From Goddess To Omega: Claimed By The Enemy Alpha

A Heart Borrowed, A Life Misplaced

Aylin's POV

"Halt! By order of the king.”

A shiver ran down my spine, strength vanishing out of my body. Kael had caught up to me, his footsteps echoing in my head as he drew closer.

"Mother," I muttered, shutting my eyes. " I want to come home. I'm sorry for disobeying. I can't be here, I'm not one of them. Open the gates."

I said those words in pain, with the kind of sincere remorse a child feels toward her mother. But nothing happened. I didn't disappear. The sky didn't open, my hair didn't return to its usual colour. This can't be happening, the moon goddess can't leave me here.

I turned around, preparing to run, but Kael's hands grabbed my shoulder before I could make the move.

"Why are you running from me?” he asked breathlessly, his eyes glaring into mine with curiosity and longing. " I saw you just now, you were in the room with me."

"I'm sorry my lord," I muttered, my lips quivering, my legs shaking. This was the first time I'll be touched by a human. Kael's hands were cold, his grip was firm altogether sending tremors through me. This was the man I defied order for. And in truth I would give it all up for Kael: throw myself into those arms and bury my lips into his. But there was my identity to be thought of: my status, my home, my mother.

"I'm just one of the bedside nurses assigned to you.” I explained further.

"I can understand that," he said gently, "but why did you run? It startled me.”

Our faces were merely inches apart now, the sound of our beating hearts pounding in my ears. Kael's eyes bore deep into mine, prying, interrogating, searching. But he would never know the truth, that I'd given him life—my spiritual essence flowed through his veins, that he would be no better than a corpse without me. To him, the transfer felt like a blurry kaleidoscopic dream, but it would only get worse, blurrier from there until he didn't remember anything anymore.

"Your grace, we've been looking for you.” I looked up to find a group of soldiers charging towards us. Suddenly they stopped, awe spreading across their faces. "Oh it's a miracle, the alpha King is alive, and well."

"Yes Landon," he said with awe in his tone. "It is indeed a miracle. I'm alive. I feel like I've never been sick.”

"Yes, may the moon goddess be praised." The other soldiers erupted into chants of jubilation but Geoffrey, the first guy remained still, his eyes scanning me all over.

“Did you catch a criminal?” he suddenly asked, gesturing to me.

"No, not this beauty, can't you see?” Kael answered, putting his arms around me. "She's one of my nurses and she'll continue to do her job.”

Kael took me to the palace that night, the same building I spent hours of the day surveying so much that I knew every part of it.

The positive change in the king's health was a source of great jubilation, but while the parties went on, I remained in the bedroom trying to reach my mother or even Ira.

But still, there was nothing. It was as if every connection I had to the gods' mountain had been severed.

But I got a response from Ira in the morning.

A huge cartoon at the edge of my bed. I opened it to find some wads of cash, a few gowns and accessories along with a handwritten note.

*The goddess won't speak to anyone or step to the court. This is all I can do princess. I wish you happiness, and a stronger heart to bear tears.”

Tears?

I sat with that word for a long time.

Ira knew. She stood in front of me all those mornings on Olympus with her careful eyes and her red robes and she knew exactly what descending would cost me. My divinity, the gates, my home. She knew and she said nothing except *a greater sacrifice* and let me walk into it blind.

And my mother. My mother who held my face and said *his fate is sealed* like she was talking about the weather. She could read hearts, and discern the intents of the mind. She let me argue, let me rage and storm out and break through the guards and fall all the way down here. She could have shown me, one vision, one honest word would have saved me.

I folded the note and set it on the bed.

If there were tears coming for me, they would not be for those two. They had used up whatever grief I owed them. Deceit dressed as love was still deceit. Silence dressed as protection was still a lie, a greater danger.

I was human now, fully, permanently, and irreversibly.

And it's alright, I would live like one.

I didn't see Kael until the third night. He didn't knock, the door just opened and Kael was standing there in the dark with his hair loose, looking at me like he'd been thinking about it for hours.

"You're awake," he said gently.

"I wasn't sleeping." I sat upright and scooted to the far end of the bed.

He crossed the room and sat beside me. Not lingering in his step, it was like he belonged there.

"You saved my life," he said quietly. "Didn't you."

"I told you, I'm a nurse. My name is Aylin."

“Aylin," he repeated. Nothing else, he reached out and pushed the hair back from my face and I should have moved, but I didn't.

"I don't know who you are. But I know what I feel when I look at you."

When he kissed me it was slow and certain. His hand curved around my jaw like I was something worth keeping and I thought, *this is it, this is what I gave everything for,* and for that one moment I believed it was enough.

7 months later, Kael proposed in front of the full court. He knelt with a ring that caught the light and said there was no one else he wanted beside him. The nobles fawned, the servants wept and as the crowd rose to give an applause, I heard the women whisper behind me, *She looks ethereal, like a goddess.*

I said yes.

But underneath the smile, underneath all the glamour, a quiet thought tinkered in my head: *He wants to own me. I am something rare and strange and he wants to put his name on me before someone else does. Tears, remember?*

But I pushed it all down. My dream was coming true.

The days went by like chapters of a fairy tale. Mornings where he pulled me close and told me he loved me ten times. Evenings at the long table where he'd catch my eye across the room and smile. I was Luna Queen in everything and the women of the kingdom looked at me with a hunger I didn't understand yet.

I thought I was happy.

Then the storm came, a cold, unnerving wave of dreadful realisations.

“Do you not have your own routines, why do you have to tattle along everywhere I go?”

“But I thought I have to make an appearance at the event."

“Go inside now, busy yourself with sewing or drawing."

I thought this was small. But it worsened, a sharpness in his voice at dinner. A look when I spoke out of turn in council. Then one evening his hand connected Whomever cheek and I hit the floor before I even understood what had happened. I lay there for a moment just breathing, listening to my own heartbeat, and thought nothing. My mind went completely blank.

“Learn to talk to a king.” He bawled. " I am not equal, you ugly maid. Know your place."

Too stunned to speak, I got up and stumbled out of his room.

Before Kael turned sour I would normally take tours around the kingdom but he never allowed it without an entourage and his permission.

I left the castle alone for the first time on a grey Tuesday morning. I told no one, and alerted no guards. I pulled a plain cloak over my shoulders and slipped through the east gate and walked into the village with my head down. I went into the deeper parts of the kingdom, places his guards won't allow me to see, which I never cared to look at as a goddess with a portal.

What I found shredded my heart to bits. The Regalwolf Kingdom was a cluster of dilapidated buildings, muddy streets and leaky drainages. Not only this. There were children sitting in this dirt with hollow eyes. Women carrying water in cracked pails, arms bruised, mouths pressed shut. Men bent low under years of labour with nothing to show for it. Houses that were barely standing, streets that smelled of rot.

And above it all the castle sat fat and golden on the hill. I stood in the middle of that town and something went cold and still inside me.

This is why that man was doomed to die.

Every time I had spoken Kael's name my mother's face had gone flat. The way you look at something already decided. I couldn't read minds, no, only the moon goddess could do that. But she had been watching this kingdom from above for years. Kael Michaelson was an evil ruler and his death would bring peace to the people. What had I done? How had I allowed distraction to ruin me? I never should have healed this man, he was supposed to be 6 ft under.

I walked back to the castle and went straight to my room and dropped to the floor.

"Mother." My voice cracked open. "Mother, I hear you now. I understand what you saw that I couldn't. I was blind and stupid and I threw everything away for a man whose heart is rotten all the way through." I pressed my forehead to the cold stone. "Please. I want to come home. I'll be whatever you need, I'll be obedient, I'll never question you again, I'll perform every duty without complaint. Just open the gates. Please, mother. Take me back."

Silence, then the storm hit.

Thunder shook the windows, lightning split the sky white, rain came down like punishment, hammering the roof and flooding the courtyard below.

I sat in the middle of it and understood. She heard me, she just wasn't coming. I wiped my face and stood up.

I headed straight to Kael's bedroom.

"Why," I said.

He looked up from his desk. "Why what?"

"I walked through the kingdom today. I saw how much poverty the people live in, while you sit up here drinking wine and spending gold!"

Kael's face went dark, then he set down the wine slowly.

"You left the castle without permission."

"Answer me." I screamed.

He stood and crossed the room. I maintained my defiant stance breathing angrily. When a punch landed on my nose. I hit the wall and slid down it, my ears ringing.

“You gutter rat!" He grabbed my shoulder and threw me out the door, out of the castle.

"Leave me alone.” I screamed, but the cold night air bit into my flesh.

"You are a weak omega with nothing," he said. "No name, no rank, no life before I gave you one. I raised you to stand beside me and you have the nerve to come into my study and question how I rule." He stepped back. "Learn your place or lose it."

Then the door shut.

I sat on the ground in the cold and thought about telling him. -You were a corpse when I found you, you would be in the ground right now, every breath you take exists because of me. But I kept my mouth closed and sat with the pain and let the cold settle into my bones.

This was a mistake. This was what my mother's silence had been trying to save me from. I had handed my entire future, my divinity, my home, to someone unworthy of a single hour of it.

The next morning, Karl did the unthinkable.

"Aylin, this is Cersei.”

She walked in beside him like she already owned the room. Dark eyes, dark hair, dark clothes. But my divinity sensed it immediately: dark aura. Something sat wrong around her like a shadow that didn't match the light.

"Did you hear?” Kael said again. “This is Cersei Blackcrest.”

And there it was.

The Blackcrest pack, dreaded for generations, was known by their reputation. Dark magic and sorcery both of which had been banned in the werewolf land. But things fell through after Sylas, their leader died and left the pack ruined and destitute.

“Your grace," I said carefully. "I don't think…"

"No one asked you." Kael didn't even look at me.

Cersei smiled and sashayed into the palace like she owned the place.

That night Kael didn't come to my room, or the night after. I was moved to a smaller chamber near the servants' quarters without explanation and my things were relocated— those that really belonged to me.

This was the end.