Dumping The Ice King His Mini-Tyrant novel Chapter 416

Altair’s small body hit the ground with a dull thud, crumpling like a discarded beanbag. His eyes were squeezed shut, face drained of color—he looked as lifeless as a frostbitten blade of grass, all vitality snuffed out.

The room fell utterly silent. Dames’s hand shook around the stick he still gripped, his boyish face shadowed by a grimness and cold resolve that seemed far too mature for his years. There was a chill about him, a streak of the Vaughn family’s infamous selfishness and detachment woven into his very bones.

Altair lay sprawled and motionless, as if frozen in a crack of time itself. The sight was enough to make anyone’s heart clench. Yet Dames’s dark eyes were bottomless, unreadable—like a child untouched by conscience, unable to grasp the difference between right and wrong, untroubled by the idea that he might have done something terrible.

He finally dropped the stick and reached down, unfastening Altair’s watch from his limp wrist. Back when they’d still been close, Altair had shared a secret with him: the watch contained a GPS tracker. But there were days, Altair had confessed, when he was angry or upset—days he wanted to disappear for a while, not be found by anyone. So he’d made a few modifications to the device himself.

Dames pressed a hidden button on the watch, just as Altair had once shown him. As long as that button was activated, the Vaughn family’s bodyguards couldn’t track Altair’s location. Satisfied, Dames tossed the watch aside and began dragging Altair’s unconscious form deeper into the room.

With great effort, he fetched a length of rope and bound Altair’s hands and feet. His own face had gone pale, and as he stared at Altair’s motionless body, his lips trembled.

He knew exactly what it meant to hurt Altair—and he was terrified of the consequences. That fear was why his hands shook, why his breath came in shallow bursts. Yet somewhere inside, he believed that if he didn’t do this, he’d lose even more.

“I won’t let you take my mom from me!” The words tumbled out, more to himself than to the silent figure before him. “I already lost her once. Do you have any idea how much that hurts?” His voice cracked, raw with emotion. “What gives you the right to take her away from me?”

Struggling, Dames shoved Altair’s limp body into a storage cabinet. His leg still hadn’t healed properly, and every step felt like a rusted nail was jammed into his knee. The pain was its own kind of torment, but by now he’d grown used to it. Walking made his limp more obvious, and every time his gait turned awkward, he could feel the sting of others’ stares. Better to stay in a wheelchair than risk their ridicule.

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