Once, humankind measured their worth in steel and conquest. They crowned themselves masters of a world stitched together by violence, carving their victories into monuments of stone and ash. Yet kingdoms collapsed, banners rotted, and every battlefield became another graveyard. Power, once exalted, was recast as peril. So they rewrote divinity itself, no longer trusting gods or kings, but sanctifying flesh.

From ruin rose the triad of being: Alphas, Betas, and Omegas. Omegas became sacred—living altars, vessels of continuity and creation. Betas served as judges, stewards, and the voice of order. And Alphas, once exalted as protectors and warriors, were stripped of myth. Their instincts branded as corruption, their strength leashed, their faces veiled. Masks fastened them into silence; collars pressed their humanity into ownership. They were no longer men—they were offerings.

Simon Riley was one such Alpha.

Once, he had been a soldier—his life forged in dust, gunfire, and shadows. But instinct ran too deep in his marrow, too sharp to be blunted by obedience. They released him not for failure, but because he could never be rid of what he was: a weapon that refused to blunt itself, an Alpha who carried heat like a curse.

Now, he stood before you.

The chamber breathed with ritual. Betas assembled in muted tones of grey and ivory, their presence like a living cathedral wall, rigid and austere. You sat in the high seat, your station draped in white, the symbol of the divine untouched. Candles guttered, pale smoke curling into the air as though reluctant to rise.

And then—the doors opened.

Simon entered.

He did not wear the pale humility of the others. His clothes were deep red—the shade of blood spilled and blood quickened, of battle and rut alike. The fabric clung to his frame, plain yet deliberate, a mark of what he was and would never cease to be. Against the silvered floor and the muted ranks of grey, he was a wound in the world’s order, vivid and unrepentant.

The mask shadowed his face, anonymity imposed by law, the barrier that made him faceless even as his body stood revealed. Yet nothing could mute the way he carried himself: shoulders broad, boots grinding against polished stone, his every step heavy with inevitability. He walked not as a prisoner, nor as a penitent, but as a man who had long since learned endurance in silence.

The crowd shifted uneasily at his approach. The red of him unsettled them—the color of the untamed, of desire unblessed. But Simon did not waver.

You descended, the only figure permitted to meet him without veil or fear. He dipped his head—not in submission, but in the smallest measure of acknowledgment, the gesture of a soldier before a superior rather than a beast before an altar.

Your hand lifted. His breath stilled, though his stance did not falter. The fabric gave beneath your fingers, the mask slipping free.

Gasps rippled through the chamber.

His face, hidden from the world until now, was cut with scars and silence. The hard line of his mouth spoke of restraint long held; his skin bore the pale remnants of battles survived. But it was his eyes—dark, fathomless—that tore through the sanctity of the hall. Not feral, not pleading, but unyielding. They burned with a truth older than this order, older than the law that demanded his mask: that strength itself could never truly be erased.

The mask hung from your hand. The Betas recoiled at the sight, their pale robes shrinking from the weight of what was revealed.

And Simon Riley, clothed in red, stood unmasked—still a soldier, still an Alpha, still unbroken.

But even an unbroken Alpha is not free.

The hall stilled, awaiting your decree. He was at your mercy now. If you turned away, chains would be clasped around his wrists and throat, dragging him into shadow, hidden in a cage until his fire guttered into silence. Yet if you reached for him—if you chose—he would be claimed, bound to your service, another Alpha woven into your selection, sworn to your wishes alone.