Chapter 46: A Journey

Levi opened his eyes and found the first heir of the territory standing over his bed.

For a single, suspended second the world remained perfectly still. Moonlight from the narrow window cut a pale bar across the floor and the edge of the mattress. Kai stood inside it, dark clothes blending with the shadows, posture rigid, expression stripped of its usual impenetrable calm. His gaze was fixed on Levi with the stunned, unblinking intensity of a man who had walked into a room prepared for one kind of confrontation and found another entirely.

Levi did not scramble for the sheet, his instincts had told him to, but he had simply ignored it. He had discarded the clothes earlier because they felt restricting, and he wanted air to touch some certain parts of his body. He however never expected that someone would visit him, especially not Kai, and especially not at this hour.

He sat up and the sheet slipped further down his hips as he moved, pooling around his thighs. He was becoming self aware, but he ignored those thoughts. He simply looked at Kai and waited, his mind already running through a whole lot of sequences.

Kai swallowed the lump that had just formed in his throat, then quickly regained most of his composure.

"Put on your clothes." He finally said, breaking the awkward but intense silence.

Levi heard the order, but he did not obey.. Kai had come here for answers, Levi could tell just from one glance at the Alpha. He knew the first prince had risked and sacrificed a lot to come here for those answers, and Levi also understood, with sudden and terrifying clarity, that this might be the only opening he would ever get.

Dexter’s plan had not vanished simply because Levi had walked out of the study. A refusal meant nothing to a man who spoke of heirs and leverage with soft certainty. If Levi wanted a claim strong enough to change the arithmetic, if he wanted the first son’s mark as a shield instead of another chain, he would have to take the chance the Goddess and pure accident had just dropped into his lap.

He shifted on the mattress, the movement slow and unhurried, and let the sheet fall away completely.

"I didn’t expect you," he said. His voice came out quieter than the situation seemed to warrant, almost conversational. "Especially not after Flora."

Kai kept his eyes on the now moving omega, and he felt his body tense up without his permission. "I said put on your clothes."

"I heard you."

Levi rose from the bed.

He did not move quickly. He did not perform. He simply stood, bare in the low light, and watched the first prince’s carefully rebuilt composure take the impact of that fact. Kai’s gaze flicked downward once, involuntarily, but also quickly corrected. Levi had caught it, and that emboldened him to take a single step closer.

"You came to ask about the request," Levi said. "Why I asked you to mark me."

"That is not relevant until you are dressed."

"It’s the only reason you’re standing in this room." He took another step. The distance between them narrowed to something that made the air feel charged. "You could have sent a servant with a message. You could have summoned me to a formal space and demanded an explanation under supervision. Instead you waited until dark, and walked into a supervised room without knocking. You’re already breaking your own rules, Kai. You might as well hear the answer."

Kai did not retreat.

That, Levi thought, was the first crack.

The first heir’s hands remained at his sides, fingers slightly flexed, as if physical restraint required active effort. When he spoke again, the cold precision had thinned.

"You asked because you want leverage against Dexter and my father. You said as much."

"I did." Levi held his gaze. "That doesn’t mean it was the only reason."

He closed the last of the space between them. Close enough now to catch the clean, controlled scent of the first prince, and close enough that Kai would have to touch him or step back. Kai did neither. The stillness itself was a tell.

Levi lifted a hand and set it lightly against the front of Kai’s shirt, over the sternum, feeling the hard beat of a pulse that no longer matched the calm of his expression.

"You’re always carrying everything," Levi said, softer. "The house. Your brothers. The alliances. Flora..."

Kai’s breath had gone carefully measured. "You don’t know me."

"I know what it looks like when someone is drowning while still giving orders." Levi’s fingers spread slightly against the fabric. "I asked you to mark me because a claim from you would be harder to erase. That’s true. But I also asked because you’re the most responsible out of your brothers. You’re better than them, who wouldn’t want to be marked by a man like you?"

The pull flared, stronger. Kai’s hand rose as if to remove Levi’s from his chest—and stopped short of contact, hovering.

"This is a mistake," Kai said. The words sounded scraped.

"Probably." Levi tilted his face up. "You’re still here."

He rose onto the balls of his feet and set his mouth against the corner of Kai’s jaw, not quite a kiss, simply pressure and breath and the soft, deliberate invitation of an omega who had stopped pretending he had anything left to lose by asking. Kai went rigid. The full, complicated architecture of his self-control held for one heartbeat, then another.

Levi felt the moment it began to give. He smiled to himself, it was working. It had been a while since he seduced someone, and he had thought he’d lost his charm. But somehow it had worked.

A sound left Kai’s throat, low and unwilling. He raised his hand a bit higher, but instead of pushing Levi away, it hauled him in. The first heir’s mouth found Levi’s without restraint. It was hungry, almost angry, as if the act of giving in had to be punished even as it happened. Levi opened to it without resistance.

Kai’s other hand drove into his hair.

They moved without elegance. Two steps, three, until the edge of the mattress met the back of Levi’s legs and they went down in a tangle of dark clothing and bare skin. Kai braced over him, still half-dressed, still fighting himself in the small residual ways—the tremor in his arms, the harshness of his breathing, the way he broke the kiss only to look at Levi as if searching for the last exit and finding none. Levi reached up and began working the fastenings of Kai’s shirt with steady fingers, working fast, else the prince might change his mind.

"Levi." His name sounded like a warning and a surrender at once.

"I know." Levi pushed the shirt open and set his palms against the heat of Kai’s chest. "Stay anyway."

Something final gave way behind Kai’s eyes.

He came down into the next kiss with the full weight of a man who had stopped arguing with the part of himself that wanted. Hands mapped the pale lines of Levi’s body with a rough, almost reverent urgency. When his mouth found the unmarked side of Levi’s neck, opposite Dexter’s claim, the bond roared up so hard that Levi’s back arched and a broken sound escaped him. Kai answered it with teeth, not yet breaking skin, simply holding the threat and the promise of a mark against the place where it would go.

Clothes were dealt with in impatient stages. Kai’s remaining layers. The last of the space between them. When there was nothing left to remove, Kai braced his forehead against Levi’s and went still for one last fractured second, as though contemplating whether or not he should go forward.

Levi lifted his hips and closed the argument for him.

The first long slide of contact dragged a raw sound from both of them. Kai moved like a man starved of something he had refused to name, each thrust deep and deliberate. He watched Levi’s face as if memorizing the exact cost of this mistake. Levi held on, legs around Kai’s waist, fingers digging into the muscle of his back, and let himself be taken apart with the same clear-eyed intent that had brought him to Kai’s room asking for a mark in the first place.

The bond, chemically smothered for days, burned through the suppressants in bright, painful flares. Every point of contact fed it. When Kai’s mouth returned to the unmarked side of Levi’s throat and his canines finally scored the skin, Levi came with a shattered cry, body locking down around him. Kai followed hard, a low, broken groan against the bleeding edge of the mark, hips stuttering as if the release had been dragged out of him against every remaining principle he possessed.

For a long time afterward the only sound in the room was breathing.

Levi lifted an unsteady hand and set it in Kai’s hair, and stared at the ceiling with a satisfied smile on his face. He had just begun a journey towards freedom.