Chapter 43: Back To The Cage

The ride back felt shorter than the ride out.

Levi’s body had begun to understand the chestnut’s rhythm; the earlier terror of the saddle had settled into a clumsy but functional partnership. Sunlight still lay across the fields in broad, clean sheets. The air smelled of grass and warm leather. Every so often Aaron glanced over, and the look was different from the ones inside the mansion.

Levi caught himself almost smiling into the wind. The thought that followed was dangerous and difficult to dismiss: something genuine might be growing here. Not only the Goddess’s pull, not only the heat of two kisses, but a thinner, more ordinary thread. Inside the house Levi was a blood debt, a claimed complication, a problem to be managed with suppressants and rules. Out here, for a few hours, he had been allowed to be a person learning to ride a horse beside someone who occasionally forgot to be cruel.

He did not trust the feeling. He also could not entirely extinguish it.

The mansion rose ahead of them by degrees, stone and glass reclaiming the horizon. As the outer stables came into view, the lightness in Levi’s chest began to compress. He had almost forgotten just how much like a cage the mansion felt.

They dismounted in the packed yard. A stable hand appeared with the same careful blankness as before, took the reins, and vanished toward the stalls. Levi’s legs wobbled slightly when they met solid ground. Aaron’s hand settled at his elbow—brief, steadying, unnecessary by the third second and still there until the fourth.

"You didn’t die," Aaron said.

"I thought I already told you, I’m a natural."

Aaron’s mouth twitched. For a moment it seemed he might say something else, but he didn’t. His gaze lifted past Levi’s shoulder, and the expression cooled by several degrees.

Kai stood near the inner archway that led from the stable yard into the main grounds.

The first heir looked as composed as ever, dark clothes precise, posture immaculate. Only the particular stillness of his attention suggested that the calm was being actively maintained. His eyes moved from Aaron to Levi, took in the wind-disordered hair, the residual color in Levi’s face, the proximity that had not yet been properly dismantled, and settled on his brother with quiet, unmistakable displeasure.

"Explain," Kai said.

The word was soft, yet carried the full weight of the first son’s authority.

Aaron did not immediately step away from Levi, which was its own kind of answer. "He needed air, so I took him for a ride. Father’s off the grounds, and no one issued a formal prohibition against the fields."

"There is a standing order that the Hill omega remains in supervised areas unless expressly cleared." Kai’s gaze flicked to Levi, then back. "You did not only remove him from supervision. You removed him from the palace. If a visiting Alpha, a scout, or a servant with inconvenient loyalty had seen you, the political cost would not have been yours alone to pay."

"It was a few hours," Aaron said. The rough edge had returned to his voice, though it lacked the full heat of true temper. "He’s not a prisoner in a cell.."

"He is a blood debt under restriction whose presence already unsettles three separate alliances." Kai’s tone did not rise, but it was definitely at the verge of doing so. "You will not treat him as a private diversion simply because Father isn’t around. The rules exist whether the man who set them is in residence or not."

He turned his attention fully on Levi.

The force of that stare was different from Aaron’s. Where Aaron’s intensity burned, Kai’s was heavy with the expectation of obedience. Levi held still, the residual warmth of the fields draining out of him by the second.

"Return to your room," Kai said. "Directly. You will not leave the supervised wing again without authorization. Am I understood?"

"Yes," Levi said. The word came out thinner than he wanted.

Kai looked once more at Aaron. "Keep your boundaries. Respect the structure Father left in place. If you cannot, I will impose it for you."

He did not wait for a reply. He turned and walked back under the archway toward the main house, the line of his shoulders immaculate, the conversation already filed under problems managed. The stable yard felt larger and colder without him in it.

Silence stretched for a beat.

Then Aaron let out a short, frustrated breath and turned toward Levi. The composure he had managed in front of his brother slipped; what remained was the same restless, complicated attention from the trees. He stepped in, one hand rising to cup the side of Levi’s neck the way he had in the fields, then he stole the space before either of them could remember the list of reasons not to.

The kiss was brief.

It had to be. Anyone could step through the archway. A stable hand could return, Kai could change his mind and look back. But for the second it lasted, it felt passionate, alongside the dangerous thought that something genuine might be trying to grow in the middle of a situation designed to prevent exactly that. Levi’s fingers caught the edge of Aaron’s sleeve. Aaron’s thumb pressed once against his jaw. Then they separated, the air between them suddenly too cool.

Levi’s pulse was still elevated when a shift in the light near the secondary colonnade caught his attention.

Elvis stood in the shadow of the stone pillars, perfectly still.

The Eastridge Alpha was too far away for ordinary conversation, but not too far to see. His posture carried the same easy, proprietary calm he had worn during the supervised walk. His gaze was fixed on the exact space where Aaron’s hand had rested against Levi’s neck. For a long moment he did not move. Then a small, unreadable smile touched his mouth, and he inclined his head a fraction, as if acknowledging a point scored in a game only he was fully tracking.

Aaron followed Levi’s line of sight. The temperature around him dropped.

"Go," Aaron said, low and rough. "Before this becomes a larger problem."

Levi did not need to be told twice. He turned toward the supervised wing with as much composure as he could assemble. He had no idea what those two planned to do to each other, and quite honestly he didn’t want to know.