Chapter 178 CLXXVIII

Chapter 178 CLXXVIII
Levi's POV

He looked at me for a long moment. "The woman," he said. "What do you know about who she actually is?"

I held his gaze. “She is someone I love," I said.

"That is not what I'm asking."

"I know what you are asking," I said.

"And I'm telling you what I know, which is that she is someone I love and she is someone under my protection and she is someone who has been through considerable danger because of her connection to me and this pack."

"Is she the Aldric heir?"

The question landed in the room with a weight that told me it was not a guess. He had more information than I had given him credit for. He had been investigating independently, or someone had told him, or he had resources I hadn't accounted for.

I looked at my father's face it was at the calculation that was always present there, the constant assessment of advantage and position and how each piece of information could be used.

If I confirmed it, Isabel became a resource to him. A strategic asset to be controlled and positioned and used in the service of the Blackthorn family's interests.

If I denied it, I was buying time on a foundation that might not hold.

"I know that the current rogue situation is Covenant-connected," I said carefully.

"I know that the advance force is operating with Covenant energy and that the threat to this pack is more significant than ordinary rogue activity. I am actively managing that situation."

"That is not an answer to my question," he said.

"No," I said. "It isn't."

He studied me the calculation behind his eyes was working at full capacity and I could see it and I held his gaze and gave him nothing.

"You know something about the Aldric line," he said. "And you are not telling me."

"I'm managing a security situation," I said. 

"When I have confirmed information that is relevant to the family, I will share it."

"That is not how this family operates," he said. 

"Information relevant to the Blackthorn interest is shared immediately. That has always been the requirement."

"Then perhaps the requirement needs to change," I said.

He went very still.

I had never said anything quite like that to him before. Not directly, not with that specific clarity I had refused things, I had delayed things, I had managed around the edges of his authority for years but I had never looked at him and said the requirement needs to change.

He heard it for what it was. "Levi," he said.

"I've made a decision," I said. "I want you to hear it clearly so there's no ambiguity afterward."

He waited.

"I'm done," I said. 

"With the arrangement, with the bonding timeline, with the position you've decided I should hold. I'm done allowing decisions made about my life to be presented to me as obligations I have no standing to refuse." 

I looked at him steadily. "I am removing myself from the Blackthorn succession. I'm not bonding with Vanessa. And I'm asking you to take your security team and leave my territory."

The silence in the apartment was complete.

My father looked at me for a long time. Long enough that I could see the various responses he was considering and setting aside, working through them with the methodical efficiency he brought to every challenge.

When he spoke, his voice was entirely level. "You don't have that authority," he said.

"It's my life," I said. "I have the only authority that matters."

"You are a Blackthorn," he said. 

"You were born into this family and the obligations of this bloodline and no decision you make in this apartment at four in the morning changes that. You can refuse the position. You can refuse the bonding. You can refuse everything I have built for you." 

He paused. "But you cannot leave the Blackthorn family, Levi. That is not a thing that exists. There is no door out of this bloodline, and there is no version of your life in which the Blackthorn name and everything attached to it stops applying to you."

"I'll find one," I said.

"You won't," he said, without anger, without heat, with the complete certainty of someone stating something they know to be structurally true. 

"You will try snd I will wait. Because I have always waited, and you have always come back to what you are, because what you are is not something you chose and not something you can unchoose." 

He looked at me one more time. "We will speak again when you have had time to think more clearly."

He walked to the door he opened it, and his security team appeared from the corridor, and he left with the same composed precision with which he had arrived.

The door closed.

I stood in the middle of my apartment in the quiet that followed and breathed through the anger and the exhaustion and the specific weight of having said what I had said to the person I had said it to, which was not something that could be unsaid.

I had meant all of it.

I had also just told my father nothing about Isabel's true identity, nothing about the Covenant, nothing about the Aldric bloodline, and watching him leave I understood with cold clarity that the conversation had confirmed one thing above everything else.

My father knowing what Isabel was would be the most dangerous thing that could happen to her.

More dangerous than the Covenant's advance force more dangerous than Vanessa. Because my father would move to control it before the end of the week.

My phone rang.I pulled it from my pocket.

Xavier.

I answered immediately. "Xavier."

His voice came through and it had a quality I had not heard from him before in any of our interactions. Xavier was a controlled man, a man who moved through difficult information without allowing it to destabilize his external presentation.

He was not controlled right now. "Levi," he said. "Aria just called me."

Everything in my chest stopped. "Where is she?" I said.

"She's on a street three blocks from your building," he said. 

"She's alone." A pause that lasted exactly as long as it needed to. "Isabel is gone, someone took her.”