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To be an omega was to choose the right Alpha.
There were so few omegas like herself, of course they could have their choice of Alphas
The kind of omega she was - she had the choice of everyone and any one, under her feet.
She had been, after all, the descendant of an Emperor, the imperial blood ran in her veins.
Of course, she had the pick of any Alpha worth knowing the name of.
She knew what she was, she knew what she was made of - steel within her bones, brilliance within her mind - when she met him, she knew immediately it could only be him.
He had been the mere son of the King of Chen - a prince of no particular rank, Imperial only because he had the blood of an emperor, but even by the time she met him, he had earned land and fame for his ruthless tactics, for his ability to command.
Was there ever another Alpha like him? Even her own father could hardly compare, nor could the fatuous princes growing fat and lazy in the capital, glutted on meat and plenty, and bickering over petty quibbles.
He collected luminaries around him - brilliant stars that only dulled in comparison to him - he was like the coming of a prophecy, the blaze of the rising sun, lining clouds in a searing spray of colours, lighting the world and the land around him; Alpha and beta alike turned their faces to him like sunflowers turned to the sun, adoring, willing, loyal.
Where he went he trailed those who burned with dedication, adoration, loyalty, and when he spoke, she could feel her own blood flame with desire for that...
For words to be dropped like pearls from his lips to her hands.
She'd never felt like that for anyone before.
It was only him.
It was always the omega's right to choose - the Alpha might court, the Alpha might ask, but the omega chose, and she'd chosen him, he who had picked up a Dongyi woman, the woman already rounding with child when he brought her back, bound by blood and conquest.
But an Alpha such as he, of his blood and rank, could have as many concubines as he wished - she didn't mind, she didn't care. He had followers and friends aplenty - she could see them, loyal little Fan Jian, the bright (and perplexing) Ye Qingmei, and the rumours that followed him. Who wouldn't follow him, who wouldn't want him? Even that little chit had followed him from the backwater provinces, drawn by the lure of his magnetic brilliance.
He liked bold people, this bold, brave conqueror - she could see how far he would go. The only one who would wrest a country to its knees in his own fists, command an army with his own voice that he'd earned with his own blood and sweat.
So she didn't ask her father to ask him to come to her, to ask him to ask for her hand.
She, bold as the brassy gold that marked his status, went to him.
To say that she was shocked to be rejected was to downplay the sheer disbelief.
That she'd actually dropped the teacup he'd handed to her, the fine, translucent porcelain shattering like shards of clouded jade at her feet.
Her!
He'd turned her down, said he had no intentions of taking another omega.
He had none! he was married to no one - the Dongyi concubine didn't count, he had no wife, how dare he --!
Another omega meant that - the little chit.
The -
"What is his name?" she demanded, because now she had to know, had to believe - the little chit wasn't just some hopeful upstart, hoping to marry one of his retinue to move up in life and buy his provincial family capital connections. She had assumed that the chit, for all that he danced attendance on him, had intended to solicit courtship and marriage from the unsettling Ye Qingmei, or even, however taboo, the loyal but dull Fan Jian.
And he … that look in his eyes, told her all she needed to know, even before he even said the name Chen Pingping.
He'd chosen that Chen Pingping.
Who ever had heard of the Alpha choosing? For all that he was a rare male omega, he might be pearl for his rarity, but she was carved precious jade -- who had ever heard of an Alpha disdaining one for the other? In what land would anyone put them together and she come out the loser?
How could there be a competition in the first place?
She didn't cry.
There was no point in it, in crying, because crying never did anything at all to help anyone.
But it was perhaps the first lesson in her life: sometimes you could lose a competition even before you knew it existed.
Later, later so much later, he came to her, before the empire went to flames, fell in rivers of blood, after her own parents had died, and said, "I would take you as my sister, and it would be as if we came from the same womb, and shared the same blood."
They already shared dragon blood, though hers more distant than his, but.
Was there a point, in being denied nothing, when the one thing you wanted was forever out of your reach?
Was there a point in being close to the one thing you wanted, close enough to breathe, but never enough to touch?
To always be close enough to see the one you chose, and scent his musk on someone else, to see how Chen Pingping could wear it as a badge of honour.
She had lost him, lost to Chen Pingping, even before she had known this Prince existed.
She got to live in the Capital with him, as his sister, Aunt to the half-Dongyi prince his concubine, now consort, bore him.
As his sister, she lived under his protection, the claw of the dragon extended over her, the wing of the imperial phoenix sheltering her within the palace like a precious pearl.
She would never have to mate, never have to marry, because she was the Emperor's sister -- the fact that he chose her, the way he didn't choose his own Empress, was a pride she must treasure. She had be pleased with it, to hold that close, because if he hadn't chosen her, to make her family, then she would have, like those survivors of the remnants of the clan in the bloody path to accession, been forced either to flee for her life, or to marry someone she didn't choose.
Unlike his consorts, she lived apart, different. Unique, set aside on a pedestal all her own.
Within the palace, but outside its hierarchy.
He didn't have to have remembered her.
He didn't have to be kind.
And perhaps, that pearl of kindness choked her even more.
She never was sure if she hated the little omega princess, the one birthed by that bookworm consort.
That he, by dint of being of such rarity, meant he was symbolic of the Heavens' blessings upon his rule; and as a result was given the run of the palace, patted and cosseted by all, even the dragon of her own adopted mother.
She might not have cared overmuch - the child was a child, after all; except that even he would let this child climb into his lap, curl up against him, forgo half the palace manners and protocol because he was just so special.
Because, she knew, he had a soft spot for male omegas, for all that Chen Pingping had been completely derelict in his duty and provided nothing in return for his favour.
But he was an omega, and one like her, born in the teeth of the dragon, would it not be her responsibility to teach him how much worse it could be?
So when the boy grew up, and tried to take on the role of Prince, she told him:
It's better to be alone.
It's better to need no one, and to climb the heights of power alone.
One such as you (us), with dragons' blood and phoenix wings, can't ever rely on anyone to provide something as important as safety.
Certainly not one so below yourself in station.
When she gave birth to Wan'er, she had been pleased that the little girl, sickly as she was, was an omega. She would never be something that could move beyond her own control, beyond the Imperial Family. Not an omega, not an omega like her.
For she had realised, in the two years between the omega princess' and Wan'er's births, that her Imperial brother, while not kind, had a softness towards omegas, like all Alphas did. She did not have favour, but he, a man without kindness, was willing to give the grit and rasp of something almost like kindness, and it meant that a lessening of ruthlessness.
It meant she had given the Emperor a pawn to use, and leverage she could hope to use to control the Prime Minister, an appeal to his baser, fatherly instincts, so she could get him to lower his guard. And even when the Prime Minister realised that her heat had been a false thing born of drugs, he could not make a move against her, because the child she had was his, and always, he would remember how she'd made herself vulnerable for him.
She had expected the maternal feeling in herself, every time the little infant cried, weak and mewling, so she only would see the infant when Wan'er was asleep.
Wan'er was her child, and she would protect her, of course, but an omega's protection was not the sort that one could get from an Alpha.
Her protection was a vicious, clawed and fanged thing, and every action she took was for Wan'er, Wan'er's future, was the embodiment of lessons she'd learned, being the Emperor's Sister.
For in this Imperial Court - it didn't matter whether you, of the high born blood, of the dragon's get, ought to have something.
If you fought, and won, then you deserved to have it.
To play this game, to make a move was to play to win. She'd learned that lesson well - she had seen the gifts and rewards that were lavished on Chen Pingping, for playing when she hadn't known the game existed. Gifts of politics, gifts of trust, gifts of favour
Softer emotions had no place in the Imperial Palace.
To play the game was to play to win: any move was legitimate, as long as you won.
But when you lost you lost catastrophically, and though the little stupid crown Prince had begged for mercy, on her behalf, she had known even before the little idiot had come in, just how much she'd lost.
For her brother had called in Chen Pingping while she knelt outside, and she had heard how her brother had made his omega scream, rewarding him for the game well-played.
And proved to her that she had lost, and lost completely.
She almost thought that her brother would be crude enough to send his omega out after, boneless and stinking of his pleasure, but no.
He dismissed her after Fan Xian, and banished her.
And when she turned, at the end of the hall, he shot an arrow aimed for her heart - where it would have landed, if it weren't for his armoured target in the way.
And in the end, that break, the banishment from his side, was still.
Kindness.
When Wan'er came to see her, in the end, she told her to not see her off in the morning.
She had played the game and lost, and to lose was to lose everything worth keeping. If it meant that the pawn she had given His Majesty Her Brother he would keep and dispose of as he saw fit, it too was no longer within her power to protect.
She was more alone than when she had gone to him and realised there was a competition to lose, more alone than when he had come to her, and told her he would take her as his sister, even when her daughter stood in front of her and asked why.
"Why? Why? Let me give you this last advice," she said, looking at Wan'er and seeing her flinch from the beast that snarled within her breast, the vicious, terrible cruel beast of omega protection. "As omegas, we have to rely on ourselves. But also, we must choose the right Alpha."
Wan'er didn't understand.
She probably never would.
Because Li Yunrui had not chosen the wrong Alpha, for he was still kind enough to merely banish her.
But there was a whole range between wrong and right, and in the end, she had not chosen the right Alpha.