Caught by the Mad Alpha King-Chapter 482: Aftermath

A few days later, Nero had reached the private and entirely unpoetic conclusion that anyone who spoke reverently about first rut had either never experienced one or deserved to.

The fever had finally broken, the sharpest edge of his pheromones no longer turned the recovery wing into a controlled disaster zone, and the physicians had stopped moving around him with the strained caution of people working beside unstable explosives. That, apparently, qualified as improvement.

Nero personally thought it qualified only as proof that hell had a recovery room.

He lay half-reclined against the raised bed, one knee bent beneath the sheet, staring at the muted city beyond the reinforced glass while the remains of the heat lingered under his skin in a way he found unpleasant.

It was no longer the violent, delirious inferno of the first days. It had retreated into something meaner and more intimate, a residual burn in his bones, a constant low ache in his muscles, a sense that his body had been taken apart by fire and reassembled in a hurry by someone who had not consulted him. Even breathing felt different. Easier now, yes, but not yet natural, as though his lungs still remembered the moments when he had surfaced from sedation, choking on air that should have been enough and somehow wasn’t.

That part, more than anything else, had stayed with him.

The pain had been bad enough that language kept failing around it. He could still recall the sensation of waking through the sedatives and finding no mercy in consciousness, only a body so hot and overloaded it had stopped feeling like his.

Every nerve had seemed to carry too much current. His chest had gotten so tight that every breath felt like a hard, useless drag. The world had come in bursts: light, voices, restraints, cold cloths, the taste of metal, someone saying his name, and someone else saying numbers in a voice that had already gone from concern to disbelief.

The sedation had failed more than once.

Nero had been too far gone to follow everything in real time, but he had pieced together enough afterward. His response had not merely been difficult. It had exceeded whatever neat expectations anyone had built around age, lineage, or standard presentation.

The painkillers had barely touched him at first. The sedatives had been taken: too little, then not enough, then still not enough, until someone, Dr. Bird, probably, because he had the calm of a man who could discuss catastrophe like a scheduling matter, had approved increasing the dose again and again until it was nearly ten times what anyone would have considered reasonable before the palace was forced to admit that reason had left the building hours earlier.

Nero had heard that number yesterday and had not decided whether to be offended or proud.

At present, he mostly felt tired.

A soft knock came at the door, followed by Chris entering without waiting for permission.

Nero turned his head.

His father looked calm, like men do when they’ve been scared badly and then decide to act like it. He wore dark trousers, a long loose shirt, and that expression he always acquired after days of too little sleep and too much concern, when grace became something applied with force rather than ease. In one hand he carried a mug that smelled faintly of broth and herbs. In the other, a tablet.

"Before you start," Nero said, his voice still rough around the edges, "I already know it’s disgusting."

Chris set the mug down on the side table and sat in the chair beside the bed. "You haven’t tasted it."

"I can smell morality in it."

"That’s broth, not morality."

"It feels the same."

Chris’s mouth moved slightly, not quite a smile. "Good. Sarcasm means your brain survived too."

Nero watched him for a second longer than usual. Up close, the tiredness in Chris was easier to see.

Nero looked away first.

"How long was I out?"

"You weren’t out consistently enough for the question to be comforting," Chris said. Then, because he was not cruel enough to leave it there, he added, "The worst of it lasted a little over two days. After that, the fever started breaking in intervals. You’ve been properly lucid since yesterday morning."

Nero absorbed that in silence.

Chris leaned back slightly in the chair, studying him with that same calmness physicians and parents had in common when they were trying not to hover and failing through discipline. "How’s the pain?"

"Manageable."

"That answer is suspiciously mature."

"It’s still there," Nero said before he could stop himself. "It just doesn’t feel like I’m being flayed from the inside anymore."

Chris went very still for a moment, then nodded once, slow and controlled, as though that answer had found the correct place in whatever private reckoning he had been carrying.

Nero stared at the blanket over his legs. "I woke up thinking I was dying."

The words came out flatter than the memory deserved, but he had no interest in making them real again.

Chris did not interrupt him.

Nero continued because he had started now and hated leaving things half-said. "I’d come up through the sedation, and it would just still be there. The heat... I couldn’t breathe right. Everything hurt, and every time I thought they’d finally knocked me out enough, I’d wake up again."

He did not look at Chris while he said it.

"If you say something comforting," Nero muttered, "I’ll throw the broth at you."

Chris folded his hands loosely. "I was going to say that sounds unpleasant."

Nero glanced at him.

"That’s your idea of restraint?"

"It’s my idea of not beating your ass for threatening your father," Chris said, with a gleam in his eyes that promised he would have no difficulty following through.

That, more than the words themselves, nearly dragged a smile out of Nero.

Nearly.

Instead, he sank a little deeper into the pillows and muttered, "You say that like I had full command of my higher reasoning."

"You threatened me before the rut too," Chris said.

"That feels irrelevant."

"It feels documented."

The door opened again before either of them could say more, and Dax stepped into the room. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

The shift in atmosphere was immediate and irritatingly familiar. Even exhausted, even dressed more simply than usual, even moving with visible care because the recovery suite was still operating under medical restrictions, Dax could fill a room by entering it.

He had discarded anything ceremonial hours ago; now he wore dark trousers, a fitted shirt with the sleeves rolled back, and the expression of a man who had spent several days very close to losing his mind and had come through it with his self-control mostly intact and his patience permanently damaged.

His gaze went first to Nero, then to the untouched broth, then to Chris, then back again.

"Why are you threatening your father?" He asked with a low voice.