The Crown Prince's Courtesan - Chapter 4
That day, Marie took a strange medicine. A drug immature Omegas must never take — something that would ruin her pheromones.
Her memory of that day was hazy.
‘Take it. You have to take it! Swallow it! If they find out… if they discover you’re a dominant Omega! It can never happen!’
‘Hngh, Mom—n-no, I don’t want to—waaah!’
‘Swallow it! If you don’t want to die, take it, Marie Alproze! You—You must become an ordinary Omega! You must not be found out!’
‘Aaaaah!’
It burned. It hurt. It was unbearable.
The pain was so intense that Marie’s memory fractured into pieces.
Her mother kept crying beside her.
How much time passed like that, she didn’t know. After that feverish torment, Marie became a broken, half-functioning Omega.
From that day on, something had gone terribly wrong with Marie’s pheromone glands.
The physician said that while she could still produce pheromones like a regular Omega, there was serious damage to the receptors that allowed her to accept Alpha pheromones.
As a result, her body could no longer properly enter heat cycles, making pregnancy nearly impossible.
‘It was just too much.’
Marie had laughed when she found out the truth.
She couldn’t even cry. Alphas sought Omegas because only Omegas could carry their children — yet here she was, infertile. What kind of blind Alpha would ever want her? She likely wouldn’t even be able to marry properly.
‘Someone like me could never be granted that miracle.’
Marie was a realist. Resignation had long calcified in her like stone; she no longer even felt disappointment.
Looking back now, she could understand her mother, to some extent. Her mother had been a submissive Omega, someone who knew the brutal ecosystem of Omegas better than anyone.
She must have clearly seen the abyss that awaited a poor, unprotected dominant Omega.
If the debt collectors had discovered what Marie truly was, they would’ve taken her without hesitation and used her however they could.
But what Marie couldn’t understand was what came after.
That one choice was something Marie could never forgive.
My mother left my sister behind.
‘Ma… Ma!’
‘Close your eyes, Freya. It’s okay, shhh… It’s okay.’
In front of her mother’s hanging body, Marie could do nothing but cover her sister’s eyes. She should’ve stayed. No matter how broken she was, she should’ve held on. She abandoned them, left her children behind in cowardice.
And just because their mother was gone didn’t mean the debt collectors showed any sympathy. The gambling debts her father left behind were so massive that even selling the estate and the territory wouldn’t come close to covering them.
Marie and her younger sister were on the verge of falling directly into the debtors’ hands.
If it hadn’t been for her aunt — the woman who claimed to be her mother’s sworn sister — they almost certainly would have.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said take your hands off them. I’ll pay that debt.’
The aunt who appeared out of nowhere had no wealth to speak of. But she used even her late husband’s life insurance payout to save Marie and her sister.
‘You’re Lydia’s daughters, aren’t you? I’m Helen. I was your mother’s friend… I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner. Marie, Freya — please, call me Aunt.’
‘Y-you came to find us?’
‘Yes. Come with me to the capital.’
How long had she searched for them? As Aunt Helen gently caressed her face, Marie clutched her hand tightly. From that moment on, the sisters moved to the kingdom’s capital and their new life in the city began.
She had heard that her mother and Aunt Helen had once been close friends, and that they had originally served as royal palace maids.
Goodness. Palace maids! That was a surprising revelation. But her aunt spoke little of the past, and beyond that, there wasn’t much Marie could learn.
The days that followed were filled with happiness, but also constant hardship. Aunt Helen ran a general store in the capital. She had no children of her own, but now with two girls to care for, their household naturally became even more impoverished.
Marie, always a quick-witted child, came to a simple conclusion:
‘We need money.’
To earn money, she needed a proper job. But for a noblewoman, especially an Omega, to find employment was almost unheard of. Still, she couldn’t just sit around and do nothing.
So, Marie helped around the general store and studied whenever she could. Thankfully, she was smart — brilliant, even — and eventually passed the notoriously difficult entrance exam to the Academy.
