MY HUMBLE VIOLETTA

KAI'S POV I watched them tear through everything we owned. They ripped the cushions open. Plates smashed against the floor. The family photographs knocked off the wall like they meant nothing. “Please.” My mother grabbed one of the men by the arm. “Please, stop. You'll damage the house.” He turned to her, face twisted in disgust. “Get off me, you filthy thing,” he snapped, and pushed her away. She fell to the ground, letting out a faint cry. I rushed to her side, wrapping my hands around her. “Have you no respect for your mother?” I snapped. The man looked at me like I was something disgusting he had stepped on. “You're lucky I'm even letting you breathe the same air as I.” “You fucker,” I cursed, my fists clenched. I slowly got up, glaring at him. “Don't get all bold, Omega.” He mocked. “Remember who you are.” I hated that word. I hated the way they used it to describe us, like it explained everything wrong with us. My mother grabbed me by my hands. I looked back at her. She shook her head, her eyes pleading. She didn't want me to fight… not like I could in the first place. I finally relaxed a bit. Not because I was afraid of him. I was afraid that one wrong move could destroy my four years of hard work. Dallas stood in the middle of our living room with his hands in his pockets, watching his men go through our things like they were looking for something worth stealing. “Kai. Kai. Kai,” he called, taking his step one after the other. Each step is calculated and deliberate. “I thought you were a smart boy.” “You can't do this, Dallas,” I frowned. “We can't get our money?” “You cannot exploit me like this,” I growled, my eyes locked with his. “Exploit?” He tilted his head to the side, staring at me like he had no idea what I was talking about. “Dallas,” I kept my voice low. “We had a deal.” He laughed. “This is part of the deal,” he said with a wink. “This isn't what we talked about.” “This is business, Kai.” “Business?” I scoffed. “How is exploiting me business? I f*****g paid you every cent you asked for. Your services were f*****g expensive. So this isn't business.” “You think hiding an Omega is free? You think if they catch me helping your kind disappear, they'll give me a slap on the wrist?” He shook his head. “They'll kill me, Kai. So yes, you're paying me. You're paying me to keep my mouth shut. That's the deal.” My mother made a small sound from the corner. I didn't look at her. I couldn't. “This is ridiculous.” “Want to try me?” He laughed. My mouth opened to give him a befitting answer. But I closed it after seeing my innocent little sister hiding in a corner. Dallas was a mad man. He would intentionally report us to the authority and make himself look like a saint. I inhaled deeply, and forced the words out. “I'll get the money,” I said. “Soon?” “Yes.” He walked toward me slowly. Stopped close enough that I could smell the cigarettes on his jacket. “If you don't get me that money," he said quietly, "you're going to regret the day you ever tried to hide your scent.” Then he turned around, nodded at his men, and walked out. They followed, leaving the door opened. He just left, like wrecking our home was a quick errand he had run between other things. I stood in the middle of the mess, staring at everything. This would have been the perfect time to call the authorities. I wasn't f*****g owing Dallas a dime. He was exploiting me. I should report to the authorities. But the thing is, people like me don't have a say in anything. In this world, we are three kinds of people. Alphas, Betas, and Omegas. Alphas run everything. Every government, every corporation, every court, every law. Betas exist in the middle, useful enough to work, invisible enough to be ignored. And Omegas? Omegas exist to breed. That is it. That is the whole story the world tells about us. We are property wrapped in skin. Registered, claimed, and controlled. An unclaimed Omega over twenty is illegal. They can take you off the street, drag you into a registration office, and assign you to an Alpha who will own you for the rest of your life. No trial. No argument. That is just the law. I found out I was an Omega at sixteen. I knew immediately how f****d up I was. My parents were omegas. They had high hopes that the moon goddess would have mercy on them and give them Alphas as kids. But all three of us came out as Omega. Mine didn't come as expected. And I actually believed I was an alpha, until I woke up and sensed it. I cried all week. I knew the fate of omegas. I had spent all my life worrying about my family. Then mine too. And that was when we came to a conclusion. We were not doing it. We were not going to let our title define what we can or cannot be. We were not the only family who refused. There are Omegas all over this city who decided they would not lay down and become what the law said they were. They built a whole quiet world living underneath the one everyone else can see. We found them. Or they found us. Either way, we stopped being alone. But hiding has a cost. The biggest cost is the scent. Omegas have a scent that Alphas can detect. It doesn't matter how well you dress or how well you speak or how straight you stand. If an Alpha gets close enough and catches it, you're done. So that's where Dallas and his team came in I don't know exactly what it was. But all you needed was to apply it to your skin every morning and it made you smell, at most Beta. It wasn't cheap. Oh, hell no. It was really expensive. But it worked. And with a clean scent and borrowed documents, I walked into Varen Group eighteen months ago and applied for an analyst position. Varen Group was not a gentle place. It was full of Alphas who thought the world owed them everything, and it probably did. Not the kind of place someone like me should want to spend eight hours a day. But it paid well. Enough to pay up the debt piling up in my family and help us around. The job was risky, but it was the only thing that gave us a stable life. A life enough to buy the scent removal potion without any problem. And there were a lot of problems with Dallas. So I kept my head down, did my job, and deposited every extra coin I had into my family's welfare. Everything was going fine. Or I told myself that. Because when you're living a lie, fine is just another word for not being caught yet. I looked around at our broken home. My mother was already picking up the photographs, pressing the cracked frames back together like she could fix them. I had to find the money. Or my nightmare would finally become reality. And if caught, death is what awaits my family and I.