Dax Is Poisoned
Dax Is Poisoned
###Chapter 056###
\### Dax Is Poisoned###
(Daxton Reyes’ POV)
Before I could react, she raised her hand and pressed two fingers against my throat—sharp nails biting skin. A faint shimmer of magic, cold and wrong, pulsed between us.
The room spun.
I staggered back, choking on air that suddenly felt too thin. My vision blurred; my pulse thundered in my ears.
“Sleep,” she murmured. “Dream of obedience.”
I fought it. Gods, I fought. But the poison surged through my veins like wildfire.
Darkness took me before I hit the floor.
When I woke, I was in my own chambers.
The drapes were drawn tight. My wrists were bandaged though I didn’t remember injury and an IV of silvery liquid dripped slowly into my arm.
For a moment, confusion blurred everything. Then the memories returned, hitting like a blade to the ribs.
Sylvia. The poison. The curse she’d cast to silence me.
I ripped the IV from my arm, gasping as the needle tore free. Blood spattered the floor. The door was locked from the outside.
I stumbled to the mirror.
The face that stared back looked hollow, gaunt. My eyes—once sharp gray—had turned faintly glassy. But under the skin, glowing faintly along the veins at my neck, was something else.
Silver.
The mark of wolfsbane infusion. A slow toxin meant not to kill but to tame.
My hands shook as I braced against the sink. “What have you done to me?” I whispered.
The reflection didn’t answer. But deep inside, under the haze of sickness and fury, something ancient stirred—the wolf, enraged and wounded, but awake.
She cannot hold us forever, it growled. Not while the bond remains.
And there it was the faintest echo of her. Adelina.
A pulse, soft but steady, somewhere beyond the mountains. Not a voice, not a thought just warmth. Life.
The bond.
I gritted my teeth. “Then we use it.”
Days passed. Or maybe weeks.
Sylvia paraded me before the Council, all smiles and deception. She told them I was recovering from exhaustion. That I’d be fit to preside over the upcoming Blood Summit.
No one questioned her—not to her face. They never did. But I saw the flickers of doubt in their eyes. The whispers that followed when I left the room.
The Council was fracturing. They just didn’t realize it yet.
At night, I practiced walking unaided, forcing strength back into poisoned muscles. I trained my senses to filter through the fog. Every breath was agony, every heartbeat rebellion.
But slowly, I began to see the patterns. The servants who lingered near my quarters. The subtle shift in the guards’ routines. The way Sylvia’s private physician delivered her “medicine” at precise intervals.
She thought I was broken.
She forgot who raised me.
One evening, Caleb’s name surfaced in a Council report.
“Traitorous Beta aiding rogue insurgents.”
The words burned through the fog like fire.
If Caleb was alive—and working with Adelina—it meant the rebellion was no longer rumor. It was real. And close.
For the first time in weeks, I felt hope.
That night, I didn’t take the tea. I pretended to. I smiled as Sylvia watched me drink, then poured it into the plants the moment she turned away.
The next morning, my head was clearer than it had been in months.
And that’s when I found it—a faint trail of residue on the cup, glinting like mercury under the light. I scraped it into a vial and hid it beneath my cuff. Proof.
If I could get it to Caleb or anyone outside the estate they’d know Sylvia was using wolfsbane control toxin. A crime punishable by death under Council law.
But for that, I needed to escape.
The opportunity came sooner than expected.
That night, the alarms rang—short, sharp bursts of sound. A breach at the western wall.
Sylvia’s enforcers stormed through the halls, shouting orders. She swept into the main corridor, her composure breaking for the first time.
“What’s happening?” I demanded.
“Rogues,” she hissed. “They’ve come too close. We’ll crush them before dawn.”
Something in her tone sparked realization. She wasn’t afraid of rogues. She was afraid of her rogues—wolves she’d lost control over.
And suddenly, I knew. Adelina’s alliance.
The Hollow Crescent wolves had reached Aspen’s borders.
I hid my smile behind clenched teeth. “Then you’d better pray your poison still works, Mother.”
She shot me a sharp look, but I’d already turned away.
In the confusion, I slipped through the servant passages, the vial hidden in my palm. My body trembled with weakness, but the wolf inside guided me. Every hallway, every shadow was familiar.
At the stables, I found my black mare waiting, restless. I swung onto her back, pain slicing through my ribs, but adrenaline drowned it out.
As I rode into the night, the cold mountain air burned my lungs clean. The taste of poison was still on my tongue—but for the first time, it wasn’t victory Sylvia would savor.
It was fear.
Sylvia’s manipulation and gaslighting deepen the villain dynamic.
Dax’s slow realization of his poisoning mirrors his emotional awakening and renewed bond with Adelina.
The chapter ends on a powerful cliffhanger—his escape from Aspen and discovery that Adelina’s rebellion is real.