Levi stood in front of the impressive wooden door with a blank, unimpressed look. He rapped his knuckles against it twice and stepped back. He did not straighten his military uniform, because he already knew it was perfectly kempt and his eye did not wander out of boredom. He stood perfectly still as his carriage and driver pulled around to the stables to wait for his business to be over. The door pulled open to reveal a relatively attractive young woman who curtsied when she saw him.

"You're expected, sir. Mister Smith is already in the dining hall. I'll bring you to him." She offered. At Levi's nod of approval she stepped aside to let him in, closed the door, and began leading him to his friend. Levi sniffed the air instinctively and the woman's scent washed over him.

Omega. He thought to himself. As an alpha he had no real reason to scent people, knowing they were all beneath him, but he still did it out of sheer military habit. It was useful knowing who the people around you were.

"Sir, Levi Ackerman is here." The woman said gently when they arrived in the dining hall. Levi immediately noted the absence of Erwin's mate, Petra. He was silently grateful for it. He'd always been envious of Erwin for being mated to her and didn't want to awkwardness of her presence to cloud his mind.

"Yes, thank you. You can go now." Erwin said dismissively. The woman curtsied again and left. "So kind of you to show up." Erwin told his friend in amusement as Levi sat down across from him. The table was easily large enough for twenty people and while Erwin normal sat at the head of the table, neither alpha felt the need to put on a power display in front of the other.

"I had work to do." Levi muttered. "You'd know something about that if you did anything." Erwin laughed.

"Would I still be in uniform if I didn't do anything and had time to change? It's been busy for everyone lately."

"True. War will do that to you. Now, when is the food going to be served? I haven't eaten yet today."

"I'll hurry them along, then." Erwin said, gesturing for a maid that had been waiting silently against a wall to come over. He said something to her in quiet tones and she nodded before floating off, going through a servant's door to, Levi assumed, the kitchen.

Eren growled at one of the other servants and kicked his shoe none-too-gently to get his attention.

"If you can't stop fantasizing about your alpha long enough to serve dinner I'll gladly suggest putting you on stable duty, horse-face." He snapped at Jean.

"Fuck off." The other omega snapped back.

"Oi! Shut up! Erwin wants the food ASAP." Mikasa said, stepping into the kitchen. "Levi's here, so make it good. The midget bastard doesn't miss anything." She spared a quick smile for her brother and then swept out again. The girl always seemed like she was on the move, even when they were kids. It was a wonder the beta's alpha could keep up with her.

"Wait, who's Levi?" Eren asked in confusion. He turned to Jean and raised an eyebrow, seeking an answer.

"You're lucky you haven't been around long enough to meet him. Trust me, you'd rather stay back here instead of serving. Let someone else do it. He's a friend of Erwin's, real short and dark. Super picky, too. I think he might be a clean freak." Jean offered freely. While the two weren't exactly good friends they had a mutual respect for each other and could get along just fine when personal matters weren't involved.

"Then I'll stay back here. It's not like we're stretched super thin serving two people." Eren said with a shrug. If Jean said he didn't want to meet this Levi guy, then he believed him. There would be no point in lying to another servant about something like that.

"Appetizer's done!" Someone called.

"Well get it out!" The head cook yelled back. There was a scramble for a few seconds, plates being put together, the serving staff straightening their uniforms, glasses being brought out, but when it was over the well-oiled machine of domestic servants went into action. They each knew their part as they grabbed things to be brought out and swept through the door to the passageway that led directly into the dining hall.

"I'm gonna go see what he looks like." Eren said, his curiosity getting the better of him.

"Stay out of sight." Jean warned. He didn't even bother trying to dissuade the younger brunet.

Eren nodding his understanding and went through the door, up the narrow but sturdy stairs, and down the short hall to peer through the partially open door. For a moment he thought he wouldn't be able to see the guest, but then a servant moved from where she had been bent over, filling his glass, and he got a glimpse of the man.

He was definitely military, sitting in a pristine uniform, and he was dark. He was also probably shorter than Eren. He stifled a giggle at that. An alpha shorter than an omega, who would have thought? All in all he wasn't bad looking, but Eren had only gotten a brief look of his profile before deciding to go back down to the kitchen.

Maybe he's totally ugly. Eren thought with a smirk. He always thought it was funny to meet ugly alphas because it just seemed so odd. Pushing aside that train of thought, he rolled up the white sleeves of his serving uniform and went to help the kitchen staff. They still had two courses to serve. Eren was suddenly glad it was a light dinner and not an entire formal affair.

Levi paused in the middle of his sentence and frowned slightly. He thought he smelled something strange. Not unpleasant exactly, just something he'd never smelled before. That certainly didn't happen often.

"Levi? Are you alright?" Erwin asked. Levi looked around the room without answering, seeing who was there. Was it an attack? Someone from Sina, perhaps? Or Rose? All of the servants looked familiar to him from the previous times he had been to his friend's house and he couldn't see anything perceivably different. He wondered what… it was gone. As quickly as the faint scent came, it left. Levi's frown deepened.

"I thought I smelled something strange." He told Erwin. Erwin frowned in turn.

"I didn't smell anything out of the ordinary. Maybe it's one of the new servants. I got a new head cook and a few others." That didn't sound quite right to Erwin, but he lived in the house and if nothing seemed out of order to him then Levi would drop the matter.

"Perhaps you're right." He said, not believing it.

"Oh shit!" Someone yelled just before the next course was to go out. Eren whipped around to see what had happened, thinking of burned food and dropped plates. Instead he saw Sasha bent over, hand stuck between her legs. Someone was holding her shoulders, murmuring gently into her ear as the young woman shook.

"Sasha, are you alright?" Eren asked, hurrying over to his friend. She was crying.

"Burned her hand." The other woman told him.

"Shit, let me see." He demanded. The other omega obediently loosened her hand from where it had been pressed between her thighs and held it out for him. It was shaking quite badly and was an angry shade of red, clearly painful.

"Okay, okay let me think." Eren muttered.

"Next course!" The head cook shouted.

"Fuck, you go serve. Sasha's out for the night." Eren said, pointing at someone else in the white shirt and black pants of a server. He nodded and grabbed some plates, heading out immediately with everyone else. "You, get me bandages, a bucket of water, and some balm." He said, speaking to the woman that had been holding Sasha upright. She nodded and disappeared, off to do as he had asked.

Eren led Sasha to a corner of the kitchen, sitting her down on the floor as he crouched in front of her.

"What the hell were you doing?" He sighed, somewhere between angry and concerned.

"I grabbed a pan that I thought had just been cleaned to hand to a cook, it'd just gotten out of the oven." She explained, trying to control her tears.

"Idiot." He hissed.

"Here you go, dear." The other woman said, dropping off the things he'd asked for before hurrying back to her own duties.

"Okay hold still, this is going to hurt." He warned. She whimpered, and he could smell the sour fear rippling off of her. Someone else whined in response to the strong scent but Eren ignored them and went to work, gently rubbing the balm into her angry and already blistering skin. As the son of a doctor he'd had a lot of practice with this sort of thing and the tears, smell, and quiet sobbing didn't bother him as much as it would have someone else. He dipped his fingers in the water and ran them over her skin soothingly, allowing the balm a moment to settle into her skin before plunging her hand into the water. He quickly rubbed off the remains of the balm, dried her hand with a spare cloth, and applied the balm again. Then he carefully wrapped her hand with the bandages, covering both her hand and the lower half of each of her fingers. Sasha's tears had stopped, but she still sniffled every once in a while and whined in pain when something brushed her hand a little too hard.

"Go sleep it off. You should feel better in the morning, but you'll need to change the bandages. If it starts to smell funny or oozes anything that's not clear you need to find someone to help you right away, alright? Do you need me to walk you to your bed?" Eren offered. Sasha shook her head, cradling her newly bandaged hand to her chest.

"No, I've got it. Thank you." She said, her chin quivering. She stood after a moment and wandered out, hopefully to her bed. Eren watched her for a few seconds before dumping out the soiled water and putting the balm and remaining bandages away.

Then he went back to work in the kitchen, furiously helping everyone he could to make up for Sasha's absence. Though, it wasn't unusual for the woman to sneak off for a few minutes to pillage the larder when no one was looking, so her being gone wasn't exactly a blow to the service.

"Next course!"

"Oh no, I'm not going up there again." Someone hissed. "Get someone else. That man reeks alpha and it's freaking me out! No one else does that! He's looking at everyone. It feels like he's trying to figure out what color your soul is." Eren growled deep in his throat and located the source of the complaint.

"I'll go. Just shut the hell up. If you can't deal with alphas you shouldn't be working here." He snapped impatiently. Normally he wasn't so short, but he was being worn thin and just wanted to get the service over with.

Snatching the plate from the man's hands, he followed the only other server that was going. Dessert didn't need nearly as many people as the other courses. The door to the dining hall was swung open silently and they approached the table with their eyes carefully not meeting the alphas'. Eren went to Erwin's side and cleared away the remains of the main dish and set down the dessert as Erwin waved over a servant that had been up there the entire meal to refill his glass. He was careful not to look at the other alpha, not wanting to see if the stories about him were true. Turning away from Erwin with his job done, Eren began walking away. Suddenly he froze. His nose twitched slightly and he turned back toward the table. The air was thick, heavy with some scent of spice and the outdoors that had never touched his nose before. Without his permission, his eyes rose to meet the one of the short alpha sitting across from Erwin. The steel gray eyes where already on him, boring into his own with an intensity that made Eren's skin prickle. He slowly began to realize that the scent was coming from the alpha and his eyes widened. Oh fuck.

When the mysterious smell didn't come back for the rest of the course Levi began to dismiss it. He was certain he hadn't imagined it because, while his imagination was quite vivid, it would certainly never play any tricks on him. Perhaps Erwin was right. It may have been a new servant. But the thought tickled the back of his mind, drawing his attention to it occasionally. He'd never reacted to a new scent that way before. Why would he now? It was a strange mess he would investigate later. At the moment, he had more pressing matters on his mind.

"How are the talks with Sina?" He asked.

"Not good. It looks like Sina and Rose are squaring off. Many of our people think they'll end up in war. Some of my acquaintances in Sina seem to agree, though they're far from eager for that outcome." Erwin told him honestly. It's not like the other man wouldn't find out sooner or later.

"I think Rose has been gearing up for this for a lot longer than we think." Levi murmured. Erwin perked up at that, interest flaring.

"What makes you say that?"

"Do you remember the accidental encroachment on Sina's territory two years ago? I have deep suspicion they were looking at environmental layout of that area. Perhaps they've even gone to other areas and that was the only place they got caught. But, this is just suspicion." Levi admitted.

"I've learned to take your suspicions very seriously." Erwin returned, his face thoughtful. He said something else to Levi that the dark alpha didn't hear, his attention very suddenly elsewhere. The scent was back. Servants came in to change courses and he instantly zeroed in on the source of the smell. It was a brunet omega. His eyes were down and his tanned hands were steady as he efficiently went about his work. He didn't seem to be paying any attention to Levi at all. A low, inaudible growl rose up in his chest at that. He thought he knew now what the scent meant, but he needed to test it. Staring at the young omega, he let off his mating scent. Everyone could smell it, of course, but one person would have a very marked reaction to it. There was an audible intact of breath and the omega turned, eyes meeting Levi's instantly. A small smile threatened to curl the man's lip as he watched the omega's eyes widen with the same realization Levi himself had just experienced.

Mate.