Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig partner.axcient.com. NS
Answer
partner.axcient.com. 5 NS ns-1250.awsdns-28.org.
partner.axcient.com. 5 NS ns-385.awsdns-48.com.
partner.axcient.com. 5 NS ns-702.awsdns-23.net.
partner.axcient.com. 5 NS ns-1782.awsdns-30.co.uk.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0