Chapter Text
Akihito ignored the sounds of movement about him. The blindfold couldn't block out the knowledge of his father's presence regardless of how well it blocked out the room's light. He heard the click of the balcony doors and the cold from the summer winds pebbled his naked skin. He unconsciously tugged at the chains holding him in place as he shivered.
His feet were spread far past his shoulders and locked to the feet of the king sized bed. His arms were like wise stretched out and chained to the top corners of the wooden canopy. He wasn't very tall and the position forced him to his tiptoes in order to prevent strain on his shoulders, not that he wouldn't strain them before the night was through.
Aki didn't know what had angered his father but he prayed that three nights of the whip were enough to placate him. The man had been summoned from their regional kingdom to emperor's court nearly a week ago. He'd left certain that he was about to be rewarded for quelling a peasant uprising over the summer and ensuring that the crops were harvested and stored on time.
The Takaba kingdom was tiny but important to the greater Sion Empire. They were the largest producer of buckwheat and sweet potatoes though they rarely sent men to join the ranks of the Empire's army. In the past few decades thought the people of Takaba had grown tired of their ruler's unreasonable demands and wild mood swings. Takaba-sama was unstable and unpredictable. He was as likely to praise as he was to punish. The uncertainty of his responses had stressed the man's advisors and driven the populace to revolt several times. The clashes between them and the Takaba aristocracy were growing in size and frequency.
His father, as unpredictable and unstable as he was ruled the small region with an iron fist and disobedience, actual or perceived, was met with swift physical retaliation. Akihito had spent his life under his father's tyrannical rule. The older servants told stories of a softer kinder man from before Akihito's birth. His father had apparently doted on his mother and the woman had been the kindest soul to ever grace the Takaba lands.
Akihito was reminded daily that it was his fault for his father's behavior. If only Akihito hadn't been born too soon, if only Akihito hadn't been born an omega, if only Akihito's birth hadn't killed his mother then Takaba-sama wouldn't have to live without the light of his life.
The whip was nearly silent as it flew through the air. The fall wrapped about his torso placing the frayed end of the popper just over his left chest. He sucked in a breath with the pain. His nipple throbbed as a thick welt started forming before the whip was drawn back.
"Do you know why I have to punish you, Kudaranai?" The whip fell again this time wrapping about his right leg and snapping sharply into the back of his knee.
"Because I am a useless waste of resources, Takaba-sama." Akihito kept his voice soft. The rage pounding at his muscles would do him no good. Years of this ritual had taught him the proper answers. He answered without emotion while silently praying the conditioned responses would sooth whatever had been irritating his father since his return from the emperor's court.
"That's right, useless." The whip fell again. "Useless and expensive. I should have gelded you when you were a child. I could have fetched a pretty price for you with the spice traders." The whip fell with the words each struck harder and more painful than the previous. "Instead I was kind and kept you and how do you repay me? Tell me, Kudaranai! How did you repay my kindness?"
The whip cracked against his body Akihito's confused silence driving his father's anger higher. "You useless, worthless piece of crap! How dare you take Ai from me!" The whip fell again.
Akihito panted out apologies and chanted his agreement about how worthless he was. He was sorry he hadn't meant for Ai to die and he deserved the punishment. The whipping sped up as he spoke and soon his father was yelling almost incoherently about how Akihito was the worst thing to ever happen to the Takabas and how had he been born right then his father wouldn't have had to sign a beta up as the heir.
Sudo Shu had joined the household the previous summer and Akihito's life had gotten progressively worse since the young beta had arrived. Takaba-sama had always been unstable but the presence of the beta irritated him with the constant reminder of his failure to sure an alpha heir. To make matters worse Sudo was already married to a distant cousin Mayu Aoki so his father couldn't even mate him to Sudo and secure the Takba blood line.
Male omegas could not inherit from the Takaba kings. It wasn't to be tolerated by his old fashioned father that consistently spouted the uselessness and worthlessness of male omegas in general and Akihito in particular. The Takaba kings were alphas and only took omega females as wives. Those wives birthed alphas. The only reason that Sudo had been named heir was that Takaba-sama was the last surviving alpha of the line. Male siblings were traditionally strangled when the heir took the regional throne.
His father had remarried four times since his birth. Each wife had been younger that the last and each wife lost to strange illnesses sometimes months into the marriage. No other aristocrat had allowed Takaba-sama access to their daughters after the last marriage. Young Momohara Ai had been fifteen when she'd supposedly fallen deeply in love with Takaba-sama at the annual royal spring ball. She'd snuck out of her father's townhouse and given herself to the elder Takaba in a fit of passion.
At least that is story published in the country newspapers. Akihito knew better. Ai had snuck out of her father's house. However, it had not been to rendezvous with Takaba-sama. In truth she had been on her way to the capital's port where she had booked passage to Britannia. She had been accepted to the prestigious academy of arts in Londinium but her father had forbidden her to attend a school out of country.
Her life had not gone as planned. His father had seen her at the spring ball and had sent his most trusted men to spy on her father's house in an attempt to learn how to capture her. She'd made it all too easy by leaving the safety of her home without even a servant. The actual legality of their marriage was suspect. Traditionally the only thing required for a woman or an omega to be considered married was to bed them with at least two witnesses to the deed. Sion law required that the father or guardian of the woman or omega and the husband to be sign a marriage certificate with at least four witnesses.
In Ai's case, Akihito's father brought her straight back to Takaba lands with hardly any stops along the way. Once in the Takaba manor the brute had stripped her down to her stays bent her over the entryway table and raped her. There had been numerous witnesses though each of their stories said she had gotten on her knees and begged to taken.
Akihito would not have lied to the officials that had come to fetch Ai home. Not that they had asked or cared about the truth. They hadn't even bothered to speak to Ai, who at the time of their visit had been tied to the end of his father's bed in a very similar fashion as he was currently tied to his own. No the investigators hadn't even stayed for dinner taking their sacks of silver and leaving young Ai to face Takba-sama's unpredictable moods.
Akihito and she became close through their shared suffering under his father. They were close in age with Akihito being only two days older than Ai. They had shared a love of art and language and had enjoyed their time drawing the Takaba gardens and translating the old books in the library. They had found comfort in each other's presence though Ai often cried and literally wasted away being unable to keep most meals down. The two short months she had lived in the Takaba Manor were filled with bittersweet memories and Akihito's last days of freedom.
Ai was the only wife that his father had not strangled or beaten to death. Instead she took her own life when she learned his father had succeeded and gotten her pregnant. Akihito had begged her to not do it but she'd been unable to bear the thought of bringing another Takaba into the world. So one warm summer night while his father was visiting a neighboring kinglet Momohara Ai slit her throat in the quiet of her locked chamber and Akihito lost the only friend he'd ever had.
That had been in June and now July was drawing to a close. He still didn't understand how he was responsible for Ai's death. He did know that Sudo had spun a tale of clandestine meetings and whispered conversations between Akihito and Ai whenever his father was out of the house. They had met in private and whispered to each other but Akihito had in no way encouraged Ai to take her own life. In truth until she'd learned she was pregnant their whispers had been about escape. They'd had a plan centered on the summer crop inspection and up until that last night of her life Ai had had hope.
He heard his father drop the whip and slam out of the room. The cool air made him shiver as he tried to lessen the tenseness of his muscles. Since his father had not unchained him he would have to rest while hanging. The servants knew better than to free him before sunrise. He hissed as he relaxed the pain blossoming now that he was conscious of it.
A chuckle sounded in the room and he tensed again. A leather gloved hand smacked into raw back causing him to arch away from the touch. Sudo's voice sounded in his ear. "Takaba-sama sees you as worthless. I know better. I have found you an Alpha little omega and he's willing to pay your weight in silver." Sudo slapped his back again and then exited the room.
Akihito breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth slowly. It wasn't the pain that had him taking the measured breaths, it was panic. No alpha of his father's or Sudo's acquaintance was desirable in his book. They'd be as cruel as or worse than the two of them and Akihito was certain he'd rather join Ai than suffer under another Alpha's hand. He'd have to escape.
He closed his eyes. Tomorrow, his father and Sudo had a planned inspection of the fields to determine which would be planted for a fall harvest and which would be left to lay fallow. They always spent the night at the far village tavern after an inspection seeing as how the farthest fields were a day's ride from the manor. He would be released in the morning and make his escape once the manor had gone to sleep.
The guards left on the property were lazy and spent every night Takaba-sama was not in residence playing cards and dice in the soldier's quarters. The servants wouldn't know he'd left his rooms as he was always locked in them whenever his father was gone. Bread would be left for him when he was released in the morning along with a skin of wine before the chamber doors were bolted and chained. They'd not even know he was gone until the following evening when his father would come to punish him again.
Unbeknown to his father and Sudo the manor was filled with secret passages. They were old, very old. Most built into the original structure. Nearly a hundred generations of Takabas had lived in the building which had over time been expanded and remolded. Many of the passages were now dead ends but one led out of the house and far beyond the manor grounds.
Past the gardens and even the small hunting park there was a small cave that exited near their neighbor's lands. He thought it might be Sakazaki lands. It was this passage Akihito would take to escape. There were several small valuables in the room not bearing the Takaba crest. He would take them and sell them to the first peddler he could find.
Then he'd dress as a beta and make his way to the capital. According to Ai, Londinium, Britannia had laws protecting omegas. In that country women and male omega couldn't be forced into marriage, they even had a female ruler. Aki closed his mind and let dreams of being an artist and earning his way through his drawings fill his thoughts. He was going to Britannia. He'd be free.