“—gonna need you to— to sit down for this, Nico.” Dr.
Vos’s office was small and cold, her desk covered in files with Dutch labels I couldn’t read.
She’d been smelling me for the past 2 minutes without saying a word, just circling, her nostrils flared, her face giving away nothing while I sat there in yesterday’s clothes with my skin tacky from dried sweat and whatever else my body had been leaking all night.
“I’m sitting.” “Good.” She pulled her chair around to face mine, no desk between us.
“What I’m about to tell you is going to sound impossible, but I need you to hear the whole thing before you react.” “That’s a really great way to make sure I react before you finish.” “Nico.” “Just…
tell me.
Please.” She looked at me for a beat, her eyes steady, clinical.
“Your bloodwork flagged when you arrived.
Elevated testosterone, unusual hormone ratios, markers I don’t see in regular athletes, and I ran the panel twice to confirm.” “You keep sayin’ regular like there’s another kind.” “There is.” The room went cold, or maybe it didn’t, maybe it was just me; my hands went numb on the armrests, my stomach did this horrible slow drop, every hair on my arms stood up ’cause the part of me that’d been awake since the first training session already knew what she was gonna say.
“There’s a biological designation,” she said, and the pause before ‘designation’ told me she didn’t love the word.
“It occurs in a small percentage of the population.
It’s genetic, it’s inherited, it’s been documented for centuries, though not in any literature you’d find at a university.” “You’re stalling.” “I’m trying not to scare you.” “I woke up last night producing fluid from inside my body that I’ve never produced before, I came so hard I couldn’t see straight, and I can smell my captain from across a car park.
So I think, like…
we’re past scared.” She paused—just barely, a twitch at the corner of her mouth.
“The fluid is— it’s called slick.
It’s a natural lubricant produced by omega males during—” “Omega?” “Let me finish.” “Omega like wolves?
Like a fuckin’ nature documentary?” “Like a biological designation that predates nature documentaries by about 12,000 years.” Her voice was steady, but her hands were gripping her knees, knuckles white.
“There are three designations: alpha, beta, omega.
Most people are beta; they’re baseline, they don’t present, they live their whole lives not knowing the system exists.” “Alphas and omegas are rare, maybe 1 in 50,000, and male omegas…” She paused, choosing her words.
“Male omegas are the rarest presentation of all, roughly 1 in 10,000 among males who carry the gene.
The literature is thin.
Most physicians will never encounter one.
They carry a gene that activates in early adulthood, typically between 20 and 25.” “And I’m…” “You’re presenting as omega.
Your bloodwork confirmed it.
Your scent confirms it.
The heightened senses, the phantom fevers that don’t show on a human thermometer, the…” She gestured vaguely at my lap.
“The physiological responses.
All of it is textbook presentation.” I stared at her, she stared back, the fluorescent light was buzzing above us, and I kinda wanted to laugh ’cause the whole thing sounded batshit, proper batshit, and also it made perfect sense, every single thing that’d happened since I landed in this country clicked into place.
THAT was the part that scared me more than the word ‘omega.’ “Kessler,” I said.
“Alpha.
He presented at 19.
He’s known what he is for 14 years.” “And he knew about me.
From day one.” “He could smell you from your first session.
Alphas can detect a presenting omega’s scent before the omega even knows what’s happening to them.
It’s biological, involuntary, and in Damjan’s case…” She stopped.
“Difficult.” “Difficult how?” “Nico, you need to understand that what Damjan’s been doing, the distance, the hostility, asking Henrik to send you away…
all of it was him trying to protect you.
An unbonded alpha in close proximity to a presenting omega experiences a drive that is, to put it mildly, overwhelming.
He’s been fighting his own body as hard and as desperately as you’ve been fighting yours.” I sat there, my brain just…
froze, honestly, trying to process the words she’d just used while also replaying every moment with Kessler.
His nostrils flaring, his jaw locked tight.
His eyes dropping down my body in the corridor.
His voice cracking on I will not be able to stop at telling you.
It all looked different now; the man hadn’t been cruel, he’d just been holding himself together with his fingernails while I stood in front of him, leaking a scent that was designed, literally designed by 12,000 years of biology, to make him lose control.
“The fluid,” I said, my voice coming out rough.
“The slick.
Is that gonna keep happening?” “Yes.
And it will intensify.” She leaned forward.
“What you experienced last night was pre-heat.
Just a preview.
Your body is preparing for its first full heat cycle, which based on your hormones and the speed of your presentation, I estimate will hit within the next 72 hours.” “Heat cycle?
You’re tellin’ me I’m going into heat?” “Your body will experience elevated temperature, extreme sensitivity, an increased sex drive that may be…
difficult to manage alone.
Your scent will intensify, which means—” “Kessler will smell it.” “Everyone in this building will smell it.
But Kessler will smell it first and strongest, because you’re compatible.” “Compatible?” “Your scent profiles match.
His biology recognizes yours, and yours his.
That’s why your symptoms are accelerating, and why the suppressants failed.” She paused, and when she spoke again her voice was softer.
“Your body isn’t just presenting, Nico, it’s already started bonding to him.” My hands were shaking in my lap, the room was too bright yet too small, the sweet smell coming off my own skin thick enough to taste.
I pressed my thumb into the compass tattoo on my wrist, pushed until the bone ached ’cause I needed a point of contact that wasn’t this office and wasn’t this woman telling me my body had chosen a man without asking my permission.
“Can I stop it?” “The bonding?” “Any of it.
The heat, the…
all of it.
Can I take a pill?
Can you just—” “There are— there are stronger suppressants.
The ones Henrik gave you at orientation, I prescribed those, just a standard dose, but they failed because your presentation is unusually aggressive and because the compatible alpha is in daily contact, which accelerates everything.” She took a breath.
“I’ll prescribe a higher dose, but I have to be honest with you.
If your first heat hits at the intensity I’m predicting, suppressants alone might not be enough.
You’ll need to be somewhere safe, somewhere isolated, and you’ll need someone you trust nearby.” “Nearby to do what?” She didn’t answer, but she didn’t need to ’cause I knew.
I knew from the way my body had responded to my own fingers last night, from the way it responded to Kessler’s scent; I also knew from the fluid still drying on my thighs underneath yesterday’s joggers.
The knowing sat in my chest, and it was NOT something I could put back.
“Does he know?” I said.
“About the bonding.
That it’s…
does he know it’s him?” “I haven’t told him.” “But he can feel it.” “Almost certainly.” I opened my mouth and the door behind me opened at the same time, a scent hitting the back of my throat, cedar and warm skin, sharp electric, and Dr.
Vos stood up fast and said “Damjan, not now—” and every nerve in my body lit up.
I didn’t turn around ’cause if I did and looked at him while knowing what I now knew, while my body was doing what it was doing, while the word bonding was still ringing through my skull…
I was not gonna survive it.
“I told you 6 o’clock,” Dr.
Vos said.
“It’s a quarter past.” And behind me, close, way too close, his voice low and wrecked and barely English: “I could smell him from the gates.”