Chapter 946: The Dog’s Stupid Dog
Phei’s people felt it at once.
Patricia’s expression cooled by several degrees, Maddie’s brows drew together, the comedy draining out of her face and something far less friendly moving in to replace it while Cassiopeia tilted her head, eyes narrowing into slow, dangerous attention — she knew Maxton-Heavenchild grade tactics on sight, and she’d just watched someone else deploy them.
Emily’s gaze sharpened behind her calm mask, that efficient brain of hers already three moves deep into damage control, legal exposure, media framing and, Phei suspected, at least one viable plan for quiet homicide.
Elena, near the front, went very still, her nostrils flared faintly — she’d caught the scent of rot rising up through the expensive perfume and gone hunting-quiet over it.
The anchor let the silence breathe one polished, poisonous beat longer than necessary, then finished: "...and saved his aunt and cousins from the abusive Harold Maxton, or so they say!"
A collective exhale moved through the crowd, relief spreading almost visibly now that the sentence had been permitted to redress itself in righteousness.
People smiled, some nodded while few clapped harder than before, eager to recover from the brief discomfort and return to the safer story being sold to them.
Brave young man. Abusive uncle. Rescued family.
Clean narrative, easy morals, no thinking required — which was fortunate, because public audiences, like governments and toddlers, tended to turn dangerous the instant they were asked to hold more than two ideas at once.
But the seed had already gone into the soil tainting Phei as rebellious enough to attack his own family.
The second half had softened the first, yes. It had not erased it. The first impression had been given room to breathe, and for everyone in that garden who didn’t know the whole story, a quiet little question had been laid beneath the floorboards: what kind of boy turns on the man who raised him?
The answer might later arrive noble, tragic, justified, even heroic — but the doubt had landed first, and doubt was a miserable, fertile little parasite once loosed into a crowd.
Most people never saw the weave.
The goddess saw it. Patricia saw it. Maddie saw it. Cassiopeia saw it. Emily saw it. And Elena saw it most clearly of all — her lips barely moving as she breathed a curse, recognising not just the trap but the hand behind the curtain that had set it.
"That dog."
She knew, instantly, what was happening.
Worse — she knew which house had most likely arranged it or led in it, it was clear there were two families in play here.
Phei felt it too.
That subtle thickening of the plot beneath the garden lights was too clear to miss, the careful malice buffed to a professional shine, the deliberate cruelty of a man who’d just made a knife look like an introduction.
He could almost admire the craftsmanship — the way you might admire the engineering of a guillotine right up until you noticed your own neck had been cordially invited to the demonstration.
Preston cameras, Preston feed, Preston timing, the next morning after a Heavenchild ambush primed for the press cycle. The pieces arranged themselves in his mind without effort. He’d wondered who was hoping the dragon would stumble on live television.
Now the wondering was over.
Still — he couldn’t step back. Not with the cameras feeding, with his people watching from the front rows and the doggy anchor smiling as though he’d done nothing more hazardous than read an autocue.
So Phei smiled.
Because sometimes the only correct answer to a trap was to walk into it looking beautiful enough to make the trap doubt its own career choices.
The woman with the earpiece guided him toward the platform, and as he reached the stage the anchor rose smoothly from his chair, exaggerated warmth pouring off him.
His smile broadened for the cameras and his arms opened slightly — the practised gesture meant to suggest welcome, respect, brotherly ease, and whatever other lies television hosts sold by the pallet.
Then he extended a hand as though for a handshake and leaned into the same motion, clearly intending to fold the greeting up into a half-embrace, that public male intimacy men performed when they wanted an audience to witness comfort.
The front row reacted before Phei did.
Brian groaned under his breath while Landon’s face tightened with the helpless dread of watching a toddler reach for an exposed socket.
Sierra and Valentina groaned almost in unison, so perfectly synchronised that under less hostile circumstances it might have been adorable. David, who’d been leaning back in his usual half-detached amusement, abruptly stopped smiling.
Only those few truly understood the condition Phei carried regarding contact from strange men — or were at least among the handful who’d seen enough to grasp that random hands on him were not merely uncomfortable:
He’d worn the edges off it with Brian, Landon and David through repeated proximity, trust, and the slow exhaustion of familiarity; he could shake their hands now, tolerate small touches, because sometimes friendship was only trauma slowly learning not to bite the same people twice, but even those touches lasted so fast than a second and they’d learnt to respect his condition.
But strangers were another continent entirely.
And the real question wasn’t only who among his own people knew.
Cherry knew, of course — Cherry had eyes and the inconvenient maturity to use them, after she got to know Phei, she too had thought he was just arrogant once.
But was she the last of it? Surely whoever had placed this anchor on this stage had known, or been told enough. The greeting was too pointed. Too eager. Too perfectly framed under the lights. A clean handshake from a respectful distance would have been the natural thing — instead the man came in for the embrace as though he already understood exactly what Phei did when boxed into such a gesture in public.
Step back, and the camera caught rejection.
Allow it, and the man won his proximity as everyone watches traumas Phei had surface.
Hesitate, and the audience would sense the discomfort without ever understanding its source.
A small thing. A social thing and a poisoned little courtesy in a good suit.
And that was the rot at the centre of human cruelty — it so rarely needed knives when etiquette could be made to wound politely and on camera.
The anchor’s arms stayed open. The cameras watched, the audience waited.
Phei’s smile did not falter. But somewhere far behind his eyes, in the deep cold place where the dragon kept its patience, something ancient opened one slow eye and began, with great and unhurried interest, to pay attention.
The man had made his move.
And — for the first and last time that night — Marcus and Danton got their win.
Now domino follows!
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