Destiny's Game*-Chapter 56: Something Real.

Bill’s POV

I was born into a poor family.

My father was on his deathbed—drowning in the kind of sickness that eats bones from the inside—and my mother... my mother did what she had to do.

He died slowly, the kind of death that drains a house of warmth long before the body gives up. And my mother...

she did what she had to do.

Prostitution wasn’t shameful where we lived.

It was currency.

Everyone thought I was born an Alpha.

That was the only reason anyone in the neighborhood treated us with the slightest respect. My mother clung to it like a lifeline—her "Alpha son" would save her someday.

Alphas were supposed to lift families out of the dirt. Alphas attracted patrons, opportunities, protection—at the very least, respect.

My mother thought I was her lottery ticket.

Her way out.

But destiny didn’t work that cleanly.

The older I got, the more "wrong" I became.

My scent never stabilized.

My strength fluctuated.

My dominance came in waves—violent, unpredictable spikes followed by days of emptiness.

Everyone whispered the same word:

defective.

My mother prayed it was a late blooming. An Alpha glitch she could still fix, polish, or sell.

But nothing changed.

But then I hit the age of first presentation.

And my body betrayed her.

Betrayed me.

The day it happened, I remember the smell.

Sharp. Sweet. Wrong.

An omega scent.

My mother froze.

Not with fear.

With disappointment so violent it felt like a slap.

"Omegas," she said, "are born to be owned."

She didn’t mean it cruelly.

She meant it as truth.

People talk about traffickers like they’re shadows that snatch children in alleyways.

But most of the time?

Your family hands you over.

All it took was one man noticing my scent shift.

One whisper.

One offer of money on the table.

My mother didn’t even hesitate.

I wasn’t kidnapped.

I was sold.

At first, they kept me with the other omegas—drugged, silent, lined up like livestock. They wanted to sell me to a breeder household. Someone gentle, someone rich.

But then I fought back.

An omega wasn’t supposed to fight.

Wasn’t supposed to break someone’s jaw.

Wasn’t supposed to bite a handler until he passed out.

My punishment wasn’t what changed my fate—

my defiance was.

Rumors spread.

An omega who behaved like an Alpha.

An omega who wouldn’t submit.

An omega who drew blood.

And the Alvara household...

they collect strange things.

Louis’ father bought me not because he needed another omega—

but because he wanted to know why I hadn’t broken yet.

I arrived at their estate still feral, still furious.

They tried to train me.

Restrain me.

Condition me.

But I learned faster than they expected.

Pain wasn’t something to fear.

It was something to study.

I was given a choice when the Alvaras bought me.

People pretend choices make things better.

They don’t. They just make your fate feel heavier.

I was given a choice when the Alvaras bought me.

People pretend choices make things better.

They don’t. They just make your fate feel heavier.

I was fifteen.

Too old to be innocent.

Too young to understand survival.

They sat me down in a cold room and explained it like they were offering a job interview:

"Serve with your body... or with your hands."

Serve as a pet, a warm body for whatever the household needed—

—or become something else entirely.

Something sharp.

Something useful.

They made it sound simple.

But it wasn’t simple.

Because choosing the first option meant becoming exactly what my mother was.

And I hated her.

Not for the prostitution, no—

but for the moment she sold me and didn’t even look guilty.

For the way she didn’t fight for me.

For how she never taught me anything except how to be used.

I looked at the handler who presented the choice, and all I could think was:

I will die before I become her.

So I chose blood.

Not because I was brave.

Not because I was cruel.

But because I couldn’t stand the thought of living a life where my only worth was between my legs.

And once I made that choice,

there was no going back.

They trained me like a weapon.

Beat me to teach obedience.

Starved me to teach patience.

Hurt me to teach precision.

And I learned.

Fast.

Pain wasn’t the enemy.

Pain was a teacher.

And I was a very good student.

By sixteen, I could break a grown Alpha’s wrist in under three seconds.

By seventeen, I could endure torture without screaming.

And by eighteen...

Louis found me.

Not as a servant.

Not as a fighter.

But as something in between:

a tool with a mind sharp enough to choose who to belong to.

The first person I ever chose was myself.

The second was Louis.

Everyone else?

Just consequences.

----

I saw him for the first time when I was sixteen.

He was six.

Small.

Soft-looking.

Too clean for the house he was born into.

They told me to "watch the boy."

I still don’t know if it was supposed to be an insult...

or a warning.

Because giving a half-trained killer the heir of the Alvaras to babysit was either stupidity—

or trust.

And the Alvaras aren’t stupid.

Louis walked right up to me without fear.

Most adults couldn’t look me in the eye back then.

They’d stare at my hands instead, like imagining what those hands had done would keep them safe.

But Louis just stared at me with wide, curious eyes and asked,

"Why do you look sad?"

Not afraid.

Not disgusted.

Not cautious.

Just curious.

No one had ever asked me something like that.

Not even once.

I didn’t answer him.

I didn’t know how.

He tugged on my sleeve and said,

"You don’t have to talk. I just want you to sit with me."

So I did.

Not because I cared.

Not because I wanted to.

But because some part of me was afraid of what would happen if I refused the heir anything.

For the first time in my life, sitting felt... strange.

Calm.

Quiet.

He played with toy soldiers on the carpet.

I watched the door, the windows, the shadows—

because I didn’t know how to do anything else.

Then he handed me one.

A tiny plastic soldier.

Like I was someone who could be trusted not to break delicate things.

He smiled up at me.

"Now you’re in my army."

My army.

Not the Alvaras’.

Not the handlers’.

Not the killers’.

His.

I should’ve felt insulted.

A blood-soaked teenager being assigned to play games with a child?

It should’ve made me angry.

But for the first time...

I didn’t feel like a tool.

Not completely.

And maybe that was the moment—

the very first crack in the walls I’d built—

where Louis stopped being an obligation...

and became the closest thing I ever had to a choice.

He used to call me mum.

Not at first.

At first, he called me "Bill," like everyone else. Like I was just another adult the household shoved in front of him.

But one day, he slipped.

Just once.

He’d scraped his knee running in the hallway.

A stupid, tiny injury.

The kind that shouldn’t matter in a place full of monsters.

He didn’t cry.

He never cried.

He just walked to me—like I was the only fixed point in the entire mansion—and said,

"Bill, it hurts."

I was sixteen.

Covered in scars.

Fresh from a job that should’ve killed me.

I didn’t know a damn thing about comforting anyone.

So I did what I understood:

I cleaned the wound.

Tied the bandage tight.

Told him he was fine.

When I finished and stood up, he grabbed my wrist and whispered,

"Thanks, mum."

He froze after he said it.

I did too.

He looked terrified—not of me, but of the fact he’d admitted something.

Because Louis loved his mother.

But she wasn’t there.

Never there.

She visited like a ritual and loved him like a performance.

And a six-year-old can only survive so many empty rooms before they look for warmth somewhere else.

He let go of my wrist immediately.

"I-I didn’t mean—"

"I know," I said.

But the truth?

He did mean it.

And the worst part?

I didn’t correct him.

Because I knew what it felt like to grow up motherless.

To grow up needing something that simply wasn’t there.

I hated my mother with every part of me—

hated what she became,

what she chose,

what she abandoned.

But watching Louis...

this small, quiet boy with too much loneliness in his eyes—

it made something old and ugly ache in my chest.

For the first time in my life, I felt sad for someone else.

Not for myself.

Not for the past.

Not for survival.

For him.

So when he called me "mum,"

I let him.

Not out of kindness.

Not out of softness.

But because he deserved one person in that house who didn’t lie to him, ignore him, or treat him like a tool in training.

And maybe—

just maybe—

because giving him something I never had

felt less painful than admitting I needed it too.

He made it a habit after that.

Not every day.

Not every time.

Just... when it was only us.

When the hallways were quiet.

When the staff had changed shifts.

When his father wasn’t home.

"Bill," in public.

"Mum," in private.

Never loud.

Never careless.

A whisper he saved for when he was tired, or scared, or pretending he wasn’t either.

He’d climb onto the chair beside me while I cleaned weapons, legs swinging because they didn’t reach the floor yet, and murmur,

"Are you tired, mum?"

Or he’d tug on my sleeve in the kitchens before breakfast and say,

"Don’t tell anyone I called you that."

He wasn’t stupid.

He understood the Alvara household far too early for a child his age.

He understood what love cost here.

What affection meant here.

What weakness became here.

He wasn’t allowed to need anything that wasn’t approved by his father.

And he wasn’t allowed to give anything freely,

especially something as dangerous as trust.

So he hid it—

this strange, fragile attachment

between a six-year-old Alpha boy

and a sixteen-year-old Omega killer

who had no idea what to do with affection

except not break it.

He protected it more fiercely than anything else in his life.

Sometimes, after a mission, when the blood hadn’t dried completely on my clothes and my hands shook from the adrenaline crash,

he’d sneak into the laundry room where I washed the stains off and say softly,

"You’re back... mum."

Like he was reassuring himself that I hadn’t disappeared.

Like he already knew loss too well.

He was smart enough to know the word would be misunderstood.

Smart enough to know his father would punish him for it.

Smart enough to keep it tucked between us like a shared secret.

And for a long time...

I let him keep it.

Because in a house full of monsters,

a secret like that felt—

not safe,

but real.

And Louis...

Louis only ever wanted something real.