Chapter 64: Reaching Backwards

Levi could remember his last months in the palace like it was yesterday. He had tried so hard to forget everything, but staying here and staring at familiar faces and environments made it difficult not to think of the past.

He remembered how things had suddenly swung out of proportion the moment the Alpha returned, and even Levi had not been able to handle the sudden shift.

***

Eight months ago

"You sick bastard!"

Aaron’s voice tore through the corridor outside the guest wing. He did not wait for a reply. He charged.

Elvis had only a second to turn before Aaron’s weight hit him. They crashed into the wall hard enough to rattle a frame loose. Aaron’s fist connected with Elvis’s jaw on the second swing. The Eastridge Alpha staggered, then shoved back with the strength of a man who had not expected the attack but was ready to answer it. They hit the opposite wall. A guard shouted, and another ran towards them.

Aaron did not hear any of it. All he saw was the man who had stood at the end of Levi’s hospital bed and called poison a lesson.

"You poisoned him!" Aaron snarled, driving a shoulder into Elvis’s chest. "You put wolfsbane in him and walked around this house like nothing happened!"

Elvis blocked the next blow and slammed Aaron back a step. Blood showed at the corner of his mouth. His eyes were cold.

"You’ve lost your mind."

Aaron swung again. "Don’t stand there and lie to my face."

They went down in a tangle of formal coats and rage. For a few ugly seconds it was only fists, breath, and the sound of bodies hitting stone.

Then the guards reached them.

Two men dragged Aaron backward, and two more held Elvis against the wall. Aaron fought the hold hard enough that one guard’s helmet hit the floor. He was still shouting when a third presence filled the corridor and the temperature seemed to drop.

"Enough."

The word cut through the noise. Aaron strained against the guards once more, then went still under his father’s stare. Elvis straightened his coat as much as the men holding him allowed and wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.

"He poisoned Levi," Aaron said, breathing hard. Levi wouldn’t say this bastard had poisoned him if he hadn’t, Aaron was sure of that. But he knew Levi’s words didn’t hold much weight to his father, so subconsciously he already knew he wasn’t going to win this argument, at least not with substantial proof, and he didn’t have that.

Elvis looked at the Alpha, not at Aaron.

"I don’t know what your son thinks he heard," he said, voice steady. "I’ve given no such admission. The omega has been through a severe trauma. Hallucination, confusion, fever dreams — pick one. I came to check on him as a concerned ally. That is all. Your son attacked a guest of this house without proof and without restraint."

"You liar—"

"Aaron." The Alpha’s voice was quiet and final. "You will not embarrass this house further. Release him."

The guards loosened their grip on Elvis, they however kept a firm hold on Aaron. The Alpha’s gaze moved from his son’s bleeding knuckles to the Eastridge Alpha’s split lip and back again.

"There will be a formal inquiry into the poisoning," the Alpha said. "Until then, no one lays hands on anyone. Am I understood?"

Aaron’s jaw worked. He wanted to spit the truth back in both their faces. He wanted to put Elvis through the wall again. Instead he tore his arms free of the guards, shot Elvis one last look, and said, low and rough:

"I’m going to break your nose properly next time."

Then he turned and walked away before his father could order him to stay.

***

Levi was still propped against the pillows when Aaron came back into the medical room. The new guards at the door had let him through at once. Aaron’s knuckles were split. There was a red mark along his cheekbone. He closed the door and stood at the foot of the bed like a man who had not burned through nearly enough of his temper.

"I found him," Aaron said.

Levi’s eyes moved over the damage. "I can see that."

"I hit him. I would have kept hitting him if the guards and my father hadn’t pulled me off." Aaron dragged a chair close and sat, elbows on his knees, hands hanging between them. "He denied everything. Said I’d lost my mind, and that you were confused from the poison. My father is calling for a formal inquiry, you’re likely going to get questioned soon."

Levi listened without interrupting. When Aaron finished, he let out a slow breath and shook his head once.

"You’ve done enough," Levi said. "Don’t bother yourself further on this. Not like that."

Aaron’s head came up.

"He almost killed you."

"I know what he did." Levi’s voice was tired but steady. "I also know your father just drew a hard line under me in this same room. If you keep swinging at a visiting Alpha in the halls, you’ll be the problem, not him. I don’t need you locked down or sent away. I need you here."

Aaron stared at him for a long moment, the fight still sitting on his shoulders. He did not like the answer, but he listened to it anyway.

"I’m not letting this go," he said. "He will pay for it. I don’t care how long it takes."

"I believe you."

Aaron leaned back in the chair, took a deep breath, and let the rage in him roll off just a little.

"I don’t know how he got the wolfsbane into you yet," he said. "But it had to move through someone’s hands. I’m going to make sure any servant who’s been near him stays far away from this room and from you."

Levi nodded. The caution was useful, It was also no longer the center of what he was thinking.

He was not truly worried in the way Aaron meant.

The fear of the unknown poisoner was gone. The man had a name, a face, and a pattern Levi knew too well. Elvis did not stop because a door closed or a guard was posted. He stopped when the cost became higher than the satisfaction of the lesson. Locked rooms and withheld food had been the old tools, Wolfsbane was the new one. There would be another after that unless Levi changed the board for good.

Hitting Elvis in a corridor would not do it, an inquiry under the old Alpha’s eye might not do it either. Levi needed something that reached past this house and past Eastridge’s polite political cover.

He needed people who already owed him a debt of a different kind.

His family. If Levi was going to deal with Elvis in a way that lasted, he would have to reach backward first. His brothers had been exceptionally close to the Eastridge Alpha while they were kids, and they still maintained some sort of relationship even now. Levi wasn’t ready to forgive them yet, but if he was going to, they had to at least be of use to him

Aaron was still talking, laying out which senior staff he trusted to watch the door and which rotations would be stripped from anyone who had served the Eastridge rooms, but Levi wasn’t exactly listening.

When Aaron finally paused, Levi met his eyes.

"Thank you," he said. "For believing me. For going after him."

Aaron’s mouth tightened.

"Rest," he said. "I’ll handle the staff. And I’ll be back."

He stood, checked the guards once more at the door, and left.

Levi lay back against the pillows and stared at the ceiling, his mind already racing with plans and possibilities. First, he needed to find a way to reach his family, and if he succeeded in reaching them, he genuinely hoped they had some sort of information that might help him get rid of Elvis.