The Virelle estate stood like a monument to discipline. Marble columns, gleaming corridors, chandeliers shaped like stars. It was a palace sculpted in silence, where laughter had no place and children were seen but rarely heard.
By the time Elias turned six, he knew every inch of it. Not just the secret doors or hollow walls, but the rhythm of footsteps, the sigh of locked rooms, and the scent of coming storms in the air before anyone else noticed. It wasn't intuition. It was attention. A survival skill.
He had learned to be small. To be still. To observe.
But inside, Elias was never still. His thoughts were a hurricane in waiting.
He had lived one life already. Died once. Reborn into a world that would chain him in silk and call it kindness. But Elias didn't forget who he was before. The boy who loved stories. The boy who loved a boy. The boy who wanted more.
This new world wanted to smother that boy.
His education began in earnest that year.
"Omega instruction," they called it. Not schooling.
Not the kind of learning he longed for—books and philosophy and languages. No. His days were now filled with posture drills, etiquette rehearsals, scent control, and scripts.
Scripts for how to speak to an alpha. Scripts for how to lower your eyes just enough to be pleasing. Scripts for silence.
He sat each day in a high-backed chair, a silver tray balanced on his lap, practicing pouring tea for invisible guests. Lady Ismara watched from the doorway like a queen inspecting livestock.
"Too stiff," she snapped. "Pour with grace. With delicacy. You are not a beta."
He hated that sentence.
You are not a beta.
As if being born omega meant his thoughts were somehow less sharp. As if instinct should replace intellect.
But Elias said nothing.
He poured the tea again. Perfectly this time.
He looked up, met her eyes.
And smiled.
Not sweetly. Not softly.
He smiled like someone hiding fire behind his teeth.
His new tutor was a beta named Master Ronel. Pale hair, tight gloves, voice clipped and flat.
"Your duty is not to challenge," Ronel said on the first day. "It is to yield."
Elias didn't reply.
Ronel continued, unfazed. "Alphas lead. Omegas serve. Betas balance. That is the way."
Elias tilted his head. "What happens if the balance breaks?"
Ronel blinked.
"Excuse me?"
"If an omega refuses. Or an alpha abuses. Or a beta manipulates. Is the system still sacred, or just enforced?"
Ronel's lips thinned. "Your role is not to question."
Elias leaned back in his chair.
"I wasn't asking permission."
The air grew still.
Ronel reported him, of course. Told Lady Ismara that her child was unruly. Disrespectful. Dangerous.
She didn't punish Elias. Not directly. But his meals grew colder. His playtimes vanished. His solitude deepened.
He didn't mind.
Solitude was where he sharpened.
At night, he read in secret.
Books smuggled from the upper library, hidden beneath floorboards and in hollowed-out drawers.
He read history first—the true kind, not the filtered court versions. Stories of omega revolts. Of philosophers born to serve who dared to write instead. Of alphas who fell in love with ideas instead of dominance.
Then he read science. Biology. The real reasons behind second genders. Hormones. Evolution.
It didn't make the system less cruel.
But it made it less divine.
He took notes on parchment he tore into tiny pieces, writing in shorthand with a brush too small for his fingers. He hid them in hollowed candle bases. He memorized pages like prayers.
Every moment alone became a moment of rebellion.
He started to watch the guards more carefully. Their shifts. The weak points in their patrols. The blind spots in the garden walls.
He dreamed of running.
He dreamed of fighting.
He dreamed of being someone who didn't have to dream.
Rowan visited again on the cusp of spring.
He was nine now. Taller. Shoulders broader. The early signs of an alpha awakening beginning to settle into his scent.
But his eyes were still curious. Still quiet.
He found Elias in the garden, kneeling before a flowerbed, brushing dirt from his palms.
Rowan stopped at the edge of the path.
"What are you doing?"
Elias glanced up. "Learning the names of things before they get renamed by power."
Rowan squinted. "That's confusing."
Elias smiled faintly. "It's supposed to be."
Rowan stepped closer.
He crouched beside him. "They say you're strange."
"I am."
"They also say you'll never be bonded."
Elias looked at the soil.
"Good."
Rowan frowned. "Why?"
Elias met his eyes. Calm. Unblinking.
"Because cages gilded in affection are still cages."
Rowan stared at him.
Then, for the first time, he didn't speak.
He just sat there, quietly, while Elias touched the petals of a violet and memorized the scent.
That night, Elias wrote a new story.
Not about love.
But about war.
Not swords and battles.
But the war of silence. Of smiles. Of playing the role so well, no one noticed you were rewriting the script.
He titled it:
"The Omega Who Bent the World Without Ever Raising His Voice."
He didn't know it yet, but that story would one day change everything.
Including him.
He traced the letters of that title over and over again until the brush snapped.
Then he picked up another.
And wrote again.
Later that week, Master Ronel returned with a different lesson plan.
"Today," he said, holding up a silver box, "we teach obedience."
Inside the box were scent blockers. Thin necklaces laced with hormonal dampeners.
"You will wear this during your lessons," Ronel said. "It helps with discipline."
Elias took the chain, examined it.
"Discipline," he echoed. "Or erasure?"
Ronel frowned. "You are not being erased. You are being refined."
Elias smiled. "Same difference."
He put on the chain anyway.
Because rebellion, he was learning, did not always look like refusal.
Sometimes, it looked like agreeing.
So long as your mind remained your own.