay like evidence.

Chris pushed on anyway, because why would he stop now? "Which means nobody can force me to learn it..."

Dax moved with the slow inevitability of a natural disaster. His arms tightened around Chris, pulling him flush against his chest, chest to chest, scent to scent. He didn’t squeeze hard enough to hurt, but just enough to make Chris’s breath catch.

"Try finishing that sentence," Dax murmured, voice warm and velvet-dark against the side of Chris’s throat, "and see what happens."

Chris froze from the sudden realization that he’d just stepped on a landmine wearing emotional flip-flops.

He swallowed. "I’m just saying... technically..."

"Technically," Dax cut in, "you think being my consort exempts you from learning how to navigate the people who want to tear you apart the moment you walk into a room wearing my collar."

Chris sighed like a dramatic theater actor preparing for his final monologue. "Well, it seems like you forget that I have hands and know how to defend myself."

Dax didn’t even blink. "In an alpha and omega’s world, you don’t."

Chris raised his head just enough to glare up at him. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me," Dax said, his voice so maddeningly calm it made Chris want to throw Volume Three at him. "You can’t sense threats yet. You can’t feel hostile pheromones. You can’t read intent in a room."

Chris opened his mouth to argue...

Dax kept going.

"And your body is still adjusting. You’ve spent ten years suppressing everything that should have protected you. Even the physician said your pheromonal response is barely waking up."

Chris blinked. "Wow. Please keep talking. I love being a medical cautionary tale."

Dax’s warm fingers slid up his spine, tracing every curve of it. "You’re not a cautionary tale."

"So what am I?"

"My vulnerable omega," Dax said, soft in a way that made Chris’s chest ache. "And I don’t want you walking into a political nest until you can sense the danger in it."

Chris groaned. "I’m not a vulnerable princess you have to shield, Dax. You assigned Rowan with a team of twenty, TWENTY alphas, and God knows how many regular soldiers. Also, I can still use my dominant pheromones to freeze someone if needed."

Dax stilled.

Then... that slow, devastating smile appeared. The one that meant, ’I hear your argument. I respect it. I will not be accepting it.’

"Christopher," Dax murmured, brushing his nose down Chris’s cheek like he was tasting the air, "my little moon, you will learn those books, and I will ask you about them every night."

Chris’s entire spine stiffened like someone had plugged him into a wall socket. "Don’t you dare..."

But Dax dared, he absolutely dared, in fact, he looked like he’d been waiting to dare.

"I will," Dax said, voice warm and unbearably pleased with himself. "Every night. After dinner. Before you try to escape into the shower."

"Escape?" Chris sputtered. "It’s called personal hygiene."

"It’s called fleeing."

Chris slapped his chest. It was the weak, exhausted slap of a man betrayed by his own body. "Dax, no... Fine."

"Fine?"

"Yes, fine."

Dax became very suspicious. His whole body went still in that very alpha way that meant his instincts were trying to climb out of his spine and pace the room.

"What are you planning?" he asked slowly.

Chris blinked up at him, the picture of exhausted innocence with a streak of pure malice under it. "Nothing," he said calmly. "I just thought that if I need to learn, then you can abstain for the time I’m forced to literally eat etiquette."

Silence. Actual silence. The kind that happens right before someone screams, or a chandelier falls, or two armies charge.

Dax pulled back just enough to see Chris’s face. His eyebrows rose. His eyes narrowed. His hands tightened around Chris’s waist like he was worried Chris would try to physically disappear into the upholstery.

"Abstain," Dax repeated slowly, as if testing a foreign word. "As in... no intimacy."

"Yes," Chris said brightly, because he was delirious with pain and spite. "You know. A fair exchange."

Dax stared at him like Chris had just declared war on oxygen.

"Christopher," he finally said, in that soft, terrifying tone he used right before he overturned governments, "you are threatening me with celibacy."

Chris nodded. "Correct."

"For studying."

"Yes."

"A study ban."

"A study ban," Chris agreed. "Equal effort. You read, and I read. You suffer, I suffer. Fair system."

Dax blinked once.

Then he slowly leaned down until his forehead pressed against Chris’s, his voice a hot whisper. "You think you can weaponize abstinence against me."

Chris held his ground. "Yes."

Dax inhaled sharply through his nose. "You believe," he continued, voice shaking with disbelief and something darker, "that you can train me with deprivation."

Chris nodded again. "Positive reinforcement didn’t work. So I’m switching to negative."

Dax’s breath hitched.

Chris immediately regretted everything. Because that was the sound Dax made when Chris had just triggered a challenge.

"Christopher," Dax murmured, sliding a hand up his back like he was checking for hidden claws, "my little moon... you are playing a game you cannot win."

Chris lifted his chin stubbornly. "Watch me."

Dax’s mouth curved in the smile of a man who had just heard the funniest, most adorable, and most catastrophically stupid thing in the world.

"Very well," Dax said quietly, voice dipped in victory. "I accept your terms."

Chris blinked. "You... what?"

"I accept," Dax repeated, smug as sin. "You will study. And I will abstain."

Chris narrowed his eyes. "You’re agreeing too fast."

"Yes," Dax said. "Because I know something you do not."

"What?"

Dax kissed the top of his head, utterly self-satisfied. "You will break before I do."

Chris laughed. "Says the man that broke the rule and touched me after less than ten minutes."