Chapter 55: Tell The Truth

The bathroom attached to Levi’s room was smaller than the princes’, but at least it was functional.

Levi locked the door behind him out of habit more than necessity and leaned both hands on the edge of the washstand until the worst of the dizziness passed. Blood had already dried in a thin, tacky line from his nose to his upper lip; more of it stained the cuff of his shirt where he had pressed the fabric against the injury without thinking. The bridge of his nose throbbed in a dull, spreading ache that promised a bruise by evening. He tilted his face toward the small mirror and inspected the damage with the same detached attention he might have given a torn seam.

Merrick’s fist had not been skilled. It had not needed to be.

He ran the water until it turned as cold as the pipes would allow, soaked a cloth, and held it against his nose until the copper smell of his own blood filled the little room. The sting sharpened him. In the mirror, his reflection looked pale and slightly incredulous, as if the face in the glass had not yet caught up to the fact that the quiet servant who delivered trays and kept his eyes lowered had crossed a room and punched him in the mouth.

Of all the reactions the second mark had produced so far, Merrick’s was the one Levi had not predicted.

Dexter’s fury had been inevitable. Aaron’s confrontation had been inevitable. Kai’s brittle retreat into damage control had been, in its way, inevitable too. Even Flora’s eventual response was already taking shape in the distance like weather. But Merrick had walked into the room and swung as if the claim on Levi’s throat were a personal theft rather than anything else. The hatred in his voice had been raw enough to strip enamel. The tears had made it worse, not better.

Levi exhaled slowly through his mouth and adjusted the cloth.

He did not have the energy to hate Merrick back. What he felt instead was a thin, tired clarity. The house was full of people who had decided that his body, his marks, and his proximity to the princes were available surfaces on which to write their own grief and ambition. Merrick had simply been the first to do it with his knuckles.

The bleeding slowed. Levi rinsed the cloth, wrung it out, and cleaned the rest of the blood from his skin with methodical care. The bruise would show. There was nothing to be done about that. He checked his teeth, found none loose, and leaned his hip against the washstand while the cold water dripped from his fingers into the basin.

Elvis had not come.

The thought arrived without urgency, which was its own kind of information. By now the Eastridge Alpha should have heard, servants talked, and Elvis had already demonstrated that he watched the house’s movements around Levi with proprietary attention. The second claim being attributed to Aaron was exactly the sort of development that should have produced a visit, a message, or at least the particular smiling pressure Elvis applied when he wanted to remind Levi of older claims and older rooms.

He had gotten nothing.

Levi turned the fact over while the throb in his nose settled into a steadier ache. Either Elvis had not heard, which strained belief, or he had heard and chosen not to move yet. The third possibility—that Elvis was simply less invested than Levi had calibrated for—sat uneasily against every previous interaction. Levi didn’t believe that third possibility.

And yet the morning was advancing, the second mark was public knowledge in the shape the brothers had agreed to give it, and Elvis had not appeared.

Levi found, to his own mild surprise, that he preferred the absence.

Elvis had been part of the arithmetic from the beginning. Not the largest part, but a significant one. The knowledge that if the suppressants succeeded and the bonds thinned, Elvis would still be standing at the end of the corridor with a patient smile and a claim that predated every political arrangement in this territory. Getting Kai’s mark had always been, in part, about building a future in which men like Elvis no longer had open access to him.

If the deal with Aaron held, that future became more concrete.

If Levi secured even a fraction of the political standing he had demanded, he would use it. He would sit in the rooms where routes and alliances and visiting Alphas were discussed, and he would make certain that Eastridge’s particular interest in a former omega who had once been locked behind someone else’s door found no purchase here.

People like Elvis did not deserve a second opportunity to decide the borders of someone else’s life.

Levi dried his face, inspected the bruise forming across the bridge of his nose and under his left eye, and decided it was as managed as it was going to get. He left the bathroom, returned to the main room, and stood for a moment in the center of the floor listening to the ordinary sounds of the house beyond the door.

Most of the plan had been actualized, yet the thought did not produce triumph so much as a thin, precise attention to what remained.

The Alpha returned in two days, and until that man rode back through the gates and the recent developments were placed in front of him, every arrangement remained provisional. It didn’t matter what type of agreement he had with Aaron, if the Alpha didn’t approve any of it, all his games would be for naught.

However, Levi had faith in himself. He doubted the Alpha would ignore two full claims, even if the second one belonged to Aaron. He had two out of the three princes, that was something that couldn’t go unnoticed. And even if the Alpha decided to play unfair, and try to diminish the weight of his Levi’s accomplishments, the omega still had one last play under his sleeve, he would simply tell the truth.