6. Just a Beta
Just a Beta
Andie
The bell above the door to Mama Li’s Noodle House chimed, a familiar sound that almost soothed the buzzing under my skin.
The air inside was a humid cloud of star anise, simmering broth, and ginger.
The scent had meant a safe space for the better part of a decade.
Almost like Robert’s chicken, if not quite so close to my heart.
This was our place. Danae’s and mine. A tiny pocket of the world free from Olympian politics, Alpha posturing, and the suffocating weight of my mother’s expectations.
Mr. Chen looked up from behind the counter, his face crinkling into a gentle smile. He was a small, wiry Beta man with kind eyes. His wife, Mama Li, ruled the kitchen with an iron wok and a heart of gold.
“Ah, Cross Xiǎojiě,” he said, his voice warm. “Just you today? Your friend is not yet here.”
“She’s on her way, Mr. Chen,” I said, doing my best to hide my anxiety.
“Good, good. The usual booth is ready for you.” He gestured toward the back, to the private room Danae and I always used. “The oolong is already waiting.”
I slid into the booth, the worn velvet of the seat a familiar comfort. The room was sectioned off by a dark wood screen carved with coiling dragons. It was also where I would finally get the weapon I needed. After the disaster with my fathers, Danae was the only one who could help me.
Alexander was trying to break me. To dismantle the independent life I had clawed out for myself, piece by painful piece.
Or perhaps he was trying to chip his way through my defenses again, just like that night, on the Odyssey.
No doubt, he’d use the chaos in my life and eventually present himself as my savior.
But Danae would see through it. Danae, with her beautiful, logical mind, would cut through the manipulation and find the hard data. A coded message. An offshore payment. A weather anomaly. Something. Anything. Her data was my only hope for survival.
I poured myself a cup of the fragrant tea Mr. Chen had left, my hand trembling slightly. The warmth of the cup did little to ward off the cold dread coiling in my gut.
The screen to our booth slid open. Danae slipped inside, her cheeks flushed from the city chill. She offered me a small, apologetic smile as she shrugged off her coat.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said, sliding onto the bench opposite me. “There was a water main break on 5th, and the entire street is chaos.”
It was a simple, mundane, human problem. It shouldn’t have irritated me as much as it did. “Don’t worry about it,” I said, my voice tight with anticipation. “Did you find him?”
“I found… a lot of things,” she said, her usual directness tempered with a note of caution. She produced a House Hephaestus data slate and booted it up. “Okay. I ran a full diagnostic on the last three events you flagged. The Beaumont wedding was the key.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. “The storm,” I breathed, leaning forward.
“Exactly.” She tapped the screen, bringing up a series of meteorological charts.
“It appeared on the satellite with less than a ten-minute warning and dissipated just as quickly. So, I ran the data against every known power signature of a House Zeus Alpha going back fifty years.” She looked up at me, and my stomach plummeted.
There was no triumphant spark in her eyes.
Only a quiet frustration. “There’s no match, Andie.
The energy patterns, the ozone decay… it’s all wrong.
This was a natural weather event. A one-in-a-million statistical anomaly. ”
The words were just noise. They didn’t compute. My mind was back in the mud and the driving rain. The bride had sobbed hysterically as I’d shielded her ruined dress from the photographers. An anomaly? No. It was a targeted strike
“A fluke?” I repeated, the word tasting like poison. “Danae, the cake van was stranded for two hours. The power went out in the middle of the reception. The string quartet’s instruments were warped by the humidity. It was a systematic demolition of my work.”
“The van was stranded because a tree fell and blocked the access road,” she countered, already swiping to a different file.
It was a municipal services report, complete with time-stamped photos of a massive oak tree lying across a two-lane road.
“And the power outage affected a three-block radius. I pulled the grid data. A transformer blew. It had nothing to do with the venue.”
“But he was there,” I insisted. “I saw him. How did he get in? Security was on lockdown because of the weather.”
“He walked in,” Danae said, and the simplicity of it was more infuriating than any complex hack.
“I interviewed the head of security myself. Beta man, ex-military, impeccable record. He doesn’t even remember letting Stormwright pass.
He just remembers a… feeling. Of absolute certainty that Stormwright belonged there, that questioning him would be a profound mistake.
It’s a classic application of a House Zeus Alpha charismatic aura.
” She looked at me, her expression earnest, almost pleading.
“That’s the only piece of evidence, Andie.
His presence. There were no financial transfers to disgruntled staff, no back-channel communications, no digital footprints of any kind.
He used his aura to get past a single guard, watched the chaos for twenty minutes, and then left. ”
Of course he’d walked in, because he’d done that at the Fairmont, too. But even so… There had to be something more to it. Something more to his schemes.
I stared at the screen, at the clean, logical information Danae had brought. It was all a lie. It had to be. He was hunting me. I knew it. I could feel it in my bones. The intricate dragons on the scroll seemed to writhe, their painted scales shimmering with mockery.
“But he’s always there,” I whispered. “Every time something goes wrong, he’s there. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“I know,” Danae said softly. “But correlation isn’t causation. I’ve looked everywhere, Andie. I’ve peeled back every layer. There’s no proof he’s doing anything.”
No proof. The words echoed the conversation with my fathers.
Their suggestion that I just… run. Hide.
The utter helplessness of it crashed over me, a suffocating wave of impotent rage.
I was being hunted, my life’s work was being dismantled piece by piece, and the one person I trusted to give me a weapon had just handed me an empty holster.
With a choked cry of frustration, I slammed my hands down on the table. The heavy ceramic teacup jumped, spun, and crashed to the floor. It shattered with a sound that was shockingly loud in our small, private room.
The world snapped back into focus. Danae was staring at me, her eyes wide with a mixture of shock and alarm. A splash of hot tea soaked the tablecloth between us. The sudden, violent silence was deafening, broken only by my own ragged breathing.
Before either of us could speak, the wooden screen slid open.
It was Mr. Chen, his aged face etched with concern.
He held a small tray with two fresh cups and a steaming pot of tea.
He must have been on his way to check on us when he heard the crash.
His gaze flickered from my face to Danae’s to the broken porcelain on the floor.
“Aiya,” he murmured, the sound soft with dismay. He didn’t sound angry, which was somehow worse. He set the tray down on a clear corner of the table. “Cross Xiǎojiě. A big noise. Everything okay here?”
My cheeks burned hot. I had just thrown a childish tantrum in my favorite restaurant, in front of a man who had only ever been kind to me. The quiet privacy of our booth was gone, replaced by the humiliating reality of my own loss of control. I couldn’t even look at him.
“We’re fine, Mr. Chen,” Danae said quickly, her voice a little strained but recovering faster than mine. “I’m so sorry. That was my fault. I knocked it over by accident. We’ll pay for it, of course.”
She was lying for me. Covering for me. Her effortless excuse was a knife in my gut.
Mr. Chen just shook his head, already kneeling with a dustpan he seemed to produce from nowhere.
“No, no. Not important. Just a cup.” He swept the pieces up with quiet efficiency.
“You two look like you need something sweet. To settle the stomach.” He gave me a brief, concerned glance.
Then, he slid the screen closed, leaving us alone once more.
The intrusion, as gentle as it was, had irrevocably broken the spell. My rage had curdled into a thick, nauseating stew of humiliation. I felt cornered, judged, and utterly exposed. And Danae’s lie, her attempt to protect me, now felt like another layer to the trap.
Danae picked up the fresh teapot he’d left and poured for both of us, her movements precise and steady. The perfect engineer, restoring order to a chaotic system. To her, I was now exactly that. Pure chaos.
“Andie,” she began, her voice soft, cautious. “Okay. Let’s just forget the data for a minute. You’re wound so tight you’re snapping. Maybe he’s not actively sabotaging you. Maybe he’s just… watching you. And the pressure of that is enough to make things fall apart. Maybe you just… need a break.”
It was the most infuriatingly logical thing she could have said. It was so much like what my fathers had said. And because it held a sliver of truth, it felt like the most profound betrayal of all.
She was turning it all back on me. My reaction was the problem, not his action. I was the one falling apart. I was the hysterical Omega.
“So you think I’m imagining it?” I asked. “You think I’m so weak, so emotionally fragile, that the mere presence of an Alpha is enough to make me ruin my own career?”
“That’s not what I said,” she insisted, but the damage was done. “I’m just saying there are other possibilities besides a grand conspiracy. I’m trying to help you see this from another angle.”
“What you’re doing is dismissing me,” I shot back, the rage returning, cold and sharp this time.
“You’re sitting there with your perfect Beta logic, looking at your perfect data, and telling me that what I feel, what I know in my gut, is wrong.
You’re patting me on the head and telling me to calm down. ”
The chasm between us was suddenly immense. She had her world of facts and figures, a world where problems could be quantified and solved. I was living in a world of instinct and threat. It was a war being fought in my blood and my bones, and she couldn’t see it. She would never see it.
“You wouldn’t get it,” I spat. “How could you? You’re just a Beta. You don’t know what it’s like. You’ll never understand.”
The silence that followed was absolute, a vacuum that sucked all the warmth and history from our small booth. Danae physically recoiled, her shoulders hunching as if she’d been struck.
For Danae, her Beta nature had always been a sore spot. In our world, it was only ever the Alphas and the Omegas that truly stood out. The Betas were… useful. But they weren’t supposed to be beautiful or loved. Or something to be truly passionate about.
“Will I ever find a mate, Andie?” she’d asked me once. “Someone who doesn’t want an Omega?”
I’d assured her no one could ever be better than her. But if she’d believed me then, she certainly didn’t anymore.
Danae didn’t get angry. She didn’t yell. She just stared at me for a long moment, almost as if she could no longer recognize me. It was worse than any rage she could have thrown at me.
Then, with a slow, deliberate movement, she closed her data slate. The soft click echoed in the stillness. She gathered her coat, her movements stiff and economical. “You’re right,” she said, her voice completely devoid of emotion. “I don’t understand.”
She slid out of the booth and was gone. The screen clicked shut behind her, louder than it should have been.
The silence she left behind was different. The rage that had fueled me evaporated in an instant, leaving a nauseating void in its place. I stared at the spot where she had been sitting, the half-full teacup a testament to a conversation I had just murdered.
A few minutes later, the screen slid open again.
It was Mama Li. She didn’t say anything about Danae leaving.
She just placed a small, steaming plate of pan-fried dumplings—my favorite—on the table, next to a small bowl of dipping sauce.
Her face was as motherly as ever, but her eyes held a profound, quiet sadness.
“You eat,” she said softly. “Friendship is strong. It will mend.”
She slid the screen closed, leaving me with the aroma of toasted sesame oil and her simple, devastating warmth. The gesture was meant to be a comfort, but it was the final blow. It was a kindness I didn’t deserve, a faith I had just betrayed.
For the first time in weeks, the monster I was so desperate to find in the shadows felt terrifyingly close. I stared at the perfect, golden-brown dumplings, my stomach churning. I knew I wouldn’t be able to take a single bite.