Chapter Text
“You have to be careful, Simon. Try not to draw attention to yourself. You don’t want the wrong alphas sniffing around”
Everyone knew that owning an omega meant the highest status. It didn’t matter what sect you were born into or what station you were on, if you mated an omega, you had it made. The stations desperately needed the new births to sustain the population. Simon didn’t want to be owned.
He knew alphas didn’t always wait for an omega to be willing, either. Drugs that forced heat and mimicked compatible scent markers were highly regulated. They were supposed to be used medically and only in times of great distress to give an omega on the verge of death a person to connect with and bring them down. They weren’t. Simon had seen his fair share of back hallway handoffs. He always kept walking, it was better to pretend you hadn’t seen than make a scene. Better to listen to what his mom had told him and not draw unwanted attention.
“Don’t look them in the eyes. Don’t let them think you’re looking back.”
Technically, forcing a mating was supposed to carry the death penalty. No one liked dealing with the scent of distressed omega in a cramped space station. No one enforced that law. Simon hated the way his omega classmates, who once had sweet scents, would slowly turn sour as the color drained from their cheeks and the hope left their eyes. Simon hadn’t had hope in a long time. He hated that he recognized that same sour scent from his mother’s sheets when he stripped them for laundry. She should have smelt sweet. Her scent could have been so lovely. It comforted him anyway.
“You are my greatest gift, Simon. I didn’t need courting gestures. I had you.”
Being an omega meant being constantly tense, on guard and waiting for unwanted advances. Watching life in the colony had taught him that. Sure, there was the occasional fairy tale of someone the next station over who smelled fresh flowers on a handsome stranger and fell madly in love, then had millions of pups and lived happily ever after with tons of extra rations as reward. Simon didn’t think any of those stories were real.
Omegas were rare, and that meant most of them spent their lives avoiding hungry stares, ravenous eyes that were just waiting for a moment to pounce. Covetous and impolite sniffs at scent glands without waiting to be invited first. Unwanted touches that grew bolder as the omega approached maturity, sometimes that got too bold long before. No one ever stepped in to intervene. No one was willing to risk their own skin for an omega who was supposedly sacred because of what they could provide, but was really no more than territory to be claimed and colonized.
Simon was not most omegas. He was lucky. He was cursed.
The “accident” that killed his mother had left him barren. His mom had always insisted suitors had to wait until he came of age to advance. He had suspicions that the commander who had been sniffing around when he was young didn’t take kindly to that. Simon was fairly sure he had arranged for the gas leak to try and make Simon available sooner by getting his only protector out of the way. Too bad he had ruined Simon’s life and his own chance at an omega in one fell swoop.
Simon lost his mom, the only one who had ever cared for him, and the only one who ever would. The remaining population was too low. No one wanted an omega who couldn’t do their duty. He was still subjected to the leering eyes, the nonexistent personal space, the noses that came just too uncomfortably close. He still had to suffer through the initial possessive sniff at his neck. But then the recoil. The look of disgust. The hate filled eyes as the invader smelled the bitter tinge to his glands that meant failure. No escape from a pitiful life to be claimed and stolen from this womb. There is no hope for you here. There is no hope for any of us here.
“That’s disgusting, you reek.”
It made him grateful. It made him angry.
How dare they decide that he wasn’t worthwhile just because he was born with the submissive secondary gender? How dare they decide he was lesser because he couldn’t have pups? It’s not like he didn’t want them, everyone knew how important carrying on humanity was. He just couldn’t. It was his eternal damnation. His eternal shame. Even if, in the safety of his own mind, he sometimes questioned if it would be better off to let them all slowly die off. If it would be a mercy to not bring any new and innocent children into the fallen and desolate world they were all forced to endure.
He was not useful as a breeder. He realized he would have to make himself useful in other ways. The Father offered him a solution.
The Father pulled him from a life of torment, hand over hand. Taught him how to use his fists and knife instead of his scent and wiles. Bestowed upon him a divine purpose that no one could deny. He was too good at what he did. The Butcher. He had to be. He wasn’t good at what he was born to be, so he was forced to become something else.
—
“One day you’ll settle down, Grace. Find a pretty young thing like your mother. It changes you, son.”
Grace didn’t want to be changed. He liked the way he was just fine. He had his science. He had his books. He had the occasional friend before they realized how weird, how different, he was and pretended like they got too busy for him. He knew they were trying to be polite. There wasn’t that much homework assigned this week. He never called them out on it anyway. He always enjoyed having a friend while it lasted.
“You’ll come to cherish them. It’s a blessing worth waiting for.”
Grace didn’t want to wait. He didn’t want a blessing, and he didn’t feel like cherishing anyone. He knew that made him unusual. All of the other kids were already flitting from person to person, flirting and playing with their hair to try and subtly spread their scent and look for a match. Grace didn’t see the appeal. No one ever made his heart beat faster the way discovering something new did. He didn’t feel the need to hunt or chase or claim anything other than the best spot in the library. He thought maybe that part of himself was broken.
He was an alpha, but what did that mean?
“Someday you’ll find the person that your blood sings for. Their scent will feel like coming home, It’ll drive you mad and make you calm all in the same breath.”
That sounded like torture, actually. Grace had a hard enough time parsing his emotions on a normal day. He always had trouble controlling his reactions, his feelings just felt like they were too big for his body and his words moved too fast for his brain to keep up. Why would he want some stranger’s scent coming in and making everything even murkier?
Everyone else his age seemed so consumed with the need to tease and kiss and maybe even more. His parents seemed focused on finding him a meek and pretty girl who would take care of them someday, someone exactly like his mom. Grace wondered why no one else seemed to need the same things he did. He didn’t want to be touched, he wanted to be understood. No one ever understood.
Grace was technically an alpha. His parents said so. The blood tests all said so. His brand new driver’s license said so. His scent, thick and earthy, said so. The gangly limbs that had suddenly made him several inches taller than all the other kids in his class and the hint of muscle on his arms that suggested he would eventually fill out said so.
He was an alpha. He wasn’t a very good one. He never felt the pull to find his mate. To sniff. To claim. It just didn’t seem to matter to him the way it did to normal alphas. If he couldn’t be a good alpha he would have to be good at something else. Finding someone to cherish never made sense. Science did. He would lean in and learn everything he could.
For the first time in his life he felt the stirring of want, the need to possess. It wasn’t for an omega, it was for knowledge. The thrill of an experiment completed successfully, results noted and new hypotheses already spinning away. Maybe he could learn enough about biology to figure out why he wasn’t like everyone else. Maybe he could learn how to make himself normal.