CHAPTER 384: CHAPTER 384: FIRST LIFE

The next section of the scan loaded with a faint delay, as though even the digital copy resisted being read. The handwriting had changed again, less elegant, more erratic, the lines slanting downward as if written by an unsteady hand. Ink pooled in small, uneven marks, betraying the tremor of exhaustion behind each word.

"You know, I’ve done anything to stop the calamities or others being exploited, but in the end, you have to let fate take the reins of life. Even if I know about events, I might not know the full story; I might do worse by intervening. I save a man, but his life could kill others. I’ve repeated the process for four lives, and in the fourth... I’ve given up on trying to save everyone. I chose my empire, my family, and my life over the others."

Trevor’s eyes lingered on that line: ’I chose my empire, my family, and my life.’ The phrasing was very specific. Not loved, but chosen. The mark of a man who had learned to define survival as love.

He scrolled further. The next entry began without date or preamble, but the handwriting had steadied slightly, as though Yerofey had regained focus, if not peace.

"The first life was simple.

I was born into a kingdom already rotting under debt. Palatine owed more to its nobles than to any foreign power, and the royal family had devolved into mere decoration, polished symbols for celebrations and speeches. My father, the king, sold everything that could be sold except his pride. That, he saved for me.

When I was fourteen, I presented as a dominant omega. It was the first good fortune our house had seen in years. Court physicians toasted to the ’rare blessing.’ My father saw profit. The council saw opportunity."

Trevor exhaled quietly through his nose. He could already feel the shape of what was coming.

"By my fifteenth birthday, my pair was decided. I wasn’t told until the contract was signed. The nobles called it an alliance, five great houses investing in the stability of the crown.

There hadn’t been another dominant omega in two decades and five dominant alphas without mates.

They said it was fate that I would balance them all."

The next lines blurred slightly, the ink darker where it had soaked into the paper.

"They placed a collar on me during the ceremony. Gold, carved with the royal crest. My father called it symbolic. The physicians called it progress, something new from the research division that studied hormonal alignment and compatibility. I didn’t know then that it was designed to bind my physiology to theirs.

I became the link between five men, four nobles and one soldier, each stronger than the last. Their instincts clashed. Their tempers burned through me. I was supposed to be a peace treaty, but they tore each other apart in the shadows while the court applauded. How did they think that a single man could control the other five? I don’t know."

Trevor’s hand tightened around the tablet. The idea of a collar engineered to enforce a bond was obscene but believable. He had heard of dominant omegas that were bound to multiple alphas, but the law usually allowed no more than three. Science had always been willing to play god when politics demanded it.

"They said my condition was stable. They said I was blessed to survive the process. They said everything but the truth.

I remember the first death vividly. One of the alphas, the youngest, took his own life. The rest turned on each other, each one convinced the others were responsible. The research division blamed me. The hormones, they said. The imbalance of five dominant instincts fighting over one.

They replaced the collar with something tighter and heavier. By then, I had learned not to scream."

Trevor set the tablet down for a moment, staring at the quiet fire. The soft hiss of rain filled the room, steady and merciless.

He rubbed a hand across his face, then looked at Lucas, sleeping soundly against his leg. His heart clenched with something raw and protective.

He picked up the tablet again.

"By the time the last of them was gone, I was twenty-three. The experiment was declared a success. The nobles gained their loyalty, my father erased his debts, and Palatine called it peace.

I called it survival."

"History will call me the unifier of the five houses. They will not say I was a boy sold to end a debt. They will not say that the empire began with a collar around my neck. And how would they know that I convinced them to destroy each other?

Dominant omegas are different, like dominant alphas, but through some cruel twist, we are the ones dependent on the bond. The alphas... they are the ones who break first.

Don’t think strength is protection. The youngest... he was my love. He killed himself after years of military dosing, after the state used his pheromones to control entire battalions. His mind fractured under the weight of what they made him do.

Do not believe that alphas are treated better. They are not. We are all merchandise, our bodies, instincts, and power, traded between nations as resources."

Trevor froze. His breath left him in a slow, disbelieving exhale. There, buried among the nameless titles, one name finally appeared.

"Asier Altera."

The name was underlined once, faintly.

Dax’s grandfather.

Trevor’s throat tightened. He leaned back against the couch, the glow of the tablet flickering across his face. The pieces clicked into place too neatly: the temperament, the strength, and the legacy of command.

Asier had been Yerofey’s youngest alpha. The one who loved him. The one who died first.

Trevor brushed his hand once through Lucas’s hair, grounding himself in the present, in warmth and breath and pulse. His voice was a whisper only the rain could hear.

"Then it really does run in the blood."

Outside, the storm deepened, rain striking harder against the windows, as though the past itself had stirred in its grave.