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 shaful 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 soday.

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 beca.

My scent never stabilized.

My strength fluctuated.

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

Everyone whispered the sa 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 .

The day it happened, I rember the sll.

Sharp. Sweet. Wrong.

An oga scent.

My mother froze.

Not with fear.

With disappointnt so violent it felt like a slap.

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

She didn’t an it cruelly.

She ant it as truth.

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

But most of the ti?

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 with the other ogas—drugged, silent, lined up like livestock. They wanted to sell to a breeder household. Soone gentle, soone rich.

But then I fought back.

An oga wasn’t supposed to fight.

Wasn’t supposed to break soone’s jaw.

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

My punishnt wasn’t what changed my fate—

my defiance was.

Rumors spread.

An oga who behaved like an Alpha.

An oga who wouldn’t submit.

An oga who drew blood.

And the Alvara household...

they collect strange things.

Louis’ father bought not because he needed another oga—

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 .

Restrain .

Condition .

But I learned faster than they expected.

Pain wasn’t sothing to fear.

It was sothing to study.

I was given a choice when the Alvaras bought .

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 .

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 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 beco sothing else entirely.

Sothing sharp.

Sothing useful.

They made it sound simple.

But it wasn’t simple.

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

And I hated her.

Not for the prostitution, no—

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

For the way she didn’t fight for .

For how she never taught 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 beco 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 like a weapon.

Beat to teach obedience.

Starved to teach patience.

Hurt 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 .

Not as a servant.

Not as a fighter.

But as sothing 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 ti when I was sixteen.

He was six.

Small.

Soft-looking.

Too clean for the house he was born into.

They told 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 without fear.

Most adults couldn’t look 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 with wide, curious eyes and asked,

"Why do you look sad?"

Not afraid.

Not disgusted.

Not cautious.

Just curious.

No one had ever asked sothing 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 ."

So I did.

Not because I cared.

Not because I wanted to.

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

For the first ti 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 one.

A tiny plastic soldier.

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

He smiled up at .

"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 gas with a child?

It should’ve made angry.

But for the first ti...

I didn’t feel like a tool.

Not completely.

And maybe that was the mont—

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

where Louis stopped being an obligation...

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

He used to call mum.

Not at first.

At first, he called "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 —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 .

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 , but of the fact he’d admitted sothing.

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 sowhere else.

He let go of my wrist imdiately.

"I-I didn’t an—"

"I know," I said.

But the truth?

He did an 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 sothing that simply wasn’t there.

I hated my mother with every part of —

hated what she beca,

what she chose,

what she abandoned.

But watching Louis...

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

it made sothing old and ugly ache in my chest.

For the first ti in my life, I felt sad for soone else.

Not for myself.

Not for the past.

Not for survival.

For him.

So when he called "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 sothing I never had

felt less painful than admitting I needed it too.

He made it a habit after that.

Not every day.

Not every ti.

Just... when it was only us.

When the hallways were quiet.

When the staff had changed shifts.

When his father wasn’t ho.

"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 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 ant here.

What weakness beca 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 sothing as dangerous as trust.

So he hid it—

this strange, fragile attachnt

between a six-year-old Alpha boy

and a sixteen-year-old Oga 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.

Sotis, 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 ti...

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 sothing real.