1 The Bastard Son I

Sunlight streamed through the thick foliage, providing comforting warmth against the chill in the air left over from a winter that had hung past its welcome.

Atop a high branch, with his back pressed against the tree's sturdy trunk, was 13-year-old Eshijan Forester.

Young Eshijan Forester was a frequent presence in the vast forests of Mist Valley. He usually spends hours, from dusk to dawn, in the forests: hours which he would spend running around, hunting or training.

Although the time he spent in the forests was done with joy, there was another reason why such a young omega had preferred to venture into the depths of the wilderness alone.

That's because, for Eshijan, the forest was his refuge.

Eshijan Forester was a scion of the Forester family. The only aristocratic family in Mist Valley. His father was Lord Forester. His mother was the Lord's late-second husband, who was a civilian omega from Linos.

While the facts are simple, the reality widely accepted by the residents of Mist Valley paints a different picture.

-Eshijan Forester was the bastard son of Lord Forester and an omega whore from the capital.

-Lord Forester had been tricked into a marriage by the omega whore, who followed him back to Mist Valley with his bastard son.

-Lady Forester did not know of the marriage nor consent to it.

-For the sake of Lady Forester and the stability of her marriage, the omega whore and his bastard child were better off dead.

The marriage between Lord and Lady Forester was one of convenience arranged between an established aristocratic family on the verge of bankruptcy and a neo-aristocratic family with a desire to increase their standing.

The couple was courteous and maintained a loving image in public, but there was no love lost between them.

Lord Forester's affairs were known and accepted as a necessary evil by the ambitious Lady Forester. She did not care what her husband did as long as Lord Forester's actions did not drag down the Forester name.

It was only after the birth of their first daughter, Adilah, that Lady Forester began to take issue with their arrangement.

Lady Forester realized that she did not want her daughter to grow up with an adulterous and absentee father.

This desire wasn't something that occurred to her at once, but one built up over time, as her husband increasingly spent more time in the capital and less time watching over their daughter's growth. Then, three years later, things came to ahead. She received a devastating Net Transmission from her husband.

In the Transmission, Lord Forester informed her that he had fallen in love with a civilian omega of no standing in the capital and wished to take him as the second husband. An action made possible by the Conditional Polygamy Clause of the Furian constitution. Which states; In the situation where the first spouse of a Lord is a woman, it is within a Lord's right to take a second spouse under the condition that they are an omega.

Lady Forester had not taken the news well. For all she tolerated her husband's infidelity, a second marriage was unacceptable!

Tales of infidelity could be covered up from the public, but there was no hiding a marriage.

What would people say about her?

What would people say about her daughter?

How would all this gossip affect her daughter's future? Her education? Her prospects?

Those had been the thoughts running through her mind when she firmly rejected her husband that night.

Who would have thought that Lord Forester would have gone through the marriage regardless?

Who would have thought Lord Forester would have stayed a year longer in the capital?

Who would have thought it would be with a baby that Lord Forester would return to Mist Valley?

Lady Forester had refused to acknowledge the marriage and treated the new addition to the household with coldness and cruelty. An example followed by the estate servants, and once the increasingly warped and twisted version of the tale spread into town, the townspeople followed it as well. They felt it was their obligation to form a united front against the foreign threat to their town's hierarchy.

Though this is all interesting, this isn't what the story is about.

This story isn't about Lord Forester, Lady Forester, the late second husband or the Mist Valley residents.

This story is about Eshijan Forester, the baby who had been unfortunately fortunate enough to be born.

This is his story.