Chapter 79: Three Marks

Kai felt it like a blade drawn straight across the bond.

One moment he was in his private study with the final seating charts for the northern guests spread across the desk, the afternoon light clean and ordinary on the paper. The next, something sharp and absolute tore through the muted pull that had linked him to Levi since the night in the supervised room. It was not the ordinary flare of proximity or residual emotion. It was the unmistakable signature of a completed claim— a new one that was not his own.

He stood so fast the chair scraped hard against the floorboards.

Illusion, he told himself. A feedback spike from the suppressants. A trick of a mind that had slept too little since Flora stood in the receiving room and announced a pregnancy in front of her father and the Bloodmoon representatives. He held onto the hope for the length of time it took him to cross the study and wrench the door open. Then the sensation came again, clearer, heavier, already beginning to root itself into the web of bonds he had spent weeks trying to starve into silence.

Kai ran.

He took the family wing at a pace that made servants press themselves against the walls. He did not call Aaron’s name. He did not stop to consider what he would do when he found him. The only thought that remained coherent was the need to see with his own eyes that the world had not just tilted past the point of recovery. Corridors blurred. A pair of northern aides turned to watch him pass and were ignored.

He found them in the corridor that linked the east gallery to the residential halls.

Aaron and Levi were walking side by side. Not touching. Not speaking. Moving with the unhurried calm of men who had already finished the only conversation that mattered and had decided the rest of the house could catch up whenever it liked. Levi’s collar sat open to the warmer air. The light from the high windows caught the side of his throat without mercy.

Three marks.

Dexter’s older claim, pale against the skin. Kai’s own, still distinct. And a third, raw at the edges, the flesh around it flushed and tender, the scent of it rising clear and unmistakable in the corridor—Aaron’s.

Kai stopped so hard his boots scraped. For a second the hallway narrowed to a white tunnel of noise. He heard his own pulse in his ears, and tasted something metallic at the back of his throat.

He stared at Aaron. Then at Levi. Then back at Aaron.

"What have you done?"

Aaron did not flinch. The resolve that had carried him out of the east gallery was still written across his face, cooler now, settled into something that no longer required volume or explanation.

"Something I should have done a long time ago."

Kai’s hands curled into fists at his sides until the knuckles ached. The controlled voice he used for council tables and northern negotiations came out thinner than he wanted.

"We had a deal. Do you have any idea what kind of problem you have just created for me?"

Aaron’s mouth moved in a shape that was not quite a smile.

"Your problems are your problems," he said. "I’m not covering for anyone anymore. Not you. Not Dexter. And don’t waste your time discussing it with me, it’s pointless."

He walked past Kai without waiting for a reply. His shoulder nearly brushed the first heir’s on the way by. He did not look back. His footsteps moved down the corridor toward the main stair with the steady pace of a man who had already finished deciding who he was willing to burn.

The hallway went quiet except for the fading sound of those steps and the distant ordinary noise of a house that had not yet understood what had changed.

Levi remained where he was.

Kai turned his head and looked at him. Levi met the gaze for a moment, then let it drop to a point somewhere near Kai’s shoulder. There was nothing useful to say. The claim was done, and the politics were already catching fire. Any explanation would sound like excuse or provocation, and the expression on Kai’s face left no room for either.

The crack in the first heir’s composure was visible only if you had learned to read the small signs: the set of the mouth, the too-still shoulders. Levi could tell Kai was falling apart inside.

Kai stared at him a second longer, then he turned and walked away in the opposite direction from Aaron.

Levi stood alone until both sets of footsteps had fully gone. He did not follow either brother. This particular fight belonged to them, stepping into the middle of it while the marks on his throat were still fresh and the house was full of Flora’s people was a risk with no upside he could see. He adjusted his collar as high as the fabric would allow—which was not high enough to hide anything—and started toward his own rooms with the single practical goal of putting a locked door between himself and the next person who would smell the third claim.

He almost made it.

Flora came around the corner from the direction of the guest suite. Her expression was already composed for whatever household or political matter she had been handling. She took three measured steps into the corridor, saw Levi, and stopped as if she had walked into a wall.

Her usual attitude was to eye him down, and that had made her catch the sight of three marks on his throat.

The public composure did not shatter all at once. It thinned, layer by layer, while her gaze moved from one mark to the next. Color left her face in a slow, controlled drain, and for a stretched moment she simply looked at him as if she was staring at a ghost.

Levi moved to step past her, unwilling to entertain whatever thoughts that were going on in her head. But Flora did not let him. Her hand closed around his upper arm, and immediately stopped the omega in his tracks.

"What is going on?" Her voice had lost every trace of the warmth she used in public halls. "What am I looking at on your neck?"

Levi met her eyes, and he felt no obligation to soften the truth for the woman who had once told him to disappear from Kai’s notice or learn how unkind she could become.

"I don’t owe you an explanation," he said. The words came out flat and final. "Ask your fiancé. Or your mate-to-be. Whichever title you’re using for him this morning."

Flora’s fingers tightened once more, then opened as if the contact itself had burned. The drop in her stomach was physical—hard enough that her balance shifted and she had to catch it. Everything she had built since arriving in this territory depended on Kai standing beside her in eight days without the entire house smelling another omega’s completed claim woven into the first heir’s bond.

She stared at Levi for one more second, searching his face for any sign that this was a bluff or a temporary arrangement she could still dismantle.

She found none, and that scared her more than anything ever had. Without saying another word, she turned and walked away. Not the composed, deliberate walk of a Luna moving through a house she intended to rule. No, Flora was practically running. She didn’t want to believe what she had seen, and she needed answers as soon as possible.

Levi watched her go until she vanished around the far turn. He did not follow, he wouldn’t even dream of that. He simply walked the remaining length of the corridor, entered his room, and closed the door with care. He could already feel the change, nothing would ever be the same after today.