Chapter 52: It’s Mine

Aaron did not knock.

He pushed the door open and stepped into the room with the residual heat of the corridor confrontation still sitting on his shoulders. The space was quiet, washed in thin morning light. Levi stood in front of the narrow mirror near the washstand, head tilted, fingers lightly tracing the newer mark on the opposite side of his throat from Dexter’s. He was already dressed, collar open just enough to expose both claims to his own inspection. He did not startle at the intrusion. He did not scramble to cover the evidence.

He had been expecting Aaron.

Aaron stopped just inside the door and let the silence stretch while he took in the scene—the calm posture, the deliberate examination of the second mark, the absence of the old flinch that used to appear whenever an Alpha entered this room unannounced. Something in Levi had hardened overnight.

"Are you proud of yourself?" Aaron asked.

Levi’s fingers stilled on his throat. He turned, met Aaron’s gaze directly, and let his hand fall.

"Why are you asking me that?"

Aaron closed the door behind him with a controlled push and walked farther into the room.

"Because you look like a man taking inventory of a successful transaction," Aaron said. The edge in his voice was sharper than he intended. "So I’ll ask again. Are you proud of yourself?"

Levi held his stare, still not making sense of the question Aaron had asked him. "You’re circling. If you have a real question, ask it."

Aaron stopped a few paces away. He was right, the omega definitely had gotten bolder. He didn’t know if it was foolishness, or if it was the effect of getting marked by two Alphas.

"Did you seduce Kai?"

The pause that followed was small, but it was enough.

Levi’s expression did not collapse into guilt or panic. He never expected Kai to discuss the affairs of their mating night with anyone, especially not Aaron, but apparently he was wrong. Well, he guessed Aaron was probably the only person who could immediately tell that this Mark was Kai’s, after all he was the only brother who hadn’t left a mark on his neck.

He exhaled once through his nose, calming himself and trying to find the right tone to explain everything.

"It isn’t exactly what it looks like."

Aaron’s short, humorless breath was almost a laugh. He took a step back, then another, putting a thin line of distance between them as if proximity made the confirmation worse.

"That answer is doing a lot of work," he said. "It isn’t exactly what it looks like. Which means it is close enough to what it looks like that you can’t deny the shape of it." He dragged a hand through his hair, restless energy finding no clean outlet. "Why Kai? What exactly do you see in my brothers that you don’t see in me? Dexter gets the first claim, and Kai gets the carefully engineered seduction and the second mark. And me? I get the fields and a kiss?"

"You’re overthinking this."

"Am I?"

"I chose Kai because he is going to be Alpha." Levi’s voice stayed even, pragmatic, stripped of ornament. "A claim from the future head of this territory is harder to ignore, harder to starve out, harder for your father and everyone else to treat as a temporary inconvenience. It gets me out of more trouble than a claim from anyone else in this house, and you know it too. This is not a ranking of who I prefer."

Aaron knew what Levi had said made lots of sense, but he still did not believe him. He closed the distance again, slower this time, until Levi’s back was near the wall and the mirror. Aaron planted one hand against the plaster beside Levi’s head and leaned in enough that the omega had to tilt his face up to hold the stare.

"Tell me the truth," Aaron said, low. "Why did you let him mark you, and never once put the same request in front of me?"

Levi’s jaw tightened. For a moment it seemed he would refuse. But at this point he really couldn’t find any good reason to be hiding the real truth. If anything, it was best to say it now.

"Because Dexter wants to get me pregnant."

Aaron went still.

The words hung between them without decoration. Levi did not look away. He did not soften the statement or follow it with a nervous laugh. He simply stood there under Aaron’s arm and let the fact exist in the open air of the room.

Aaron searched his face for any trace of exaggeration, any sign that this was leverage or theater. He found none. The omega was dead serious.

"When?" Aaron’s voice had gone rough.

"It doesn’t matter anymore." Levi’s fingers rose briefly toward the newer mark, then dropped. "He made the offer and I refused, and he made it clear a refusal was not the end of the conversation. So I had to come up with a way to stop that from happening. With Kai’s claim on me, Dexter has to think twice before he can do anything to me. That was the point. That is still the point."

Aaron stared at him. The rage that rose this time had a different texture, less the hot, competitive jealousy of the corridor, more a cold, expanding understanding of how thoroughly Levi had been cornered before he ever walked into Kai’s path.

Aaron almost hated how much sense it made. He also hated what he had to say next.

He held Levi’s gaze, already picturing Levi’s reaction when he learnt that his plan, although successful, wasn’t exactly successful.

"I’m almost reluctant to ruin the neatness of that plan for you," Aaron said slowly. "But the mark on your throat no longer belongs to Kai."

Levi’s brow furrowed, the words Aaron just spoke made no sense to him whatsoever. That wasn’t how claims worked.

"What are you talking about?"

"Exactly what I said." Aaron did not move his hand from the wall. The distance between them remained close, charged, and irreversible. "The second claim is no longer his. As of this morning, that mark belongs to me."