Chapter Text
Moscow, March 1847
It was no secret that Ilya had been the bane of his father’s existence since the moment he was conceived. The only reason that Ilya was perhaps still alive was because his mother had been a favored omega of his father’s, all the way up until her unfortunate death so many years ago, and because his genes were needed as backup in the case of tragedy.
Preceded by his older brother, he was an unnecessary burden to the royal family as it was; he was another mouth to feed, another head to count, and another expected unruly alpha to side-eye as he got older, watching for inklings of usurpation.
It should have been a relief as the years passed by and Ilya didn’t present as anything. Unfortunately, it was only seen as another way that he had failed his father. A beta son would do the crown no good. An omega would be a disgrace. To be a proper Rozanov man, you had to be an alpha, or you were nothing at all.
So, when the first pangs of what would be one of the most painful ruts that Ilya would ever experience in several ways began shooting through his body just a few months shy of his 20th birthday, Ilya grinned. Through the cramping agony, through the bloodthirst that pulsed through his being, Ilya raised his face to his father, gums torn and bleeding as his fangs dropped.
Surely this couldn’t be wrong. Surely this would gain his father’s approval.
His father’s eyes were cold as he gazed upon Ilya for a mere moment, before he was turning on his heel and snapping his fingers at the nearest guard. “I don’t have time for this. You know what to do. I’ll send a bitch.”
An advisor meekly stepped forward before the guard could move. “Um, sir. Prince Andrei is currently using the royal rut suite for one of his mates’ heats—”
“Then lock this one in a common rut chamber,” his father sighed impatiently. “His knot won’t know the difference. Be sure to collar the omega I send, lest my son make such a poor decision to mate a common whore who may not even survive the night.”
My son.
New feelings in Ilya clashed.
Euphoria—his father had claimed him as his own. The words were not lightly said.
Rage—Ilya was an alpha now, and his designation did not like being claimed and ordered around like a nuisance. He was meant to claim, he was meant to control, he was meant to command.
His son.
Ilya was ushered away by guards, into a wing he had not yet visited, as he was not worthy of it. The rut wing. Heavy wooden doors to rooms reserved for rutting alphas lined each side. Ilya nearly went feral as they approached a door near the end, right off of a heavily locked door, behind which a variety of omegas were kept as rut partners to be loaned. His father would send one, hand-picked perhaps, for Ilya to enjoy.
His son.
Ilya could smell them, even through the wood and the other attempts to keep their scents contained to the room. He lurched towards the enticing smell, but was bodied into the room by a few burly guards, who assured him that they would have a collared bitch for him shortly as he made short, destructive work of his clothes.
His son.
Ilya paced the room relentlessly as they gathered a victim, red-tinged drool dripping from his mouth when Ilya became tired of swallowing his own blood. His gums ached to bite, and his cock had grown painfully swollen, the beginnings of his first knot already throbbing at the base.
His son.
The pain and the aggression coursing through his blood made him want to break something, made him want to tear flesh and conquer, dominate, and he suddenly understood why the royal family was so fixated on having alpha sons. Genes like Ilya’s were meant to be carried on, and what was more powerful to the throne than the promise of a future?
His son.
Ilya snarled instinctively when the door of his rut room was opened, then closed, the heavy thud of a lock falling upon Ilya’s ears, unheard.
My omega.
In his doorway, an omega stood naked. He was dark-haired and thin, skin not light enough to be considered pureblood but certainly light enough to showcase the selection of bruises he wore on his limbs.
He didn’t even register moving, but suddenly Ilya had the omega up against the rough wood of the door, gouged with scratch marks from ruts past. He needed to be closer to his scent, needed to feel this omega's skin and take in his body with nothing but scant inches between them.
The omega’s eyes were dark as well, but wet and round and wide and blown out.
Ilya’s nose was having a difficult time sorting through the heightened sense of smell it was suddenly inundated with, but the omega smelled cold. Not physically; his scent was simply unlike any other that Ilya had caught faint whiffs of when he’d sat through heat parties as a teenager, the hopes from his father that the sight and scent of sex and desperate omegas would trigger a presentation of some sort in his late-presenting son unrealized every time.
His scent was cold, like the snow and ice that still clung to the palace roofs. Icy and refreshing and comforting all at once, and Ilya’s instincts immediately recognized the warm undertone that was steadily bubbling to the surface: heat.
His omega was in heat.
As his breath grew heavier, Ilya’s eye caught a few bitemarks littering the omega’s thighs and stomach, and he growled.
The omega shrank away from the noise, and Ilya rejoiced at the submissive action, drunk on his growing rut and the newfound power that he’d only ever had directed at him by his father and brother.
Still, he tried to curb his thirst for violence as he looked upon what he knew to be his.
He grabbed the omega’s cheeks between his fingers as gently as he could, puckering his lips before sloppily placing his own upon them, pillaging the soft warmth of his mouth with his tongue, as if he could erase the taste of anyone the omega had tasted before Ilya. “Tell me your name before I take you,” Ilya grumbled, desperate to consume all of who this omega was.
The voice that came from his own mouth was not the one Ilya knew. In the time it had taken his body to get to this point, several biological changes had begun taking place, the deepening of his voice being one of them to prepare his vocal cords for what would eventually allow Ilya to make alpha commands.
A soft, enticing voice filled the space, worming its way into Ilya’s brain like a parasite. “I have been commanded by higher authority to remain anonymous,” he said quietly.
Ilya cursed his inability to make an alpha command at that moment, wanting nothing more than to demand his name, higher authority be damned. He wanted to cry out his omega’s name when he knotted him, wanted to make him purr Ilya’s.
It was fine. Ilya would consume this omega in more ways than one; his name would remain the same whether he had Ilya’s seed dripping from his ass or not.
Ilya was unable to hold himself back from burying his face into the omega’s collared neck again. This time, the omega’s hands came up to rest gently on Ilya’s back, holding him in a way that made Ilya whine.
Ice filled his nostrils again, clean, sharp, and heady, even tinged with fear as it was.
Ilya groaned and grasped one of the omega’s asscheeks in his large hand, pressing him forward as he ground his pulsing cock into the flesh of the omega’s thigh, then towards the apex of his legs, where his stirring cocklet lay.
The omega whimpered at the touch, and Ilya grinned.
“Yes. Whimper for me, omega,” he rasped, groping his omega’s sweet body. His cocklet between his fingers, his tits beneath his palms, traces of slick wetting his fingertips. “Your sweet voice is mine, now. I will make you scream soon.”
The omega’s gaze was becoming more glazed as the scent of his heat grew stronger, but he nodded. “Of course, my prince,” he agreed. “Use me as you wish.”
Ilya groaned again, covering the omega’s body with his own and plundering his mouth in another claiming kiss. “You are so perfect,” he murmured, still rutting against the omega’s thigh helplessly. “You smell like… like home. You are the embodiment of my kingdom, and you will be mine,” he promised.
Ilya did not know the omega’s name, but he knew this. He knew that this omega was his and, once he could control his voice, would demand to have the omega’s name. At least then, once he was released, he could properly seek his omega out and use every bit of privilege he had to obtain him as his first mate. As his queen.
His rut was taking full control, and Ilya’s instincts roared in dissatisfaction as his knot ached, begging to be popped, but not until it was buried in an omega’s warm embrace. First, though, Ilya had business to take care of.
He could not bite the omega now, not with the rut collar blocking Ilya from his scent gland. But, he could override the evidence left by alphas past. He pressed his omega against the door roughly, his newfound strength not yet under his full control, but the omega did not complain.
“Stay,” Ilya demanded, one last biting kiss to his lips before he trailed down the omega’s body with his mouth. He paused to suck at his tits, the tiny mounds of flesh pebbled with arousal delicious under Ilya’s tongue. It made the omega moan, the faintest whisper of a sound, but Ilya locked onto his pleasure and licked, bit, and sucked until his omega’s nipples were red and swollen and marked.
Ilya continued downwards, sucking bruises into every inch he could fit into his greedy, gnawing mouth.
The emotion that drove Ilya switched from elation to anger within a split second when he reached the first of the bite marks, consuming what was left of his rationality.
Logically, no one could have known that Ilya would present that day, nor could anyone have known that the omega his father sent for him would be his omega. Still, the bite marks marring the skin of the omega that belonged to Ilya was indescribably sickening. It sent bloodlust through his veins and his instincts into a frenzy, his teeth aching deep in their roots.
The pain and anger drove Ilya’s bites deeper than they needed to be, and the omega underneath him cried out in pain as Ilya sank his own teeth into the imprint that already existed. Blood bloomed and welled from the new mark, and Ilya lapped it up with a grin on his face, closing the wound naturally and ensuring that only the imprint from his teeth existed on his omega.
It was one of five marks.
Ilya bit through the impression of each, one by one, as his omega squirmed and cried above him. It had to happen. Until it did, Ilya could not rest, and his omega would not be fully his. He could not bite where he so desperately wanted to, so these marks would have to do.
When he was done, blood streaked his lips, and his omega was shaking, cocklet limp again after the onslaught of pain. Ilya, however, knew that the night was only beginning. The newly let blood slaked his thirst for the moment, but had only made him more desperate to lead his cock home.
Ilya kissed the omega ravenously, collecting him in his arms and bringing them both to the bed, where Ilya wasted no time in stepping back to greedily view his naked form on the sheets.
“Present for me,” he ordered, still no hint of an alpha command.
He did not need one with his omega, though, because he obeyed immediately, rolling over onto his hands and knees so that his ass was upturned for Ilya’s pleasure, even as he shook with aftershocks of pain and fear of Ilya. It was such a rush. Ilya grumbled in delight and draped his body over the omega, rubbing around his hole with great, great satisfaction when he found it soaked with slick.
His omega knew. Despite the pain, or perhaps in part because of it, his omega’s body knew that Ilya was his alpha, and that Ilya’s mouth, marks, and actions were all for his omega’s benefit.
It was time for him to repay Ilya’s efforts.
Ilya guided his hand to his omega’s neck, pressing down until he was face down, ass up on the mattress, ready for Ilya’s taking. “My beautiful omega. Know just how to make me want you,” he sighed, kissing the skin around his omega’s collar before sitting up and shuffling into place.
The red, engorged tip of his cock looked enormous next to his omega’s asshole, but his omega was not a virgin, and would be able to take Ilya as he was. As shiny and clenching every so often as it was, it enticed Ilya into its depths without further ado. He notched his cock, shuddering as a spurt of precum wetted his omega’s hole further, and then pressed in with a groan as skin and muscle stretched around him.
His omega seized, his hands gathering into fists as Ilya sank into him, inch after inch, and cried out as he was penetrated. “Full!” he cried, much to Ilya’s satisfaction. “So much, it’s so much,” he sobbed.
“It will be more once I knot you. So good,” Ilya grunted, hips immediately starting to thrust into the warm body that Ilya had in his grasp. “You are so good. Face is pretty, hole is slick—you are the perfect omega, sent to me on my presentation day as a gift.”
He had to be. This omega was the pinnacle of everything that his father described an ideal omega to be. Submissive, quiet, sensitive, receptive, pretty. He took everything Ilya gave without complaint, and never even reached for his own pleasure, letting Ilya control everything without him needing to tell his omega what he expected from him.
Perfect.
Each wild thrust came back wetter as the omega’s body responded to its alpha’s cock, and a shivery whine was forced from his mouth when Ilya buried himself balls-deep, music to Ilya’s ears. The bed creaked with the force that Ilya fucked his omega, rutting mindlessly into the hole that he would soon claim as his own.
As it turned out, his omega did not need any additional stimulation to cum, and was apparently a quick shot in heat, because he convulsed around Ilya’s cock even before Ilya himself came. It was no matter; his knot had been knocking on the door of his omega’s body since Ilya had sheathed himself, and the rhythmic clenching quickly filled it up with more blood, signaling his own end.
Ilya fucked his omega through his orgasm, not stopping to let him recover because the time he had to wrestle his knot into the same entrance that was already stretched tight around his cock was closing fast, and he had to take it.
“I am knotting,” he grit out, fingers tightening on his omega’s hips as if he could escape, as if he would want to. “Gonna fill you up, omega. Be ready,” Ilya warned, right as his swelling knot popped into his omega’s ass with a wet squelch, unable to be pulled out again.
His omega cried out loudly as he took Ilya’s knot, clutching at the sheets as he moaned and panted through the stretch, but he nearly screamed when Ilya’s sudden weight slamming into the abused flesh of his ass caused him to collapse forward. Ilya snarled and followed him down, shoving his knot further into his omega as he panted animalistically and drooled across the omega’s back, snapping his teeth at the durable material of the collar on his neck when he got close enough.
He tugged at it with his mouth, the act of biting alleviating some of the pain in his mouth. He let go of the thick leather when it remained fruitless, and instead placed an aggressive bite underneath it, where shoulder met throat. He would make his own collar if he could not bite past the real one.
When he was satisfied with how far he was lodged into his omega’s body, Ilya rode out the last lingering pulses of his orgasm in ecstasy. It felt like Ilya came forever, but it eventually passed, and he trembled as he held his omega firmly. When even their proximity wasn't enough to satisfy his need for closeness, Ilya took to licking his mate’s marked nape, where sweat had begun to bead and drip towards the small wounds he'd made with his teeth. He dragged his tongue everywhere he could reach, trying to soothe the shuddery sobs that raged through his omega’s body.
His tongue caught a few salty tears when he licked far enough onto his omega’s face, and Ilya tracked them from the source all the way down to the corner of his omega’s mouth. Ilya was only just able to reach the outermost seam. It wasn’t enough, and he rumbled, pleased, when his omega picked up on his discontent and obediently turned his head at Ilya’s insistent tongue. He opened his mouth to lick at Ilya’s lips in submission, allowing Ilya to lap at his tongue in return, excess drool making everything slick and Ilya's.
The act seemed to settle his omega, and Ilya eventually pulled away so that he could snuggle close to the first warm body that Ilya had any desire to establish a bond with since his mother died. He wrapped his arms around the omega tightly, nose as close to his scent gland as he could have it, and reveled in it.
His mate. His omega.
“You are mine, now, omega,” he mumbled into his omega’s ear. “One day I will know your name, and when I do, nothing will stop me from claiming you. Not the time, not the place, not the people around us. I will fuck you where I find you, and claim you where everyone can see my beautiful omega become mine, body and soul.”
…
Moscow, October 1849
Blood dripped from Ilya’s fangs, but it was inconsequential, because it was everywhere.
The floors pooled with it, it was spattered across the royal emblems on banners that hung too low to the floor to escape the gore, it seeped from the deep wounds that slowly took the life of every alpha, beta, and omega in the throne room who had tried to stop Ilya as he waged war on the very palace he called home.
His brother lay dead a few paces away, throat torn out from his skin after he begged for mercy, offering up the only offspring he’d managed to create with the tens of omegas in his harem in his stead.
Ilya had promised that his only niece would be safe and want for nothing as she grew up. She was a royal, after all, and Ilya had a soft spot for children. But Andrei would receive none of that kindness. Not after over a year of telling Ilya to grow up and get over himself. After calling Ilya’s omega a common bitch, and taunting Ilya with stories of how he’d fucked the nameless omega before Ilya had, how he knew his name, and how he’d personally kicked him from the palace when he was banished.
As it turned out, Andrei did not know the name of Ilya’s omega. It was apparent from the fear in his eyes as Ilya offered his life in return for his omega’s name, and got nothing.
Andrei deserved no mercy, just as the man wheezing under Ilya’s foot deserved nothing less than the fires of hell.
“Father,” Ilya said, gazing down at the dying former king with none of the reverence he once had. There was only hate left for him, and it was all his father’s fault. “You knew this day was coming just as well as I did. The end of your reign has arrived. If only you had been more concerned about my loyalty than you were your pride; perhaps things could have been different.”
…
Moscow, March 1847
Ilya woke in a daze—still in the last days of his first rut—distressed and trembling. His anger registered in his brain before his full consciousness did, and he let out a shout full of rage as he struggled against the chains that kept him bound painfully to the bed in his rut chamber, the corpses of two guards still littering the floor. The room reeked of death and desperation, and Ilya’s instincts screamed at him to make something right—something that was beyond his reach and his comprehension in the state that he was in.
He had to get free, because he needed to protect his omega. But...
There was no omega to protect, as his instincts were telling him, and pure panic overtook his body. Something was wrong, and it was his omega, because his omega had been taken the night before, suddenly and cruelly.
Ilya shook harder as he remembered.
Remembered how his father’s voice had boomed outside the door in the early hours of the morning and ordered his soldiers to ensure that Ilya had not chewed through the collar they’d put on his omega. Remembered how he’d been riding the high of another knot, how he’d let them in so politely with only a single warning snarl, how he’d willingly revealed his sleeping omega under him, collar still intact despite how red and bitten the skin around it was.
It was all his fault. He shouldn’t have been so cooperative. If he’d been as possessive as he should have been, if he’d been a proper alpha who didn’t crave another alpha’s favor, perhaps he would still have his omega.
But at the end of the day, it was still his father’s fault.
Possessive or not, seeking approval or displaying disinterest, Ilya could have worn his vocal cords out growling at the guards sent in, but he’d still been knotted in his nameless omega and helpless because of that fact.
He’d still been firmly buried in his mate, and they’d taken him from Ilya.
The memory of his omega’s scream as he’d awoken to being forcibly pulled from Ilya’s knot made Ilya sick in the light of day, sick and so angry that he gave one last heave to the creaking chain that tore the hook it was attached to clean from the wall.
He stumbled as he got up off the bed, chain rattling as it followed after him in haunting tones. He did not pause to look at the dead men on the floor. They did not deserve his attention. Because, when his omega had been in distress and they knew full well that, without his knot warmed and keeping him tethered to sanity, there had been nothing hindering his rage, they had still stepped forward and gotten in his way.
He was a new alpha, reeling after being ripped from his omega’s body, and the two guards had met their deserved demise for attempting to stop him from reaching his omega. They’d tried to stop him when his omega had been dragged away, naked, covered in his own slick and Ilya’s piss, come, and spit, with the scent of his heat still emanating from him for every alpha in the vicinity to smell.
They deserved death. They deserved more than death, but it was all Ilya had been willing to offer at the time. He would have killed every single one of the guards if his father hadn’t commanded him to kneel.
It had nearly killed Ilya when his body obeyed, still weak as his designation developed, and still within the clutches of his father’s influence. He’d watched his omega disappear through the door, unable to shout and rage and struggle and fight as he’d wanted to. He’d only been able to kneel and listen as his father dealt his punishment in words, then fists.
“Useless alpha!” his father roared, anger alive in his eyes and mirrored in Ilya’s own as he glared up at him.
It was all Ilya was able to do but, despite maintaining eye contact, he was uncaring of what his father had to say to him. None of it had mattered, not when he was half out of his mind with rut, with the other half being dragged further and further away by the second. His omega’s lingering scent was tainted by the fear and pain he’d felt as he was removed from Ilya’s arms, and it drove Ilya insane.
Even hours later, the acrid notes still clung to the room, taunting Ilya with his failure.
His father delivered a harsh strike to Ilya’s cheek, but the force barely moved him. His refusal to remove his gaze from his father’s was a challenge he would not win, but it was a challenge that he would meet regardless.
“No son of mine would take a whore from the depths of our stocks and grow attached so quickly,” his father spit.
As if he knew what Ilya knew, intrinsically down to the marrow of his bones. As if he had any say in which omega Ilya recognized as his own.
“You brother rejected six holes before I sent one in fit to be a prince’s whore,” he said.
As if he could convince Ilya that his brother had the superior discernment when his harem was made up of omegas that were not Ilya’s. The thought of his brother laying eyes on his omega only enraged Ilya more.
“You failed the test. You did not make the marks, and you are a disappointment to us all,” he snarled, bringing blood to Ilya’s face with a swipe of his nails.
As if Ilya cared about being anything to them when his loyalty had shifted the moment he’d laid eyes on his omega.
“What kind of alpha allows himself to be so overrun by his instincts that one whiff of an omega’s slick wipes out your sense of dignity? We own omegas. They do not own us. Not our bodies, not our affections, not our commitment. Not even in rut are Rozanov alphas so weak,” he growled.
As if Ilya hadn’t finally felt like the alpha his father wanted him to be when he’d had his omega.
And then—“You’ll do well to remember, boy, that in terms of ownership, I sent you that omega; that omega is mine. Not yours. And he never will be.”
The words had broken his father’s fading hold over Ilya, and he’d jumped up savagely, aiming for his father’s throat when his father had shown him what being an alpha above alphas truly meant.
Ilya’s head was still pounding from the weight of the alpha command that put him down, his body aching from the beating he’d endured. It didn’t stop him from dragging his chains to the door, disregarding everything except for the words that still bounced in Ilya’s half-feral brain.
Not yours.
Not yours.
Not yours.
In his state, he began banging his forehead on the locked door of the rut room in hopes that someone would come and let him out eventually. Whether that would be to lead him to his bedroom or to a cell, Ilya did not know.
What he did know was that he would get his omega back one day. Someway, somehow, Ilya would learn his name and fulfill what he'd promised.
I will fuck you where I find you, and claim you where everyone can see my beautiful omega become mine, body and soul.
But, in order to do that, he would need to become a stronger alpha than his father. He would need to become better. If his omega truly belonged to his father, then Ilya would need to best him for ownership, in the event that he was not given to Ilya willingly. And, he would not be given willingly, that was something else that Ilya knew by the look on his father’s face hours before. He intended for Ilya to never see his omega again.
The cuts on Ilya’s face broke open and began to bleed again, but the pain was a welcome shock to his system.
Rozanov men were not weak, even in rut.
It was time for Ilya to stop acting like a common alpha and start living up to his family name. Rozanov alphas were strong, they were smart, and they got what they wanted. It was the reason they had been able to hold the crown for so many generations.
Ilya would not be the first to break that mold.
If he had any chance of reclaiming his omega, he would first need to claim the crown, and that would necessitate clarity, logic, strategy, and discipline.
From the empty hallway, the thuds suddenly stopped.
…
Moscow, October 1849
His father glared up at Ilya, proud even in death. Perhaps not quite death, but once Ilya got what he wanted—and he would—then death would follow soon after. “I knew that I should have put you down with the bitch that bore you,” he spit.
Ilya brought his boot down on his father’s face, a sickening crack followed by a river of blood signifying that he’d broken something. “You don’t talk about my mother,” Ilya stated steadily. “In fact, you will talk about one thing, and one thing only before you die by my hand.”
His father pressed his lips together, as if they would keep him from spilling whatever information Ilya asked for.
Ilya kneeled, one leg after another, until he was nose to nose with his father. “You will tell me: what was his name?”
His father turned his head and spit out more blood, then a tooth. “I don’t know where your precious omega is,” he chuckled, still wheezing from what Ilya was sure was at least a few broken ribs and a punctured lung. “Could be dead in a ditch, could be happily mated, could still be the same fucking whore we kicked out. However, he should be of your least concern, Ilya; you will take your place on the throne once I am dead. How do you plan on being a successful king if you can't keep your head out of an omega's—”
Ilya slapped his father across the face with enough force that his cheek bounced off of the palace floor. “I told you, Grigori, that you have only one useful thing to offer me now. Your reign has been lacking for some time, and I have overthrown you in a pathetically short amount of time with nothing but a ragtag group of my allies and the weapons we've scrounged, despite you having plenty of time to prepare for this day and an entire army at your fingertips,” Ilya mused. He himself was surprised that he hadn't had more attempts on his life in the last 31 months, but Ilya attributed it to his father's increasingly obvious inadequacy.
His men were gathering the surviving palace rats as Ilya took care of business in the throne room. The crowd outside were next on his To-Do list, but this step was particularly important during his transition to power.
Ilya grasped his father’s jaw and wrenched his gaze back to Ilya’s face. “Now. I asked nicely, and you refused. So, answer without the dignity that you loved so much, Father. What was his name?”
Ilya’s alpha command rang out in the deathly silence of the throne room, and his father gurgled, trying to stop his body from obeying.
It was no use. Ilya had proven himself to be the stronger alpha, and his hatred would bolster his voice even further.
His father heaved, then croaked out his death sentence. “His name… Shane Hollander.”
Ilya shivered, committing it to memory, and then stood up. He got what he wanted, and he refused to kneel for his father anymore, for any reason. With a disappointed look down, carefully crafted after the one that plagued him as a child so often, Ilya wiped the blood from his mouth and flicked it off his hand, the spatters quickly blending in with the blood already on his father’s clothes.
“You will burn in hell, Father.”
Ilya reached to his waist, then took out his gun, sleek and shiny and unused.
Even without a weapon, Ilya had bested every single person in the throne room out of pure, spiteful rage. And, despite looking death in the face, Ilya’s father had the gall to look proud.
"And you will carry on the Rozanov reign perfectly, my son."
It took less time than it would for his bullet to pierce skin for his words to click in Ilya's head, and Ilya had not felt hate so strongly as he did in that moment since that fateful night.
The one power that Grigori Rozanov had left, he used. A card up his sleeve. A backhanded admission, not to save his own life, but to stain Ilya's, one final time.
Ilya had known that, perhaps he hadn't meant to at the time, but because his father originated Ilya’s thirst for power, he would forever be the one who made Ilya into the person he was today. It was something that Ilya could not change. Something that he would have to live with, his only consolation being that it was Ilya himself who made it happen so quickly. That is was his thirst and his discipline and his blood that he sacrificed, day and night, to ensure that he was undisputedly the strongest alpha in the kingdom.
But now, pieces of a puzzle that Ilya had been staring at for the last two and a half years began falling into place.
His acceptance back into the royal family after Ilya made an attempt to kill his father. The lack of any serious assassination attempts. His father's interest in his studies. His father's interest, period.
It was not an attempt to keep his enemies close; Ilya could see that now. No, he must have seen the potential as Ilya grew into a fully developed alpha, consumed with rage and hatred for his own blood. He had no loyalty.
But, what was the downfall of one generation's reign would be a pillar for the next.
Those who put nothing above power make the most ruthless leaders.
His father was a ruthless man. So ruthless that he had sacrificed his own life and that of his first-born son, all to ensure that the power of the crown would remain safely in the name of Rozanov. Ilya was a fool for not recognizing his father's games, and for playing the pawn yet again. To be the best, the strongest, the smartest—and yet, to still fall victim to the man who previously held those titles... Ilya was enraged by the fact that all of his hard work was rendered useless in the face of this one last failure.
And now, his victory would forever be tarnished by that fact.
Ilya made sure that his face was devoid of emotion when he looked back down, not wanting to give his father the satisfaction of seeing any lingering affections as he pointed the gun towards his forehead and fired.
Perhaps his father had one last leg to stand on. Perhaps his father was better than Ilya. But, without his life, he was nothing. He had no more days to spend looking down his nose at Ilya, but Ilya had the rest of his life to keep sharpening his skills, to build his kingdom, and to keep becoming a better alpha. One whose shadow would swallow his father's and haunt his ghost in the depths of hell where he was hopefully already receiving his sentence for eternal punishment.
Ilya felt nothing for his dead father but lingering contempt as he reached down and grabbed the front of his clothing, dragging him unceremoniously through his own brain matter, up the stairs, and to the throne. He was deposited upside down, head hanging off the seat so that Ilya could make quicker work of slicing through skin, fat, muscle, bone, nerves until his head was severed from his body, blood not even cooled yet.
When he emerged from the throne room, he looked to the side of the heavy doors, where Boodram stood guard. Boodram glanced down at the blood covering Ilya from head to toe, then at the severed head in Ilya’s hands and nodded once. “The remaining palace-goers are gathered in the main foyer,” he reported. “There were a few casualties. None from our side. We were forced to put down a few alphas who fought back.”
Ilya began walking the familiar hallways, towards the sound of a confused crowd, the smell of fear permeating the air even from where they were.
“Let us hope that they were not the ones with knowledge of where Shane Hollander is being kept from me,” he murmured. “Or there will be hell to pay.”