Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig auth.axcient.com. NS
Answer
auth.axcient.com. 5 NS ns-1210.awsdns-23.org.
auth.axcient.com. 5 NS ns-131.awsdns-16.com.
auth.axcient.com. 5 NS ns-601.awsdns-11.net.
auth.axcient.com. 5 NS ns-1897.awsdns-45.co.uk.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0