Rejected Omega Was Told to Sing the Luna Hymn as a Joke – But Her Voice Left the Alpha King Speechless
The First Dawn
It spent the next hour circling, muttering to itself, occasionally snarling in frustration. But it didn’t try to break the bars; it didn’t threaten me again.
It was thinking. Slowly, impossibly, I felt my terror begin to ebb.
This thing was a monster, yes, but it was also intelligent, curious, and maybe—just maybe—lonely.
“I don’t know the answer,”
the beast finally admitted, sounding almost frustrated.
“Tell me.”
“No,”
I said quietly.
“But ask me again tomorrow night. Maybe I’ll tell you then.”
The beast’s eyes snapped to mine, and for a moment, I saw something distinctly human in them: surprise, hope.
“Tomorrow,”
it agreed.
“Tomorrow, little songbird. And you’ll bring me another riddle? Maybe?”
“Definitely.”
It growled, but there was no threat in it—almost playful. We spent the rest of the night like that: me in my corner, the beast in its cage, both of us suspended in a strange, cautious dance.
When dawn finally broke and light streamed through the high windows, I watched the beast convulse again—shrinking, reforming, becoming human. The king collapsed on the floor of his cage, naked and gasping.
I grabbed the blanket Thomas had left and approached the bars carefully.
“Your Majesty?”
He looked up at me, his human eyes wide with disbelief.
“You’re still here.”
“I gave my word.”
“You survived.”
He sounded awed. I smiled, surprising myself.
“I gave him a riddle.”
For the first time since I’d met him, the king laughed—a real, genuine sound of relief and wonder.
“A riddle?”
he repeated.
“After five years of trying everything… the answer was a riddle.”
The Morning Bargain
The door unsealed, and Thomas rushed in, stopping short when he saw both of us alive and whole.
“Same time tomorrow night?”
I asked the king. He stared at me like I’d performed a miracle.
“Same time tomorrow night,”
he agreed.
I walked out of that chamber wearing a promise ring and carrying something I hadn’t had in years: purpose. The palace transformed for me after that first night.
Servants who’d previously avoided eye contact now nodded respectfully as I passed. The sharp-faced woman who dismissed me on arrival actually smiled thinly, but still.
Even Thomas seemed relieved, like he’d been holding his breath and could finally exhale. The ring on my finger marked me as something more than a servant but less than a lady—something undefined, something that belonged to the king in a way that had nothing to do with mating or marriage.
I was his companion, his experiment, his last desperate hope—all of the above, probably. True to his word, the king spent the first morning fulfilling his side of our bargain.
He found me in the library at dawn. I’d gone straight there after leaving his chamber, too wired to sleep.
He looked exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes, but there was something lighter in his expression.
“You actually came here first?”
he asked, leaning against the doorframe.
“Not to rest? Not to process what you just survived?”
“I’ve spent twenty-three years resting,”
I said, running my hand along a shelf of history texts.
“I’d rather learn.”
The Desire to Learn
He shook his head, but he was almost smiling.
“All right then. What do you want to know first?”
“Everything.”
We started with history: the formation of the pack territories, the rise of the Alpha Council, and the centuries of conflicts that had shaped the current kingdom. The king was a natural teacher, explaining complex politics with clarity and patience.
More than that, he listened. When I asked questions, he didn’t dismiss them as stupid or simple; he engaged with them, sometimes pausing to reconsider his own assumptions.
“You think differently,”
he observed after I challenged a particular historical interpretation.
“Not like someone trained in formal education. You see angles others miss.”
“Because I was never taught what to think,”
I replied.
“I just had to figure it out on my own.”
“That might make you more valuable than any scholar in my court.”
The compliment settled warm in my chest. We worked through the morning and into early afternoon.
The king had duties that called him away—meetings with advisers, judgments to render, a kingdom to run—but he left me with a stack of texts and a promise to return. I devoured the books.
History gave way to philosophy, and philosophy to poetry. I read about the moon goddess and her supposed blessings, about the ancient magic that predated pack law, and about curses and their costs.
The Nature of the Curse
That last topic felt particularly relevant. I was deep in a tome about magical bindings when Thomas appeared with lunch.
“You’ll ruin your eyes reading in this light,”
he chided gently, setting down a tray.
“Then I’ll read in the dark,”
I said, not looking up.
“Thomas, this book mentions curse-breaking. It says most curses have a loophole built in—something the curse-caster must include or the magic becomes unstable.”
“That’s the theory, yes.”
“So the king’s curse… the condition that he finds love for both forms… that’s not just cruelty. It’s a genuine possibility. The curse-caster believed it could happen.”
Thomas settled into a chair across from me.
“You’re trying to break the curse?”
“I’m trying to understand it.”
I finally looked up.
“The king said he’s tried for five years. What did he try?”
Thomas sighed.
“Everything. He courted highborn ladies, hoping one would see past his power to the person beneath. He brought in healers and seers. He even—”
He paused.
“He even tried to force it. He commanded a noblewoman to stay through the transformation, thinking proximity might breed acceptance.”
The Difference Between Surviving and Loving
“What happened?”
“She went mad within a week. She started screaming that monsters were in the walls, that he was going to eat her alive. We had to send her home with enough gold to keep her family quiet.”
His expression was heavy with old guilt.
“After that, the king stopped trying. He said he wouldn’t break anyone else in his desperation.”
I thought about the beast’s words last night: “As if anyone could love this.”
“He doesn’t believe it’s possible anymore,”
I said quietly.
“Can you blame him? You survived one night, Catherine, and I’m grateful for that, truly. But surviving and loving are very different things.”
“Maybe.”
I turned back to my book.
“Or maybe everyone’s been approaching this wrong.”
That evening, as sunset painted the sky in shades of amber and wine, I returned to the king’s chamber. This time, I brought something: a leather journal and a writing implement I’d borrowed from the library.
The king was already in his cage when I arrived, still human but bracing for the change. His eyes fixed on the journal in my hands.
“What’s that for?”
“Notes,”
I said simply, settling into my corner with the blanket.
“If I’m going to do this every night, I want to track patterns. I want to see if the beast changes, if it remembers things.”
