Chapter 75: Talk Things Out

Levi left the chair and stepped into the corridor while Aaron’s footsteps were still audible ahead of him. He followed after the prince with a pace that made his body ache, and at some point, he had almost started sprinting. The second prince was not running, but every line of his back said he was already counting doors and calculating angles.

Levi finally caught up to him near the turn that led towards the private rooms and closed a hand around his arm hard enough to stop him.

Aaron spun. For a second the look on his face was pure violence with no recognition in it. Then he saw Levi and the worst of the blind forward motion stilled, though the tension in his arm did not ease.

"Let go."

"No." Levi kept the grip. His voice was still raw from the night. "You’re not going to do whatever you’re about to do."

Aaron’s jaw flexed. "He set me up. He brought the wine. He put that servant in my room smelling like you and let me—"

"I know." Levi did not raise his voice. The corridor was empty for the moment, but morning traffic would start soon. "I understand why you want to put him through a wall. I’m telling you not to. Not like this. Not right now."

Aaron stared at him. The headache and the residual alcohol and the fresh, sick understanding of the night were all visible behind his eyes. He pulled once against Levi’s hold, but the omega did not release him. Levi knew better than to do so. He had given it all a thought, and letting Aaron go out to make a scene was not really the best idea at the moment.

"This is what they were talking about," Aaron said, his voice and rage rising with every word. "When you saw Dexter with Merrick in the hallway, that serious conversation, they were planning this. Dexter got me drunk on purpose. Then he sent that servant in wearing your clothes and your scent so I wouldn’t know the difference. I marked him because I thought it was you."

Levi’s stomach turned, and he felt a strong emotion flare up inside of him. He had already reached the same conclusion in the long hours in the chair. There was no way Aaron would willingly take a drink from a servant, and then get drunk with the servant waiting in his room. Someone had to have gotten the wine for him, and celebrated hard enough for Aaron to get drunk, either that or Aaron was simply an alcoholic.

Levi had concluded it had to be the former. People didn’t normally get drunk on their own, especially not on their birthdays. Hearing Aaron say it was Dexter, finally made his speculations true, and a lot more sensible.

"I know," Levi said again. "And if you charge into his room and start a fight loud enough for half the family wing to hear, everyone in this house will know something happened. Flora’s people are already here. If you make a scene this morning and the whole story comes out, things might get worse. And it doesn’t help with the fact that Merrick now knows the second mark on my throat is Kai’s."

Aaron went still, stunned by what he had just heard.

"He knows?"

Levi nodded once. "You said too much while you were still awake enough to talk. He heard you, and he had threatened me with it. When I had him on the floor he told me if I didn’t let him go he would walk into the middle of the house and say it where Flora’s people could hear. So I let him go."

The silence that followed was thick. Aaron’s free hand curled slowly into a fist against his thigh. The murderous intention from the bedroom only seemed to grow, and now it wasn’t just Dexter he wanted to kill.

"We need to handle this quietly," Levi said. "First we talk— you and me. Then we deal with Dexter, then the servant. In that order. Understood?"

Aaron’s breath came out rough. He looked past Levi down the corridor as if he could already see Dexter’s door and the satisfaction of putting his fist through it. Then he looked back.

"I still want to break his nose."

"I know."

"And after we deal with Dexter, I’m going to make sure that servant never walks right again."

Levi did not argue the point, if anything he wanted Aaron to do exactly that just now. But he knew it would only make things worse, and now wasn’t the time for excess drama.

Aaron closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them the rage was still there, but it had been forced behind a thinner, harder layer of control. He hated it, hated having to be rational when his own brother and a household omega had given him every reason to act like the animal the house sometimes already called him. For Kai’s sake, and for the secret that was now one terrified servant away from the northern guests, he would consider it.

"Fine," Aaron said. The word was tight. "We do it your way. But if either of them thinks this ends with a quiet conversation, they’re wrong."

Levi finally released his arm, and offered a weak smile he didn’t even know he could form.

"Your rooms or mine?" Levi asked, now tired of standing in the corridor. He hadn’t slept, and his body was weak.

Aaron glanced once more toward the direction of Dexter’s door, then turned away from it with visible effort.

"Yours," he said. "I don’t want to be reminded of what happened in that room."

Levi understood perfectly well, he didn’t also want to go back to that room, he might decide against talking things out if he was reminded of everything that had just happened. He turned and led the way toward his own room, tired and sore with conflicting emotions. He needed a bath, a cold one, it was only after getting one could he possibly hope to have a reasonable conversation with anyone.