"I bore no such thing!"
The weak cry of a woman echoed through the enormous VIP hospital room. Sophia lay slumped against a mountain of pillows, her pale face glistening with sweat. Her ocean-blue eyes, normally cold and proud, now trembled as she stared at the cradle beside her bed.
Inside it, two newborns slept side by side — one a healthy baby girl with a faint golden mark behind her wrist, the sign of an Alpha… and the other, a fragile baby boy with no such mark. His breathing was soft, his tiny hands twitching in sleep.
Sophia's lips quivered. "No… no, it's not possible…"
"Whether you believe it or not," came the man's voice from the foot of the bed, deep and calm but laced with restrained anger, "the results don't lie. You'd better do something about it before anyone else finds out."
Maxiel Baltimore, her husband, stood with a chilling stillness that filled the room. He was a tall man, six feet two, his presence commanding yet distant. White hair, almost luminescent under the sterile lights, framed a face carved in aristocratic perfection — two straight brows shadowed eyes of sharp, glowing grey, a high-bridged nose, and lips pale but full. His skin, flawless and white as snow, seemed carved from frost itself.
He didn't look at the children. His gaze lingered only on Sophia.
She bit her lower lip until a drop of blood slid down her chin, her fingers gripping the bedsheet so hard that her knuckles turned white.
Even after childbirth, her beauty was undeniable — long auburn hair cascading down her back, delicate features that glowed despite exhaustion. She was everything the Baltimore family expected of an Alpha wife — proud, beautiful, strong.
Or at least, she had been.
Now, with that single truth revealed , that one of her children was an Omega— a male omega at that, her world began to collapse.
The Baltimore bloodline was a sacred one. A house of pure Alpha heritage stretching back generations, unblemished by the existence of weaker subgenders. To bear a male Omega child was not just shameful , it was a curse upon the family's pride.
Sophia had clawed her way into this family. She had schemed, charmed, and betrayed to secure her place beside Maxiel Baltimore, the second son of the current patriarch. She had looked down on the other wives who bore Beta offspring — sneering at them as failures unworthy of the family name.
Now fate, cruel and mocking, had turned its eyes upon her.
Her gaze drifted to the cradle again. The baby boy's soft chest rose and fell peacefully, unaware of the storm around him. His sister's small hand brushed his, as if in instinctive comfort.
Sophia's chest tightened. Her heart — or what was left of it — recoiled.
The more she looked, the more she hated what she saw.
"I'll take care of it," she whispered.
Maxiel's eyes flickered briefly. "Good."
Without another word, he turned and walked out, the sound of his boots echoing against the marble floor. The door closed softly behind him, leaving only the faint hum of machines and Sophia's unsteady breathing.
The silence pressed in on her.
Slowly, she turned her head toward the cradle again. The boy stirred, a faint, innocent sound escaping his lips.
Sophia's fingers trembled. "You… shouldn't have been born," she whispered, voice cracking under the weight of her own fear and disgust.
Outside, thunder rolled across the night sky.
...
...
A sudden jolt.
"Ugh… what the hell… why is my bed shaking so much?"
Dorian blinked, groaning — or trying to. Everything felt strange. Heavy. The air was too warm, the light too bright. His eyelids fluttered open, but his vision swam with shapes and color.
He tried to raise a hand to rub his eyes — but froze.
A tiny hand, soft and pink, waved weakly in front of him.
"What the…"
He flexed it. The small fingers curled, then uncurled. His breath caught in his throat.
'A tiny hand? Wait— they're mine?!'
Panic flared. He tried to speak, but what left his mouth was a shrill cry — the unmistakable wail of a baby.
"Shhh, little one…" A man's voice murmured somewhere above him, deep and uncertain. "I'm sorry. Don't blame me… I'm just doing my job."
The words meant nothing to Dorian — the language foreign, muffled, incomprehensible. But the tone… the tone was filled with guilt.
His mind reeled, questions piling one over the other — until a sudden flood of memories hit him like a tidal wave.
Images. Faces. Pain.
He screamed — or thought he did — before the pain swallowed him whole, dragging him into darkness.
----------------------------------------------------------
He dreamed.
Or maybe he remembered.
He saw himself again — a helpless baby, abandoned by a dumpster near a police station. He remembered the cold air, the smell of rot, the rough hands that carried him to an orphanage.
He grew up thin, hungry, and hollow-eyed among other forgotten children. The director was a drug addict who stole their food money. He learned early that crying did nothing.
When he was seven, she overdosed. The state split them apart, scattering the children to different orphanages.
By twelve, Dorian had already lost count of how many roofs he'd lived under. Six, maybe seven. Each one worse than the last. Every place he went, something bad happened — fires, deaths, thefts, scandals. People began whispering that he was cursed. A bad omen.
They called him the Doom Bringer.
By the time he was fourteen, no one wanted him anymore. He was sent to foster care, where "parents" used him for labor or worse. So he ran.
He slept under bridges, stole scraps, fought rats for bread. By fifteen, a street gang took him in after he tried and failed to pickpocket them. They laughed, beat him half to death, then fed him.
From then, he lived by their rules. Running drugs, dodging police, living fast and bruised.
By twenty, he had a name — Dorian McGuire, adopted by the gang's boss and treated like family.
For the first time in his miserable life, he belonged somewhere.
But fate — cruel, relentless fate — never forgot him.
At twenty-five, his adoptive father died in a gunfight. At thirty, Dorian led what was left of the gang. By forty, he was hunted by both rivals and the law. He ran until his lungs gave out — literally.
Stage Three Lung Cancer.
He laughed when the doctor told him. After everything… it was his own body that betrayed him.
He remembered that night — lying on the rooftop of the hospital, the city lights blurring below him. He'd stared up at the sky, cigarette trembling between his fingers.
"What a tiring life I lived," he'd whispered. "Maybe this isn't so bad. Maybe I can finally rest."
He took one last drag — and that was when the sky darkened.
Thunder rolled. Lightning flashed.
He remembered standing up, confused. "Mid-summer… why are there thunderclouds?"
Then — a blinding white light.
He'd barely had time to mutter, "Really? Even now? I can't even die in peace—"
And the world went dark.