Rue
Rue was a fucking idiot.
She'd realised that four days ago in a shitty inn that was billions of light years away from Hakon.
A lodging room, four walls, a simple lick of whitewash and a splash of bleach. A dirty window rusty from overuse, shoved open just a crack to free plumes of dust from her pathetic enclosure. There was a view of shadowy streets, but no lamps to brighten the depravity. And this was the most she could afford in the darkened streets of the unnumbered planets, hidden away from the seven but too damn fucking awful.
Never a place for an Omega.
It was the price she had to pay for her crimes. There would be no squandering her cash on a pretty, well-lit home— bird's egg blue and chrysanthemum yellow. No friendly neighbours lingering at the corners of a yard filled with well-mowed grass. No amenities and no safety. Living in the darkness would mean going undercover. It would mean hiding from them, but also the thieves and burglars in the depths of rat-ridden shitholes.
The people. Nasty unwashed Alphas that prowled the streets stinking like piss and faeces. They would murder her if she dared flaunt her wealth, kill her if they even got a whiff of her true nature, and fuck her if they could. The bottle of scent blockers she'd bathed in would be an expensive necessity — half a bottle gone from just a single day's use. The jars of rotting Alpha jizz, a dwindling supply.
She would live on high alert forever.
And that was where she'd spent her first night, arms crossed and unable to sleep on a seat that was breaking from cigarette burnt holes realising her fucking naivety. It was of a girl who thought herself good enough to survive with her ailing mother on a third-world planet that was only safe for locals and men. Rue was as good as a rich backpacking idiot, hitchhiking in a land where people were brutally plundered and killed.
Three months later and she would either find herself naked and dead in a ditch or running back to the seven, belly filled with unwanted children, face full of tears. She could cover herself up in shit, dress up really good. But the Alphas here might fuck her for thin wrists and long fingers, thinking it enough to warrant a dirty cock to her lip.
They wouldn't care to check her gender, wouldn't even care to look at her face. This was a land of criminals, of use or be used, Rue knew that, and yet jittery anxiety pounded in her heart as if she were a babbling newbie.
And her voice? That power was dog shit, a last fucking resort.
She might have a strength that bubbled from within her, an ability to flip Alphas over, the ability to stand on her two feet. But it had only happened in her moments of fear, of desperation, of strength. The truth was she was no real soldier. And it seemed that it required concentration, that it wasn't absolute.
All her life Rue had argued and talked, had bartered and fought. None had truly bowed to her whims. And even after using her voice on the pack lizard's ugly mug, he did not dance to her tune the way she wanted him to. That had sobered her, had her solemn and realising the truth. She was no God.
She'd wanted the debt called off; the contract torn up. But despite her commands, he'd merely sulked, soiled himself with hatred in his eyes, and his head tilted down. He'd stayed quiet but did not stand to complete her demands, seemed to be incapable of listening with a strange little froth in his mouth. He seemed to be reduced to an almost vegetative state. But by doing nothing, he appeared to be going against her.
And the voice was strange. One that relied on her emotions, on her interactions with her pack, on her control. But it was no blind hypnosis, no awful brainwashing. Her mother might tremble under her father's words. She might struggle to leave 69. But that was because her mother was all human, she was weak, and her father had claimed her. He was truly her mother's pack Alpha.
So clearly, there were conditions to Rue's strength, conditions that she had yet to understand. For all she knew, the command might die off in seconds, and the emperors would come for her mere hours later.
She'd attempted it on the innkeeper, and he'd merely been swayed to give her a discount not a free fucking room. Irritated, she'd pressed too hard on an old, weak driver for a free ride, and he'd toppled to the ground, spasming. She'd stepped away horrified. All Rue knew was that the power relied on the fire in her chest that was smouldering into embers, dying into coals.
Rue might be able to rekindle it with fear and rage. But she was pretty sure she couldn't command a crowd like a necromancer. A person or a small group, Rue could hope to force them to their knees if she tried hard enough. But a mass of broken Alphas that would come running like a stampede? What about the Alphas that couldn't hear her, the Alphas that were crazed? It would be like a dying rifle against a horde of fucking zombies. And for the emperors and their armies? Tape to her lips and she'd be rendered useless, a jail cell and she was gone.
Rue needed time to understand her powers.
Time that she did not have.
Her mind spun with those horrors, her body growing all taut when a ghost of a figure danced in the distance. Her skin prickled from the twist of eyes trailing to her face, and she pulled the oily curtains shut with a snap. Oddly, deep in her heart there was hope that in the shadows Levi would be waiting to protect her, that she might have commanded him gone but he would be always waiting. A shiver ran down her spine, nails biting into the skin, a low hiss twisting from her lips.
With no fucks given, she could forget about her mother and the hundred million debt. Without her dreams of climbing the ranks, the lizard could no longer weigh her down with threats of the contract waiting to be sent to the authorities. She could run, but where? This shit hole?
Fool.
She was a fucking fool for thinking that she could run to a place where the seven had no eyes and ears in the walls and live a good fucking life. The planets under their jurisdiction were the planets with civilisation, without them, these parts were lawless dark hell holes. Even 69 was mildly ruled by their forces, authorities occasionally roaming the port.
Rue couldn't help the angry smile on her lips. She'd spent a day ruminating on her options, one night away from her mother. But Rue wasn't the sort of kid to throw her mother out on the streets just because she was a mean bitch. Her mother's words were poison, but Rue knew it to be her twisted form of love.
And her mother had changed because Rue had changed.
Rue was now a full-fledged, bleeding Omega, not the useless in-between that she once was.
Those words, as bitingly awful as they were, were words parroted from the lips of the public. It was common to hear them, to know them. And Rue would not be the first to be given a tongue-lashing for trying to go against an Omega's way of life. In fact, in 69 Rue would be considered a selfish whiny princess who didn't understand the hardships of living.
Rue would be considered a pampered little shit.
And her mother was sick. The lizard might have fucked with her living conditions. She'd smashed him against the counter for that, had barked at him to upgrade her mother to a better space— not any better with the den becoming decrepit without management. Then had conquered a better room on her own, cleaning it up for her Mama.
But her mother did have the medicine that Rue had purchased, and she choked it down daily, swallowed it down with gin. Yet it didn't fucking work. Rue had pulled her to the planet's only hospital—no off-world shit, her mother had screamed when Rue tried that, insisting on staying on 69 because it hurt.
The doctor had confirmed with a lazy yawn that her mother needed top-tier medicine. It wasn't all just an ugly, incurable STD. It was a dying Omega without her mate, and she needed a fuck ton of surgery for her failing organs. Mama was dying because her Alpha had been gone for too fucking long, and with Rue leaving the nest, there was no need to stay strong any longer.
Rue'd been outside tallying the bills, counting the sums with burning eyes. Failing organs could mean millions and that was impossible even without the debts to repay. She was now a dependent, a burden to society, a jobless dropout. And despite the shit her mother had pulled on her, despite Rue's eagerness to be rightfully angry at her mother, the truth was she didn't want her to die.
So she needed a fuck ton of money fast. And no amount of dick-sucking could get her there.
She'd scrubbed her hands across her face, screaming into her palms. She knew where that sort of technology lay, where she could find organ printers and doctors so godly they'd keep her mother running for years on nothing but her heart.
Planet 1 to 7.
The capital of their empire.