Caught by the Mad Alpha King-Chapter 336: Secure

The way Rowan’s gaze had locked on a specific line of approach, an angle that would bring someone close to Dax’s side through the milling bodies.

Chris didn’t look toward the threat. Looking was how you confirmed you’d seen them.

Instead, he did the only thing he could do without turning the entire room into panic.

He moved.

One step closer to Dax, casual enough to be dismissed as affection, close enough that his shoulder brushed Dax’s arm. His hand lifted, fingers resting briefly on Dax’s forearm like he was anchoring himself there.

Dax’s eyes flicked to him.

Chris kept his expression calm, his voice low. "Rowan’s signaling."

Dax didn’t ask questions.

He just shifted. His stance shifted, almost imperceptible to those who didn’t know what to look for. His weight redistributed. His left arm moved just enough to place Chris slightly behind him, half-shielded without making it obvious.

Chris’s pulse stayed steady because panic was useless and because the man he was standing beside was a king who had walked through wars like they were weather.

The crowd continued to swirl. The host laughed at something. Someone clinked a glass. Diplomats smiled like they didn’t know they were about to die.

And then Chris saw it with instinct and peripheral awareness.

A man moving too cleanly through the crowd. Approaching Dax’s open side.

His hand was tucked close to his body, hidden by the drape of his jacket, and the angle of his shoulder suggested the shape of something rigid.

Rowan began to move, fast and silent, but there were too many bodies between them, too much choreography to cut through without causing a scene.

The assassin got close enough that Chris could smell him, cheap cologne layered over nervous sweat.

Chris didn’t think.

He stepped right into Dax’s space, pressing in close enough that he could feel the heat of him; at the same time, he turned just slightly, making his own body a moving obstruction.

The assassin’s line broke. His forward momentum stuttered for the smallest fraction of a second.

It was enough.

Dax’s arm hooked around Chris’s waist like the motion had been waiting in his muscles all along.

One moment Chris was standing beside him; the next he was airborne, lifted effortlessly, pulled tight against Dax’s side with one arm like he weighed nothing at all.

The world snapped into slow motion.

Chris heard the crowd inhale. Heard someone gasp. Heard a chair scrape.

He saw the assassin’s eyes widen as Dax moved like a predator meeting a threat head-on.

Dax’s free hand, his right, reached to the table with a single, crisp motion.

His fingers wrapped around a cutlery knife.

Dax didn’t even look like he was aiming.

He turned his head slightly, purple eyes tracking the room with that lethal calm, and then his hand flicked.

The knife left his fingers with a clean, brutal line, and it crossed the space between them in a blink.

The silver-templed man, the one who had been too insistent earlier, was in the wrong place at the wrong time, still smiling, still leaning forward as if to see better...

And then the knife hit.

The knife hit the silver-templed man in the forehead. It struck just above his right eyebrow, a dead-center shot that punched through bone with a dull crack. The man’s expression of polite interest didn’t change; it simply ceased to function.

His eyes went wide and vacant, fixed on nothing. For a half-second, he remained upright, a statue with a silver filigree handle protruding from his skull. Then, a fine red line traced itself down from the wound, thickening into a ribbon that dripped from his eyebrow onto his cheek.

The silence in the room lasted for about two heartbeats.

Then it broke. A woman at a nearby table screamed. The crowd, which had been a barrier, became a chaotic obstacle course. People shoved, knocking over chairs and spilling drinks. The sound system, playing soft jazz, suddenly seemed deafeningly loud before someone cut the power.

The scream ripped through the hall like torn fabric.

Then the world exploded.

Chairs overturned. Glass shattered. Men in tailored suits who had ruled cities through quiet fear suddenly became panicked animals, shoving, slipping, and falling over one another in a desperate surge away from the body with the knife in its skull.

The air thickened, heavy and electric, as if the room itself had inhaled and forgotten how to breathe. Dax’s pheromones unfurled in a cold, imperial, commanding wave.

’Submit.’

’Freeze.’

’Kneel or die.’

Alphas staggered first.

Strong men who had survived gang wars and corporate purges suddenly lost the ability to stand straight. Their knees buckled, eyes going unfocused, and breath turning shallow and uneven as their instincts screamed that something vastly superior had entered the food chain.

Betas froze where they stood, hands halfway raised, minds blank with primal terror.

The few omegas present went still as statues, bodies locking in involuntary obedience, pupils blown wide.

Dax held Chris against his side, as if he were light as a feather, protecting him from the storm he had unleashed. His other hand was already moving again, lifting slightly - an almost lazy, dismissive gesture.

That was the signal.

The doors were detonated.

Sahan special units poured into the hall in black and steel, moving with the inhuman precision of soldiers trained for eradication. Their boots hit marble in perfect rhythm. Their weapons were already up. Their eyes were already locked on targets marked by movement, resistance, and intent.

"Down."

Those who obeyed collapsed to the floor, hands over heads, bodies shaking, overwhelmed by the crushing weight of Dax’s pheromonal field.

Those who did not...

A man near the glass wall reached for a concealed pistol.

He never cleared leather.

A Sahan operative closed the distance in two steps and drove a blade up under his jaw. The man’s body went rigid, then slack, blood spraying across the pristine glass like a sudden, obscene mural.

Another tried to run.

A rifle barked once. The sound was sharp, surgical. The man spun and dropped, a red bloom spreading across his back as he skidded across the marble and came to rest at the feet of a screaming diplomat.

Two more lunged toward a side exit together, coordinated, trained.

They were met by a synchronized burst of gunfire that cut them down mid-stride. Their bodies folded and slid, momentum carrying them a few more meters before they lay still, eyes staring, mouths open in silent shock.

The hall was no longer a summit.

It was a kill zone.

Dax’s pheromones continued to roll in suffocating waves, pressing everyone to the ground, crushing will and coherence alike. Men sobbed. Men vomited. Men curled into themselves, hands over their heads, whimpering prayers to gods they had never believed in until now.

Chris felt it too, the pressure, the dominance flooding the air like a physical force. The difference between him and those men was that it didn’t crush him but wrapped around him, recognized him, and shielded him. The mark at his nape warmed faintly under the collar, resonating with the bond, oddly comforting.

Dax’s voice cut through the chaos, low and absolute.

"Secure."