Chapter Text
Drats, caught again.
Jaskier sagged and let his heels drag on the ground in front of him as two guards started the long way back to the estate, each of them holding an arm.
“Captures by brutes, the—” Jaskier was jolted as he started to sing.
“No singing,” one of the guards said. “Make another sound and we’ll gag you.:”
He rolled his eyes. So touchy. Won’t even let a poor omega sing while being dragged back to captivity.
“And we’re not brutes…” The other guard mumbled under his breath.
“Of course not, darling—artistic liberties. You’re only doing your jobs; it’s my parents to blame, really, “
The guard holding his left arm shook him again, wrenching his arm in it’s socket. “I said, that’s enough out of you.”
After a few minutes went by, Jaskier looked to the more sensitive of the two on his right. “Sorry you didn’t get assigned patrol with Weaver—she’s quite nice, really.”
“That’s it!” Jaskier's arm was pulled harshly, ripping his other away from the nicer guard. Spun around, he was facing the contorted face of Thad. His least favorite guard.
“Ohhh,” Jaskier said. “It’s you. Didn’t recognize your voice through all that anger. I’m used to it being nothing but sexual tension. Or, I suppose it would be jealousy, rather, wouldn’t it?”
Thad’s eyes were bulging at this point and Jaskier could feel the hand bruising his bicep shaking with rage. He knew he should stop poking him but he also new that Thad would get in a lot of trouble if anything were to happen to him. And Thad knew it, too.
Not that Jaskier’s parents particularly cared what he looked like or how he was treated but there was a ball next week where they were trying to, essentially, peddle him off to someone’s Alpha heir and be rid of him. And bruises wouldn’t exactly do for that.
Then again, some Alphas just saw bruises on a marriage candidate as a Free Pass sign plastered o his forehead that they can do whatever they want to him.
Thad dug a rag out of his back pocket and Jaskier made a face. “Considering I don’t know where that’s been—” He leaned back, twisting his face away as Thad tried to hold him steady. “I think you should keep it to yourself.” He ducked, about to lose his temper and headbutt the man. He popped back up, looking Thad directly in the face as he delivered, “Knowing how you feel about me, you’d probably get off on that being a cumrag.”
Somehow, that made Thad—the most perpetually red-faced guard Jaskier had ever met—even redder and even madder.
“Help me hold him down!”
Before Jaskier knew it, he was caught between the two guards. Thad was still trying to wrestle a gag into him but other was, surprisingly, yelling at Thad. Well, Jaskier would take it.
After a moment, Thad was shoved off him and he was being held by the arm still by the nicer guard. “Take a walk,” he said to Thad. “Calm down. You’re not getting your hands back on him until you can control yourself. I don’t care if he won’t shut up—he’s just an Omega. Get ahold of yourself.”
While Jaskier didn’t like the implication he just couldn’t be held to a certain standard of behavior because he was just a poor, little Omega, he took it in silence. He knew when to pick his battles about his secondary sex and this was not one of those times. He made his escape attempt, he had been caught, he was going back. There wasn’t really anything else to do about it.
Oh, he had tried, for sure. Over the years since he presented there had, of course, been dozens of escape attempts. Ever since it was clear he wasn’t the Alpha son the Vicomte had been hoping for (and expecting), Jaskier saw the doors to the outside world each shutting before him. Ans after the first few escape attempts, those doors were no longer metaphorical. He had become, of sorts, a master of escape. And he was only twenty-three!
And while the escape attempts were never going to stop—not even once his parents got rid of him by shaking him up with some Alpha—the continued attempts once he had been caught had. It was one thing to face a few days of near starvation when he was dragged back. It was entirely another when he fought the guards and ran and was still caught and faced the beating of his life. He had been hit before, of course, but nothing like the time he had been miles away from the estate and a guard grabbed his arm. Guard ended up with a broken nose and Jaskier ended up unable to get out of bed for a week.
Eventually they arrived back at the estate.
At this point, it would make sense for his father to stop being so mad at his attempts at escape and to just start expecting them. But each time, he was still raging.
“Julian, what do I have to do with you to get you stay in your rooms?” His father hollered the second he was in the entrance hall. It took a lot of restraint to not roll his eyes.
He sat through his father’s lecture that he had heard a thousand times with classics like, “Why can’t you just be a good Omega and obey?” and “If I have to chain you to your bed until the day you’re mated then so help me, that is what will be done!” And, of course, how could Jaskier forget, “You Omegas! With your frivolous little ideas about what you ‘want.’ All you should be focused on is finding an Alpha to obey!”
See, his parents were fucking assholes. They didn’t only believe that Omegas were frail little things meant for nothing more than spreading their legs for an Alpha. Oh no, they were part of the Beta nobility that secretly maintained Betas were the only normal ones—Alphas and Omegas were both beings rules entirely by hormones and pheromones. The Alphas can do the protecting, the Omegas can keep the Alphas sane and, ultimately, everything else should just be left to Betas because they are the only ones who can really “keep their head.”
If Jaskier were to be asked, he thought that was rather reductive and hurtful to all sexes. Your designation was just a small part of who you were. And Jaskier was determined to be much more than just an Omega.
Finally, though, Jaskier’s father wore himself out and he found himself alone, one wrist chained to the side of his bed. And one handprint on the side of his face.
Crashing back against the pillows, Jaskier sighed. He dreamed of a day that it would be just him, out there. He would travel the world, do whatever he wished. Once one of these escape attempts finally stuck, he would make it a few towns over and get his hands on some scent blockers and then his life as Jaskier, the Traveling Bard would finally begin. And he could leave all this nonsense about “find an Alpha, get mated, pump out pups, and obey.”
He was determined that was not going to just be a dream. And he was
never
submitting to an Alpha, that much was for sure.