Chapter 69: A Nice View

The news of Flora’s pregnancy moved through the house faster than any formal announcement.

By midday every corridor carried some version of it. Servants spoke in lowered voices near the laundry. Guards exchanged looks at their posts. Even the kitchen staff, who usually kept their heads down, let the story pass between them while they worked. The northern Luna was with child, and the child belonged to the first heir. The mating ceremony in two weeks would now carry the extra weight of a secured bloodline.

Levi heard it three separate times before he even left his new room.

He did not react where anyone could see. He simply continued the slow work of settling into the larger chamber and getting used to the hallways and passages that led to it. The residual heaviness from the wolfsbane had faded enough that he could move without counting every step.

He was still getting used to his room when a knock came to his door. Ordering the visitor in, Levi was greeted by a servant. He had arrived with a letter, and he handed it over to the omega without saying anything or announcing where it had come from. The servant didn’t need to, Levi could tell from the handwriting that the letter had come from his elder brother. He waited until the door closed before he broke the seal.

The letter was short and precise. His brothers had received his message, and they did have dirt on Elvis—real dirt, the kind that did not fade with time or money. Three years earlier, while Levi and Elvis were still together, Elvis had found his fated mate. Her name was Christa. She was a local girl, well-liked, unconnected to any major pack politics. Elvis had not wanted her, of course he hadn’t, he was far too in love with Levi. He had not wanted the bond, the future, or the complication she represented. So he had planned with one of Levi’s brothers. They had lured Christa into the woods on the edge of Eastridge territory, and after that night, no one saw or heard of Christa again.

Levi read the paragraph twice just to make sure he wasn’t reading wrong or hallucinating. When he confirmed that he was indeed reading the right sentences, a cold line of sweat trickled down his spine. He had known Elvis was controlling, abusive and everything in-between. What he had not known was that the man had already erased a fated mate to keep the path to Levi clear. The obsession was older and deeper than he had allowed himself to believe. Psychotic was not too strong a word.

He folded the letter once, then again. For a long moment he simply held it, feeling the weight of the paper and the weight of what it contained. If this information reached the wrong hands it could be used in ways Levi could not control. It could also be denied, buried, or turned into another political weapon that left him exposed.

He walked to the small hearth in the corner of the new room, struck a match, and watched the letter burn until nothing remained but black ash. He crushed the ash under the toe of his boot and only then let himself sit on the edge of the bed.

He would keep the knowledge. He would not speak it yet. If Elvis decided to pull another stunt, if the promised retaliation arrived in any form, Levi now had something strong enough to make the Eastridge Alpha think twice about ever coming near him again. Murder of a fated mate was not a quiet scandal, It was the kind of truth that could follow a man across territories.

For now, silence was safer.

He stayed on the bed longer than he meant to, staring at the far wall while the house continued its noisy celebration of Flora’s news. The pregnancy announcement sat in the back of his mind like a second, less urgent problem. He was not surprised. He had felt the shift in Kai’s scent on more than one night. He had known they were sharing a bed even if the claiming marks had never appeared.

He was not happy for either of them. Flora least of all. She had threatened him, watched him, and made it clear she would remove any obstacle that stood between her and Kai. A pregnancy only made her more dangerous, not less. It locked the northern alliance into place and gave her a permanent claim on the future of the territory. Levi could already see the shape of the next two weeks: public joy, praises for Flora and her child, and a mating ceremony that would make the bond between Kai and Flora look inevitable.

As for Kai, Levi’s feelings were more complicated.

The first heir was not perfect. He had marked Levi in the dark and then spent the following days trying to starve the bond back into silence. He had stood in his father’s study and helped force Elvis out only when the secret of his own claim was at risk, not because he felt that the Alpha was a threat to Levi’s life. Still, Levi could not shake the quiet thought that Kai deserved better than a political pregnancy and a Luna who smiled while she sharpened knives. Whether that thought came from the bond or from something simpler, he did not examine too closely.

In the end it was not his place to decide.

They were adults. They knew the board they were playing on. If Flora and Kai believed this child and this ceremony were the best path forward, Levi would not waste breath telling them otherwise. He had his own survival to manage, his own marks to navigate, and now a burned letter’s worth of dangerous knowledge sitting in his memory.

He rose from the bed, washed his face with cold water, and strolled to the balcony to take in the new view. It was a lot more prettier than the view from his old room.