Yes, My Alpha: Mother of an Empire

Chapter 1

Ophelia Reeds had spent her life living in the hills of the Dukedom of Spade. She grew up in a small village called Flat Trench, within the aging walls of the church of Saint Gypsum. Much of Ophelia's childhood was no different from any other alpha woman's. Orphaned around the time she presented, as many alpha women are, Ophelia grew up without a family.

After all, no family during this time could afford to keep a daughter who did not earn a dowery. Additionally, being competition for their sons' inheritance, it was often for the best that girls like Ophelia were sent off to live within the walls of the church.

So her adolescence was spent with the priests and nuns of the church, she learned to read and write as many of the girls did. She stayed within the quarters reserved for abandoned girls like herself and grew up around a circus of ever-changing faces. While many of the girls grew up and became priests for the church, Ophelia was one of the few who chose not to. Because of that, she needed to pick up a trade.

In the village of Flat Trench, there were few opportunities for work. Most people end up being farmers or woodsmen. Being that Flat Trench was surrounded by towering hills and woods that covered them. It was far easier to get a job as a woodsman than it was as a farmer.

Most farms in the village were run by families, and very few would be welcoming to an outsider like herself. So Ophelia became a woodsman, a trade she naturally picked up because of her innate strength and her naturally sturdy build.

But the hard labor of being a woodsman was not easy, there were many days that Ophelia struggled. But slowly, over time, she became even stronger than before. She grew tall, towering over the majority of the men in the village, regardless of their dynamics. Her height soon became a running joke at both the church and the village, and Ophelia often had to hear wisecracks about her father being a giant.

Ophelia found the thought amusing at first, but it grew old quickly. Unlike most of the orphaned girls that had grown up at Saint Gypsum, no one knew who Ophelia's parents were. She was found washed up on the banks of the river that ran near the church, clinging for life and holding onto fistfuls of reeds.

When she was taken to the church, she had very little memory. She could only remember her name, Ophelia. Reeds was the name given to her at the church because of how she was found. A name that never quite sat right with Ophelia, but she couldn't really think of a better one. Most of Ophelia's memories before arriving at Saint Gypsum were vague and fuzzy.

Blurry memories of traveling carts and dancing around fires filled her mind when she tried to think of her childhood. Music that was foreign to the music of the church often haunted her dreams. But every time Ophelia tried to grasp onto these memories to capture more information. It always seemed to vanish in a puff of smoke as quickly as those thoughts arrived. The faces of her mother and father were particularly blurry, almost nonexistent in Ophelia's memory.

Ophelia lived in a daze, each day blending into the next, seamless and endless. Every day was the same, and the only thing that changed was that she got older. Ophelia had quickly realized when she was younger that paying attention to names and faces was a fruitless labor. People came and went in her life like sand through her fingers. She found, that the only thing worth paying attention to was where her next meal was coming from and if she had a place to sleep for the night.

Her only true concern was to survive despite everything.

But one day the sound of trumpets thundered through her as if awakening her out of a deep slumber. Ophelia, who had been working on one of the many hillsides in Flat Trench, jumped at the sudden sound. holding onto a nearby tree, she looked down at the road leading to the village spotting a glorious parade of horses, carts, and soldiers in bright shining armor marching to the tiny village.