Lin Feng was born in the Chen province of Go as the oldest child to Mei and Ren Feng. The Feng family was a kind, hard working family in the province, running one of their own businesses selling out of a food stall, offering food from family recipes that have been passed down by the generations. They were proud, and most of all, they were happy.

At least that’s what Lin had thought, up until the age of five when her father left home one day and never came back. She would learn later that he had been having an affair with an omega from Frens who had come on vacation and had left with an alpha that didn’t belong to him.

It was hard for a while but it wasn’t an unhappy life. Lin was too young to really understand her mothers turmoil though she did empathise with her, the loss of a mate was something so hard to bear. But Mei was a tough woman and even without her husband she kept the business running, putting Lin to work while balancing raising the newborn Ruan.

And for a while that’s what life was like, Lin learned how to cook and one the days they could afford it she would go to school and learn as much as she possibly could. Those times were often rare, but she was a good student who studied when she had the time and managed to make passing marks even with her prolonged absences. She made her teachers very proud.

When Lin was twelve, she was officially presented as an omega. There was a small celebration and her mother spoke eagerly of marrying her off to someone of a higher status so that Lin could live a more comfortable life when she was older. An idea that she absolutely hated, she loved her life in Chen and working at her family's business. It wasn’t always easy but it was hers and she was proud of it.

It was only a year or so later when her mother was killed. The two of them had been bickering over finances and futures, Lin wanted to keep going to school and her mother wanted her to focus on socialising and getting to know more people, sure that she wouldn’t need learning if she made the right connections and met the right person to give  her a good life that way.

There had been one particularly bad argument where Mei took Lin’s school books and tossed them in the trash. They were near tears in debate when the sound of a voice interrupted them and Lin had gone to tell the customer they had closed for the night, her eyes still blurred with frustrated tears.

The robbery had been awful, she remembered being shoved back into the stall and a sharp pain on her face, she remembers her mother yelling at the intruder that they couldn’t have the money, that they needed it to eat. They fought.

Lin found Ruan hiding under the counter and scooped him up, stumbling out of the stall and the noise and she hurried for help, running into someone and pleading for them to hurry with her. Pointing back to the stall which had gone eerily quiet.

She wouldn’t find out the fate of her mother until an official of some sort came to take her and her brother to an orphanage. They didn’t have any other family and no one could find their father, something she to this day is grateful for.

Life after that got hard, mourning her life and her mother while also taking care of her little brother Lin threw herself into work. Saving up coin working in other stalls and studying even harder at school than she had before, and eventually things started to feel okay again. Talking to others and making friends, even though the older she got the more uncomfortable people became towards her. Asking her if she had a mate, who and when and wasn’t it about time she started thinking about her future?

Except she was, when she was sixteen and applying for scholarships for the best university in the world. Except she was, making sure her brother was happy and comfortable. But she could ignore them, she would ignore the advances from alphas when they looked at her like she was a part of the menu, or the stupid kids at the orphanage who dating each other so much she almost felt left out.

But she had work  to do, and a family she wasn’t ready to let go of.

All things happen in threes. And for Lin that was her father, her mother, and then… her brother.

It wasn’t abandonment or some big thing, it was quiet and anti-climatic, it was the opposite of the energetic and happy little brother she knew, it was an accident. The winter had been cold, and the other kids and him had all been playing outside. Lin too, until her nose and wingtips got chilled and she bundled back inside to read by the fire.

The other kids came running in with him, hurt and dazed, but he was okay wasn’t he?

He wasn’t. Never let someone with a concussion sleep, she should have known better. Someone should have known better, but by the time they’d gotten the attention of an adult, the then sixteen year old had lost the last remaining member of her family.

That last year had gone by so slowly and so fast at the same time, and Lin had to learn how to keep going, and she did. Because she had to do right by her mother and by her brother, who believed in her strength and in her ambition, even when heads clashed. She would still show them that she would not fall to misery.

So she graduated, she made it through school and she got that damn scholarship she worked so hard for. She’d laughed and cried with friends, said goodbye to the mishmash family she had made and packed her bags.

The scholarship funded her tuition and dorm costs, but she applied nearly right away as an aid in the library, as any saved money had gone to the cost of moving across the world to a whole new country and situated there.

Now she is here at Avalor University, here to prove herself to the world she’s joined and the one she left behind.