Chapter 49: A Favor

Aaron did not go to the supervised wing the minute he got up. He had gone straight to Kai.

The first heir’s private room was already lit when Aaron pushed the door open without knocking. Kai stood near the desk in formal black, the morning’s correspondence untouched in front of him, posture so precise it looked like a man holding himself together by geometry alone.

Aaron closed the door and took a step towards his elder brother who hadn’t even bothered to look up. He had already anticipated this visit.

"You claimed him."

Kai still did not turn immediately. When he did, the expression on his face wasn’t his usual perfect look, it looked broken, and Aaron felt a grim satisfaction at having dragged it into the light.

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"Don’t." Aaron’s voice stayed low. He crossed the room until only the desk separated them. "I’m not Dexter. I felt it. We all felt it. A second full claim landed on that omega last night, and it wasn’t mine. Dexter’s probably running around ready to put my head through a wall because he’s decided it has to be me. He’s wrong. It was you. And you’d be a fool to think I wouldn’t know the difference between my own brother’s signature and anyone else’s."

Kai’s hands rested on the edge of the desk. The knuckles had gone white. There was no denying it anymore, Aaron was probably the only one whom he couldn’t lie to about the claim.

"Why," Aaron said, "the hell did you claim Levi?"

The silence that followed was long enough to become its own answer.

Kai’s gaze dropped to the surface of the desk. For a moment the perfect first heir looked like a man standing in the wreckage of a structure he had spent his life reinforcing. He moved around the desk and sat down in the chair as if his legs had given him a quiet warning. When he spoke, the polished edge had gone from his voice.

"I have no explanation that will satisfy you."

"Try anyway."

Kai’s mouth tightened. He looked at Aaron, and something exhausted and almost bitter moved behind his eyes.

"What do you intend to do with the answer? Mock me? Stand there and enjoy the fact that the perfect son finally fractured?"

Aaron leaned his hip against the desk, arms crossed.

"No," he said. The honesty in it seemed to surprise them both. "I’m genuinely curious. I’ve watched you hold this entire house together with your bare hands since Liora died. I’ve watched you swallow every personal preference that didn’t serve the territory. I’ve watched you look at that omega like he was a problem to be managed and nothing else. I would never have believed you’d put your teeth in him. What would Father say? What do you think Flora will do when she finds out the northern alliance is now sharing her intended with a blood-debt omega who already carries Dexter’s claim? Were you drunk?"

Kai’s laugh was short and stripped of anything resembling humor. He wished he was drunk, that excuse would have been a lot better than the one he was about to give.

"No."

"Then what?"

The words seemed to cost him. When they finally left his mouth, they came out rough, almost defensive.

"He seduced me."

Aaron stared. Then he chuckled, low, incredulous, and edged with the temper that was never far from the surface.

"You’re going to have to do better than that. Seduction only works if there’s already something in you for the other person to reach. You don’t get to spend weeks treating him like a political inconvenience and then claim you were overcome by a clever omega in a room. That’s not—"

He stopped, and the rest of the sentence died when he came to slowly realize that Kai hadn’t been joking. Aaron’s expression hardened, the brief amusement vanished, and for a moment the raw, possessive anger flared through him. How could Kai just sit there and admit this like it was nothing? Hadn’t he been the one always asking them to forget the omega? Meanwhile he was over here nurturing feelings and fantasies for the same person?

Aaron forced it down. He dragged a hand across his mouth and looked at Kai with fresh, unwilling understanding.

"You’re telling the truth," he said. Not a question.

Kai did not deny it. There was nothing to deny. It was the reality of the matter, and he had come to accept it the moment Levi threw it at his face.

"How do you plan to handle this?" Aaron asked, now genuinely concerned for his brother. He hated that he felt bad for Kai, but even him was able to realize just how bad this situation was for his elder brother. "Father returns in a few days, and Flora is on your heels about getting married. So tell me, Kai. What is the plan?"

Kai’s hands opened and closed once on the arms of the chair. When he looked up, the first heir’s composure had thinned to the point of transparency. For the first time in Aaron’s memory, his older brother looked genuinely out of options.

"I don’t know," Kai said. The words were quiet and unadorned. "I have spent every hour since I left that room trying to construct a version of this that does not end with the northern alliance breaking apart, Father treating the omega as an active threat, and this house turning on itself more completely than it already has. I do not have one." He paused. The next sentence seemed to cost him more than the admission of the claim itself. "I need your help."

Aaron went still, unsure if he had heard correctly. Kai, need his help? He had never imagined that a day would come when those words would be uttered.

"You’re asking me for a favor."

"The first." Kai’s voice was steady only by force of will. "And the last. I will not come to you again with something like this."

"What is it?" Aaron asked, curious and a bit desperate.

Kai held his gaze across the desk, the weight of the request already visible in the set of his shoulders.

"Tell everyone the mark is yours."