The emperor could only suppress the frustration he felt.
'At least one issue has been dealt with' thought the emperor.
He walked out of his study and started to pace through the palace garden. The gentle wind and elegant scenery calmed his frayed nerves. The frustration that had been building up from the constant losses to his fleets finally had a chance to be resolved. While walking he heard low voices in the distance, out of curiosity he slowly approached, his face still calm.
"Sally do you think daddy is willing to marry me to major general Colt?" said a sweet and immature voice.
"I can't speak for his majesty, but there are no better choice for an Omega partner than you, your highness" Sally replied.
"You're right. Now that those two omegas ran off, it should count as breaking their engagement. There isn't any better omegas among the nobles than me. If those shameless things from the Sentar family hadn't jumped around the old duke, when would it be that girls turn to become the fiancee of the major general? "said the aforementioned princess.
The emperor listened to this farce with an indifferent expression. He knew that his daughter wasn't very smart, but today his understanding was refreshed. After all, this daughter of his was born to one of his noble concubines, and as an Omega, her siblings felt little threat from her, so she has been favoured to the point of ignorance.
The emperor pondered whether the connivance of the people around the Princess was because she wasn't a threat, or simply because they treated her as a fun past time. He couldn't believe that anyone born in the royal family was so naive. In a place where children killed parents, and siblings killed each other. A place where the path an emperor took to the throne was built on the bones of their closest relatives, could such an existence as this Princess survive. Did she think he couldn't understand these little tricks that he hadn't seen since he was a child?
His headache was about to resurge out of the annoyance he felt for this daughter. Her mother was far more intelligent than most people, why did she not teach her anything? Questions kept popping up in his mind, but he regained clarity after remembering something the princess just said.
'Major General Colt?' he wondered, 'I haven't heard any news from him in years'.
With that thought in mind he chose to ignore the act that had continued on without interruption. He could at least praise this daughter for her shamelessness. Even he would be embarrassed to continue singing this "one man show". He walked back to the study while the "ignorant princess" in the emperor's mind wondered if her plan had succeeded.
The princess looked at Sally and said "Daddy must have heard what I said just then. I don't think it will be long before there's news of my engagement. Let's go celebrate".
"Congratulations, your highness. Soon you'll marry a good alpha" Sally responded.
The two omegas left the palace garden with the same scheming smiles on their faces. As if they had completed the most cunning plot. It can be said "where there is a master, there will be a servant". The thought process of these two seem to work in tandem, and they both suffer from ignorance and naivete.
However the emperor had no intention to care about his daughter's engagement, he simply contacted the major general asking him about the process of his search.
Eric Colt was not in a good mood. After having to relay the fact that he had found nothing of his fiancee and her lover, even though years had passed since he had been given the task. When the emperor's hologram disappeared he couldn't help but smash his fist down on his desk.
The assistants outside knew of their major general's temperament and weren't surprised to hear him lose his temper again.
Eric couldn't understand. He'd been searching for many years now, and except for the drones blatantly flying throughout the empire, those two omegas seem to have disappeared into thin air. He had searched countless planets, desolate and barren ones, uninhabited ones, inhabited ones. He went through them with a fine toothed comb. He even managed to arrest some of the most wanted criminals of the empire, but yet he couldn't find even a hair of those two omegas.
If it weren't for the videos that showed the two of them, or the infrequent live streams, he would've thought they were already dead. But every video they posted seemed to be a slap in the face to him. As if they were saying 'We're still here. What's taking you so long?'
Year after year of finding nothing has made him gloomier. His anger has grown to such a point that he can barely suppress it any more. Whenever he stops to refuel and restock his supplies, he finds time to go to a dingy brothel and vent his rage on some Omega he chose.
When he's done those omegas are battered and broken, laying their like corpses. If it weren't for them uttering and groaning in pain they would definitely seem like they were dead. He didn't care, it was just an Omega. He paid more to the brothels owner to keep their mouth shut, and whatever happened to the Omega after that, wasn't his problem.
Now that the emperor had contacted him, it was clear that he had started to become impatient. Eric could only expand his searching range. He didn't want to overlook a single place, so he became more thorough. His fleet kept roaming through the empire with a strong determination to find what they needed to, or they'd never give up.
Arel and Sile didn't realise how much trouble their disappearance had caused Arel's nominal fiance. In fact the two of them didn't even remember they even had fiance's. The two of them had spent so many years together that those memories they had of their life back on Erdime had long since been buried by the passage of time.