Chapter 26
Levi wasn’t well acquainted with fear.
But he’d felt it when he’d come downstairs and found the front door wide open.
And again, when he realized the hole in his omega’s side was worse than he’d initially believed.
Caring for someone meant giving up control, and the sense of powerlessness he’d felt while searching through the forest…
when he’d been forced to stand off to the side and watch the doctor work on his mate…
Levi didn’t like it. It was everything he’d always found ridiculous about others.
Everything he’d always promised himself he wouldn’t subject himself to.
Initially, when he’d woken alone in bed, he’d assumed the omega was off licking his wounds somewhere. He was under no illusions that Elm would be pleased with the claiming bite, had known it was going to be an uphill battle.
It hadn’t occurred to him, however, that he’d be so upset he’d run.
On the outside, it appeared as though he’d taken great pains about it too. The thickest jacket missing from the closet. The bow and arrow gone from over the mantel.
If not for the fact he’d left the front door open—a thing Levi was fairly certain the omega had done subconsciously—Levi may not have realized in time. And if he’d been even a minute later to the cabin…
He didn’t want to think about that now. There were other things that needed his attention.
His omega had been out for a while, and Levi had spent those days close to his side, waiting. So of course, Elm had chosen to finally wake during the one time Levi had stepped away to take a call.
Stubborn.
Even without meaning to be.
Perhaps it was for the best, gave them both a chance to get ahold on their emotions. After all that he’d been through, Levi imagined there were a lot of conflicting thoughts swirling in his omega’s head.
Must be, since Elm didn’t seem to notice when he arrived, too busy checking himself out in the mirror. His eyes had filled with something Levi couldn’t place when he touched the bites, but when he finally spotted the tattoo, his horror and confusion had been apparent.
Now he was staring at Levi with that same expression.
But that was fine.
Levi could still work with that.
The fact that Elm was present and alive was all that mattered. The rest would come.
The omega stayed rooted to the spot, refusing to follow the order and vacate the bathroom. He was going to have to, but Levi allowed him the minor defiance for now, knowing how out of sorts he still was.
Elm didn’t seem to trust the silence, however. Didn’t seem to trust Levi’s intentions. “Are you mad?”
“Livid,” Levi confirmed. There was no reason to sugarcoat anything or to lie. He wasn’t the one in the wrong here.
“I’m angry too, for the record,” Elm said.
He didn’t sound angry. He sounded defeated.
Levi knew better than to buy into it.
The thing about his omega was he could roll with the punches for a long time until he finally snapped.
He was wary and gauging the situation right now, waiting to see how Levi would express his fury.
Once he was certain he wouldn’t be physically harmed, he wouldn’t minimize himself. Would lash out with his tongue.
The omega could be clever with his words.
It was one of the things Levi appreciated most about him.
“Noted,” Levi replied.
“You don’t care.”
“I don’t think it’s pertinent to our current predicament,” he corrected.
Elm nibbled on his bottom lip, a bad habit Levi had been considering undoing. “Move away from the door and I’ll come out.”
He shook his head in the negative. “It doesn’t work that way, omega.”
After weighing his odds and seemingly coming to the conclusion this wasn’t a battle worth fighting, Elm took a step toward the wall, reaching for one of the towels hanging there.
“No.” Levi held his ground when the omega froze.
“I’m naked,” Elm pointed out.
“Get used to it.”
He bristled. “You can’t mean—”
“No more privileges,” he stated. “You lost those. You want clothing? You’ll have to earn them back.”
“You can’t be serious?”
“Have I ever told you something I didn’t mean?
” Since the omega was so hellbent on having this conversation in the bathroom of all places, Levi got comfortable, propping a shoulder against the doorframe.
“You aren’t the first in my family to try and escape their fate.
My mother tried once. Before I was born.
From what I’m told, she didn’t make it more than a couple of blocks before my father found her.
Do you know what she got for her efforts? ”
Elm noticeably swallowed.
“Her Achilles tendons were cut.” Levi had only ever known her to have a slight limp. “My father ensured she could never run from him again.”
“You promised you wouldn’t hurt me,” the omega’s voice was soft, fear palpable.
“You promised you wouldn’t try to escape,” he reminded.
“If you were going to be like this, you should have just let me bleed out.”
Levi straightened, a growl slipping past his lips. “Do you know how dangerous that was? You put yourself at risk, first by braving the storm, then again by confronting that soldier.”
“I didn’t,” Elm said. “He snuck up on me.”
“More of a reason you should have used your brain and stayed put. You aren’t trained. You have no idea how to navigate this world. You—”
“Are you going to say I need your protection?” he cut him off, a glimmer of that defiance finally entering his eyes, though it didn’t last for long.
“I did protect you,” Levi reminded sternly. “I murdered my own people to do it, if you recall.”
Elm dropped his gaze to the floor, cowed.
He heaved a sigh of frustration. “The first doctor I brought in said there was no saving you. The bullet came too close to a major artery and hadn’t exited the other side.
He refused to conduct surgery, saying it was impossible and anyone who tried removing it would nick the artery, causing you to bleed out within minutes.
He told me, in no uncertain terms, that it was best to let you go quietly. ”
The doctor had instructed Levi to pull the plug, so to speak. Had offered a concoction that would effectively stop Elm’s heart and allow the omega to die while still unconscious.
That man had been a coward, too frightened of killing the Possessio to even try, so had wrongly assumed Levi would rather hear he should just let him go himself.
“I slit his throat with his own scalpel, then shot him in the head for good measure.” And Levi would do it again. “The rest of his team seemed to be of a different opinion after that.”
The omega touched the scar on his side. “It was that bad?”
“I almost lost you.” His hands clenched into fists at his sides. “That won’t happen again.”
They’d spent enough time in each other’s company for Elm to pick up on the underlying message, his head snapping back up, eyes going wide with suspicion. In any other instance, how attuned to Levi he was would have pleased him, but right now, Levi was too caught up in the anger.
“What are you planning to do?” Elm asked.
Levi gave a slight shake of his head. “It’s already done.”
“What—”
“No,” he stopped him. “You want answers? Clothing? Those things have to be earned. I treated you well, and look what it got me.”
“I’ve been your prisoner for months!” the omega snapped, catching himself at the last second. He took a deep breath, smart enough not to completely explode, and said in a quieter voice, “You stole me from my friends and my family—”
“I’ll be that for you from now on.”
“That’s…” The spot between Elm’s brow creased. “You can’t just spring something as permanent as a claiming bite on someone.”
“Are you going to pretend you had no idea how I felt?” Levi grunted.
“You aren’t that na?ve. Even if I never confirmed as much out loud, a part of you had to have guessed where this was leading.
Why I would bring you all the way here, where you could safely move about and wouldn’t have to be trapped in a tiny cell.
I’ve been treating you like my omega for months now, Elm.
It isn’t my fault you’ve chosen to ignore all of the signs. It’s not my fault you have that habit.”
“You can’t mean that.”
“Which part?”
Elm gripped his nape, clearly struggling with all of this. “Have you forgotten who I am?”
Levi tilted his head. “Ah. Is that why you were so scared of me at the cabin? You thought I was going to kill you because you’re Kian’s brother? You still don’t trust I was telling the truth when I told you I wouldn’t. I won’t. Especially not now. Not when you’re mine.”
“I’m not.” His arms dropped and his eyes caught on the insides of his wrists and he scowled. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.”
“Explain.”
“I’m supposed to be given a chance!” Elm hissed. “Maybe not a choice, but at least the opportunity to wrap my head around things. To try and see them from your perspective and…and, I don’t know, consider how things might work between us.”
“You’re saying you might have said yes if I’d asked to mate you.”
“No, that’s not—”
“You are,” Levi insisted. “Even if you don’t want to admit it.”
“I don’t lie to myself, Leviathan. That won’t get me anywhere.”
“Perhaps not on purpose, treasure, but you do it all the same.” He was tired of speaking in here. Holding out a hand, he crooked his fingers. “Come. Be good and listen to me.”
“Or what?”
Levi sighed. “Isn’t this better?”
“Better?”
“Certainly my falling for you is better than the alternative.”
“Are you telling me to be grateful that you claimed me instead of murdering me?”
“Why? Would you rather pretend to want to return to your life on Glyph? To Sky Tancredi’s studio, where you play at being business partners but he calls all the shots?
Where you watch as your friends pair up and leave you sitting alone at the bar?
All it took was Baal doing a minor dive into your past and I could already tell you were unhappy there.
I thought you didn’t lie to yourself, Elm?
Or, perhaps, it’s more like you prefer sticking your head in the sand rather than deal with anything uncomfortable—”