Chapter 85: The Third Option

Kai closed the door of his private room and let the silence take him.

The formal coat came off first. He dropped it over the back of a chair without looking. The high collar of the shirt underneath felt too tight, he opened it with fingers that were not entirely steady and stood for a long moment in the center of the floor while the night’s wreckage threatened to overwhelm him.

He had trusted her. He had stood in receiving rooms and council halls and told himself that Flora was the better option—the clean alliance, the secured bloodline, the future his father and the northern packs could measure in treaties and joint patrols. He had pushed everything else away for that future. He had starved the bond that had lit under his skin the night the full moon. He had let Aaron carry the public weight of a claim that was his. He had looked at Levi in corridors and closed rooms and chosen duty every single time.

He had been wrong.

Cheating was one thing, people in arranged matches strayed; the territory had survived worse. But standing in a public hall and claiming another man’s child as the heir’s blood, letting an entire alliance build itself on that lie, watching him prepare to put a marking bite on her throat while she was carrying another man’s child, that was something else. She had played him. The northern representatives had watched him step forward to seal a future that had never belonged to him. And he had not seen it until the papers were already in the air and the hall was already turning.

He hated himself for that.

The perfect first heir. The son who never raised his voice without purpose, who absorbed every fracture in the house and kept the structure standing. He had worn that role until it had cost him the ability to feel the difference between a political match and a person who looked at him and saw something other than the title.

He was done. Done playing perfect. Done choosing the alliance first and himself never. From this night forward he would choose himself, and the first step was already forming in his chest with a clarity that hurt.

***

Levi’s door was closed.

Kai knocked once, short and hard, and did not wait for an answer. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him. Levi was on his feet near the window, still in the dark formal clothes from the gallery, the three marks on his throat visible above the open collar. He looked stunned—at the intrusion, at the state of Kai’s face, at the simple fact of the first heir standing in his rooms on the night the northern alliance had burned down in public.

Levi’s mouth opened.

Kai crossed the space before any words could form and kissed him.

It was not careful, it was not the restrained almost-touch of a man still measuring consequences. The kiss carried purpose, and Levi wasn’t sure what it was yet. He made a sound against the Alpha’s mouth, surprise, question, something softer. And then his hands came up, uncertain for a second before they settled at Kai’s shoulders and held on.

When they broke apart, Levi’s eyes were wide.

"Are you okay?"

"No." Kai’s voice came out rough. "I’m not. I’m tired of everything. Tired of the way I kept choosing the thing that looked right on paper while the only thing that felt real sat in a supervised room with my mark on his throat. I can’t do it anymore."

He rested his forehead against Levi’s for a moment, eyes closed, breathing in the scent the politics and the weeks of denial had never fully erased.

"I like you," he said. The words were simple and stripped of every formal register. "Forget the two options my father gave you. Aaron or Dexter. There is a third option now. Me."

Levi went still, unsure of what to say, or how to react to that message. Was it Kai that was really saying this, or had learning the truth somehow scrambled his brain?

Kai continued, the truth coming easier once the first pieces were out.

"I don’t care about the alliance anymore. It was built on a lie I was too blind to see. I don’t care about the secondary mansion or the clean exit or the version of this house that needs me to be perfect at the cost of everything else. I want to experience something normal. Even if it’s only for a moment. Even if the whole territory is still reeling from what happened in that hall. So what do you say?"

Levi did not answer at once.

He stepped back half a pace, enough to look at Kai properly. The Alpha was serious, dead serious, and seeing that surprised Levi. He had been clawing at walls since the Alpha gave him those two options, none of them seemed good for him. He wanted to choose Aaron, but Merrick made that decision feel like a nightmare. Dexter was out of the question, Levi couldn’t bear the thought of spending the rest of his life with that Alpha.

Now he had Kai in the equation, another option he could choose. Kai wasn’t exactly his ideal man, but he wouldn’t say the man was terrible either. Aside from the obvious fact that Levi didn’t feel anything romantic towards Kai, everything else made him feel like Kai was the perfect choice. First he was the heir, he had more power and privileges than the other two, and he wasn’t exactly as terrible as Dexter.

A minute passed, then another, Levi was still thinking. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet and steady.

"I choose you.".

Kai’s breath left him in a rough sound that was almost a laugh and almost something else. He reached for Levi again, hands framing his face, and this time the kiss was slower—less the crash of a man fleeing a ruined hall, more the deliberate choice of someone who had finally stopped running in the wrong direction.

Levi wasn’t sure if this was the right choice, but he was certain it was a decision he could live with. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about a lot of things if he was wih Kai.