Chapter 63: Funeral II

Levi stopped walking and turned to face the man coming toward him. There was no reason to keep moving like prey through a crowd, he was the Alpha’s husband. The life he had built away from these walls was real, and fear had no useful place here.

Aaron closed the last few steps and halted in front of him. He was dressed in all black, and looked like he had seen better days. For a moment it was only the two of them in the gap between bodies and stone, but that didn’t last for long. Before either of them could get a word out, Merrick appeared out of nowhere and made his presence known like a dog among wolves.

The moment Levi’s eyes registered the omega’s figure, blind roaring rage consumed his body, so hot Levi thought he might physically explode.

Of course, this was to be expected.

Seeing them together reminded Levi of why he had not chosen Aaron, and remembering the situations surrounding that decision simply made him nauseous with rage.

Aaron spoke first.

"Long time no see."

Levi did not match the tone. He was not in the mood for soft openings or careful reunions, and he was not about to stand there and pretend like he was happy to see either of them when he wasn’t. He looked at Aaron and asked the one question that would cut the conversation down to size.

"How’s your son doing?"

Aaron went silent. The noise of the courtyard seemed to lean in around that silence. Merrick’s expression tightened. After a beat, it was Merrick who answered, voice even and proprietary in a way that made Levi’s jaw set.

"He’s doing well."

Levi smiled. It did not reach his eyes.

"That’s all I care about."

He pushed past them before either man could step into his path or find a reply. His shoulder brushed the edge of Aaron’s formal coat, and he continued walking without looking back. He moved through the crowd with a fixed direction and a rising need to put stone and bodies between himself and the pair behind him.

He hated this place, the walls, the smell, and everything else. Four months away had not been long enough. He walked until the press of the gathering thinned and the familiar shape of Kai’s formal back appeared near the inner doors, still occupied with councilmen who did not know how to end a conversation.

Levi reached him and stopped at his side without ceremony.

Kai turned. The bright morning smile was gone, replaced by the public face of the new Alpha. He took one look at Levi and the shift in his mood registered at once.

"What happened?"

"Nothing." Levi kept his voice light enough for the people nearby and flat enough for Kai to hear the lie. "Crowds...."

Kai’s eyes narrowed a fraction, he didn’t believe that, but he did not push in front of the councilmen. His hand found Levi’s back, a brief public claim and a private check at once, then fell away as he finished the last of his exchange with the older Alphas. When he turned fully toward Levi again, the weight of the day had settled more honestly across his features.

"It’s time," Kai said before leading the way towards the funeral ground..

***

The burial site sat beyond the main courtyards, where the family’s dead were put into the earth under the eyes of the territory. The old Alpha’s body had been prepared and placed, and the rites were waiting on the presence of his heir.

Levi stayed at Kai’s side. He kept his face empty. He did not cry. He did not perform grief he did not feel. The man in the ground had called him a debt, tried to starve bonds out of existence, and had made his life a living hell when it didn’t have to. Levi could stand here for Kai, but he could not manufacture sorrow for a father-in-law who had never wanted him in the family at all.

Kai was a different story.

At the start of the rites, the new Alpha held his posture the way he held everything, controlled, upright, correct. But as the words went on and the formal pieces of the ceremony moved forward, something in him began to slip. Not in a way most of the crowd would name. But Levi, standing close enough to feel the bond and see the edge of his face, watched it happen in small degrees. A tightening at the mouth. A longer stare at the ground.

Levi did not fully understand it.

The old Alpha had not wanted them together. He had fought the claims, the bond, the entire shape of the future Kai had chosen. And in the end the man had killed himself—that was the story the territory had been given, the story Levi had accepted when the news reached him months ago. There was no long illness, no honorable last stand. Levi could respect that Kai had lost a father, but he could not find a reason for the depth of the sadness he was watching take hold, not when the same father had spent his last months treating their mating like a fracture in the house.

The rites continued, and Levi grew even more bored. He wanted to leave this place as quickly as possible. The longer he stayed, the more he was reminded of why he had left in the first place. And he didn’t want to remember any of that. Not Aaron, not Dexter—

Speaking of Dexter, Levi couldn’t remember seeing him. He hadn’t exactly searched for the Alpha, but Dexter was almost impossible to miss even when you were not searching for him, not many people possessed luscious beautiful silver hair like the man did.

’Hmmm, perhaps he missed the funeral.’ Levi thought. It was the wise decision for Levi, and he was grateful that Dexter hadn’t come. He wasn’t sure he would be able to face the young Alpha, alongside his wife, Flora.