Caught by the Mad Alpha King-Chapter 444: Save the child.

Dax didn’t move.

He didn’t let go.

Killian was dead in his arms, the weight of him settling wrong, the tension leaving his muscles like a cord cut, the last heat draining out through the open ruin of his abdomen.

Blood kept coming even after the heart stopped, sliding out in thick, warm sheets that cooled by degrees and turned sticky against Dax’s gloves. It pooled under Killian’s hips and lower back, saturating the grass until the spring green went black and glossy. The smell of it hung heavy - metallic, wet, and intimate - too real for a garden that had been full of a ball and a dog less than a minute ago.

Half of his abdomen was missing.

There was no world where a person came back from that.

Dax knew it.

His hands refused to accept it anyway.

The medic had gone still, fingers pressed to a wound that no longer pulsed. Their face tightened, pale with the helplessness that professionals learned to hide but could never fully conceal.

Rowan stood close, rifle lowered but still in his grip, eyes scanning habitually before losing focus because habit didn’t know what to do with this. Rowan knew Killian. Not in the distant way staff knew staff.

The way you knew the person who made the palace work. The person who could stop a room with a look and had once told Rowan, without raising his voice, to stop acting like a feral guard dog in front of children.

Rowan’s jaw was locked so hard the muscles jumped. His throat moved once, like he tried to swallow and couldn’t.

"Killian..." Rowan said, barely audible, like the name was a mistake in his mouth.

Hale arrived as if dragged by the alarm.

He burst through the garden entry with his comm still in his hand, eyes wide, hair disheveled from running, and he stopped so abruptly his boots tore up the turf.

He stared.

At the blood.

At the body in Dax’s arms.

At the fact that the man he’d walked beside - one minute ago, calm and capable and annoyingly composed - was now gone.

Hale’s face went blank in a stunned, disbelieving way. "No."

No one answered him.

Because there was nothing to answer.

It had taken less than two minutes.

Less than two minutes from a wrong smile to a corpse.

The corrupted woman lay by the fountain in pieces, motionless. Rowan’s shots had ended her cleanly. The other infected soldier was already restrained near the hedge line, having been pinned, zip-tied, hooded, and sedated by Dominique’s team. There was no threat reaching Killian now.

There was no threat left to blame for why he wasn’t breathing.

It was simply too late.

Otto still had Arion in his arms.

The boy’s face was scratched, blood smeared across his cheek and toward the corner of his mouth. His hands were locked into Otto’s gear, shaking hard enough to rattle Otto’s buckles. Arion’s sobs had become thin and ragged, with little hitching sounds between breaths, as if his body couldn’t decide whether to cry or vomit.

Otto’s eyes flicked over the scratches with clinical brutality, measuring depth, searching for swelling, for warmth, for anything that might mean infection had already begun.

Because Killian’s last words weren’t about himself.

’Save him; he’s infected.’

The sentence landed in Dax a beat late.

Like shock always did.

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t gasp. He simply became still in a different way - his face sealing, his grief pushed behind something colder because there was no time to fall apart.

Dax’s gaze lifted to Otto.

"Otto," he said.

Otto’s eyes snapped to him immediately.

"High-speed aircraft," Dax said, voice low and absolute. "Now."

Otto’s mouth tightened. "We can get him to our medical wing in—"

"No," Dax cut in, a blade. "Saha."

Rowan’s head turned sharply, the word yanking him back into function even through the shock. Hale stared as if he couldn’t process anything beyond the blood.

Dax continued, not softening. "My physicians have experience with pheromone shift and contamination. They have protocols. They have treated exposure. They can save Arion before it’s too late."

Otto’s grip on Arion tightened by a fraction. Arion whimpered, face pressed against Otto’s shoulder, still trying to look over it at Dax and Killian as if his brain was desperate to understand what ’dead’ meant.

Otto’s voice went rough. "He won’t leave."

"He will," Dax said. "He’ll leave with you."

Otto blinked. "With me."

"Let Minerva handle this," Dax cut in, voice low and brutal with urgency. "You know she can. My physicians kept Ethan Miller alive. They saved others you sent. Save your son, Otto."

For half a second, Otto didn’t move.

You could see it: his instincts were torn in opposing directions. Emperor. Commander. Father. The man who needed to lock down his palace and interrogate how an infected soldier got close enough to touch his child. The man who needed to hold his boy and never let go again.

Then Arion made a broken sound into Otto’s collar - pain and fear and confusion all tangled together - and the decision snapped into place.

Otto’s jaw clenched.

"Fine," he said, and the word was not agreement so much as surrender to necessity.

He turned on his heel with the speed of a man who had just been told there was a clock inside his son’s blood.

"MEDICAL!" Otto barked into his comm. "CODE BLACK. AIRCRAFT NOW. I want emergency physicians at the inner gate and on the tarmac. Sealed cabin. Full filtration. Sedation protocol ready."

Acknowledgements crackled back instantly.

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"On route."

"Aircraft fueling—eight minutes."

"Med team assembling."

Arion was still twisting in Otto’s arms, face wet, eyes wide. He kept trying to look over Otto’s shoulder, around his arm, back toward Dax, back toward the blood on the grass, back toward the unmoving body in Dax’s arms as if staring hard enough could make the world undo itself.

Otto tightened his hold and angled Arion’s head into his shoulder again.

"Don’t look," Otto said, voice low and shaking at the edges. "Arion. Look at me."

Arion’s hands clutched Otto’s gear harder, fingers slipping on blood smears and fabric. "What... what happened..."

"You’re hurt," Otto cut in, and the lie was kinder than truth. "We’re going to the doctors."

"It hurts," Arion whispered, voice small and wrecked.

"I know." Otto didn’t soften. He couldn’t. Softness would crack him open. "I know. Breathe."

They moved.

Soldiers parted immediately and formed a corridor without being asked to. Dominic’s team held their positions, weapons up, eyes scanning, the restrained infected soldier dragged farther away as if distance could disinfect the air.

Hale was at the palace doors already, pale and rigid, coordinating with guards who had gone from ’routine escort’ to ’imperial evacuation’ in the span of a minute.