Chapter Text
Min Yoongi was never meant to be an Omega.
It just wasn’t what was written in the stars for him. As a child, people would take one at his scraped knees, messy hair, and the dirt streaked across his nose and turn to his parents with a laugh and a knowing look that said you’ve got a little Alpha on your hands, huh? And in return, his sire would smile proudly and ruffle Yoongi’s hair with a nod of agreement. Yoongi was rough and tumble, always getting into trouble with his older cousins and rolling around in the dirt without a care. That was what is meant to be an Alpha, surely. Every time he came home with a new bump or bruise, instead of running to his dam with a snotty nose and quivering lip, he went straight to his sire looking for the praise he knew he would get for his “battle scars”.
Even at eight years old with an elder Alpha brother who had already presented, Yoongi was his Appa’s little Alpha, always following on the man’s heels and eager to learn how to be an Alpha exactly like him one day. Geumjae would always call him a suck-up and tease Yoongi for his idolization of their father, but Yoongi didn’t care. His father was the picture perfect Alpha– not quite as tall as some Alphas, but built and thick with corded muscle, a strong instinct to protect his family and a great pride in his ability to provide for them. Even though Geumjae was the eldest brother and was the one who would take over as the “pack leader” when their father passed away or became otherwise incapacitated, Yoongi was the golden child in his Appa's eyes. And golden child was a role that Yoongi took very seriously. While other kids his age were running around without a care in the world as to when they would present or what they would present as, Yoongi was actively building his Alpha skills. While his peers played gonggi and jegichagi on the blacktop during recess, Yoongi was running laps and lifting heavy rocks as though they were dumbbells in an effort to grow big and strong like his sire. Whenever the children would play house, Yoongi would always assume the role of sire and do his best to provide for and protect his pretend pack, whether that be through “foraging” for food to eat or puffing his chest and doing his best imitation of a growl whenever another student would come too close.
As he aged and entered middle school, Yoongi watched as one by one, his peers began to present. By the time he reached year two, it was not uncommon for a classmate to disappear one day and come back to school a few days later looking tired and haggard but smelling of their new orientation; the musky cedar wood and patchouli of a newly-presented Alpha, the clean cotton and salty sea-breeze of a Beta, or a light and fluffy whipped cream and vanilla that screamed Omega. It didn’t bother Yoongi much when a peer would come back smelling of an Omega or Beta, but every time he got a whiff of malt whiskey or freshly-cut lawn, he couldn’t stop the jealousy that sparked deep within. Why them and not him? It wasn’t fair that kids who had been indifferent to their presentation became an Alpha before Yoongi who had worked tirelessly, and hoped and dreamed of his own Alpha presentation for as long as he could remember.
When he broke down about it to his sire— one of the few times he had allowed himself to cry in front of him— Gwanhee had merely patted Yoongi’s head and said with a small, comforting grin, “You’re going to be a great Alpha, Yoongi-yah. And sometimes greatness takes time to marinate. You’ll present when it’s your time and no sooner than that.”
And present he did.
It had taken much longer than most of his peers in the end. In year two of high school, Yoongi was one of the last of his classmates to still be unpresented. It was a source of shame for him and he was victim to a bit of teasing from his classmates, but it was nothing the boy couldn’t handle. After all, his Appa was right— greatness took time to marinate, and Yoongi was going to be the greatest out of all the loser Alphas in his class. He had to be.
Everything changed when he woke up one day sweating like a stuck pig and with the fabric of his boxers damp and sticking to the skin of his upper thighs and ass as though he had pissed himself.
Upon further investigation, what he had originally believed to be urine was actually much thicker and disgustingly slimy to the touch. Yoongi immediately called out to his parents in a panic, only to be interrupted by a crippling pain exploding in his lower stomach, sending him curled into a fetal position. He remained in the same pose, whimpering helplessly, when his eomma and appa found him after bursting through the door moments later.
“What’s wrong?” His appa shouted as he moved closer to Yoongi’s bed before flinching backwards and pausing with his nose scrunched up as if he had smelled something strange. “What–”
“Shit,” his eomma whispered as she pushed past the Alpha who had frozen like a statue with his hand half raised as if he wanted to touch Yoongi but was too hesitant to do so. “He’s presenting.”
“P-Presenting?” Yoongi heard the man stutter in response as his eomma sat next to him on the bed and began petting his sweat-soaked hair. “This is not what a presentation looks like! An Alpha presents by popping their first knot, not keeling over like they’re ready to die. Something must be wrong— we have to call a-an ambulance or something!”
Yoongi wanted to protest, if this was a presentation gone wrong, he could handle it! He didn’t need to be carted off to the hospital in an ambulance like a baby. He tried to say so, but the mind-numbing cramps still hadn’t resided and prevented anything more than a groan or whimper from leaving his mouth.
“I don’t think he’s presenting as—” Eunji cut herself off with a sigh as she felt Yoongi’s forehead with the back of her hand and then glanced at the sheets that had been ruined by sweat and whatever was going on in his boxers. “He’s feverish and— and just look at the sheets. Yoongi’s not presenting as an Alpha. He’s an Omega.”
“Impossible…” his appa whispered as he finally seemed to unfreeze and stepped closer to the bed— closer to Yoongi. His nose twitched as he sniffed the air and his gaze softened as what he smelled confirmed it. “Lemon and mint…”
Gwanhee reached out, carefully scooping Yoongi up in his arms and swiftly lifted the teenager out of his ruined bed. The sudden movement caused Yoongi to whimper as his cramping intensified.
“It’s alright, son,” Gwanhee spoke softly as he cradled Yoongi to his strong chest. “We’re going to get you cleaned up in the bathtub and your eomma is going to fix up your bed. It’ll be alright.”
“No!” Yoongi groaned helplessly as his father began to carry him out of his room. When they reached the bathroom, he was set carefully onto the floor while his father turned on the tub’s faucet to run a bath. “‘m not an Omega… can’t be. Gonna be an Alpha j-just like you, Appa.”
Gwanhee sighed as he sat on the floor next to Yoongi and caressed his sweaty hair. His father had never been so gentle with him in the past. He had never been cold or emotionally unavailable by any means, but Gwanhee had always treated Yoongi like an Alpha— like he was strong and capable and never like he was fragile. It seemed that everything had changed the moment his father smelled the lemon and mint rolling off of Yoongi in waves.
As Gwanhee undressed him, he spoke to Yoongi. “You’re not, Yoongi. You’re not an Alpha like we thought you were and that’s okay. In fact, looking back, I think I misunderstood this whole time. I always thought you following me around like a little duckling was because you enjoyed learning how to provide like an Alpha, but you just liked spending time with your appa, huh? Your brother was never so attached to me, he’s had a sense of independence for as long as I can remember, but you’ve always been so dependent on me, huh? I was so set on having two Alpha sons that I neglected to see what was right in front of me.”
All Yoongi could do as he was undressed and deposited into the lukewarm water was cry and murmur the word no, all while clinging to his father and crying harder every time the man tried to soothe him.
Min Yoongi was never meant to be an Omega, but fate had cruel intentions and an even crueler sense of humor and Yoongi turned out to be the butt of this poorly orchestrated joke.
Even after his first heat had come and gone, over the course of his final years of high school, Yoongi was still as adamant as ever that he was not some whining, snivelling Omega who needed to be coddled and treated like glass. He grew up being socialized as an Alpha— always depended on, never the dependent one.
His father had treated his presentation as though a switch had been flipped in their relationship. Instead of sending him out to chop wood for their furnace or tasking him with fixing up a rickety old chair, Gwanhee now shooed Yoongi away when he attempted to take on any type of physical labor or anything that resembled providing for the family. Instead, he was led inside of the house and sat on the couch to ‘relax’, which Yoongi would instead call ‘sitting on his ass and being useless’. Trying to fight his father on the matter was of positively no help either. While the man was by no means traditional in the sense that he believed Omegas were to do nothing aside from upkeep the house and tend to the pups, he definitely was of the mindset that Omegas were to be pampered and cherished and by no means were to do anything strenuous or adverse to their mental well-being.
One of the worst things to come out of his presentation—aside from the unbearable, soul-sucking heats—was how his father had started nudging him more and more toward his dam for ‘Omega bonding time’. As much as he adored his eomma, it was mind-numbing to trail after her in the kitchen while she made dinner, or to spend hours in a craft store holding the shopping basket as she fueled her endless rotation of hobbies. He’d honestly rather be out in the blistering sun doing yard work with his appa.
No matter how often he insisted that the life of a pampered, idle House Omega (no offense to his mother) wasn’t for him, he was blocked at every turn whenever he tried to do anything even remotely Alpha-coded. Instead, he was gently redirected to see if his eomma needed help with some mindless task, but Yoongi wasn’t about to cave. He didn’t want to learn how to sew or master the perfect kimchi jjigae—not when the garden needed weeding or the shed needed fixing.
From the moment he presented, Yoongi’s life had been a slow, bitter war against what he was: an Omega. A word that made his stomach twist and his skin crawl. He raged against it and denied it with every ounce of stubbornness in his bones. His voice, his mind, his body—he tried to make all of them into weapons of resistance. He walked like an Alpha, talked like one, refused softness, refused submission, refused the neatly gift-wrapped box that society tried to trap him in. But for all his fury, there was one battle he could never win.
Every three months, like evil clockwork, his heat would come and drag him far enough under that no amount of pride or stubbornness could keep him afloat.
He remembered the early heats, the first dozen or so that had occurred when he was sixteen, seventeen, and even eighteen. The discomfort was still unbearable—the fever that burned beneath his skin and left him scalding to the touch, the emptiness that gnawed at his insides—but the desire hadn’t yet sharpened into something primal, nor had his Omega learned what it wanted– at least not fully.
Back then, all that his damned Omega craved was comfort, safety, and familiarity. Back then, it craved Appa.
Gwanhee would come into Yoongi’s room when the fever hit, carrying a basin of cool water and exuding a gentle patience that only a father could offer. He’d scent the room carefully, speaking in a low voice, humming old lullabies that Yoongi hadn’t heard since he was a toddler. Gwanhee would gather his son in his arms and just hold him, firm and quiet and steady, like an anchor thrown into a storm. Gwanhee was uncaring of the sweat that soaked Yoongi’s skin, and if he was disgusted by the slick that often soaked the bed sheets or, heaven forbid, got on the older man’s clothing, he made no indication of it.
Yoongi would bury his face into the crook of his father’s neck, shaking and muffling his sobs against the warm flesh; sometimes from the pain, sometimes from shame, other times just because it was all too much. Gwanhee would never flinch and he’d never pull away. Instead, he’d whisper over and over, “It’s okay, pup. I’ve got you. Appa’s right here. You’re not alone.”
And for a long time, that was enough. The ache dulled beneath the comfort of his father’s scent and the heat, though awful, became survivable in the circle of Gwanhee’s strong arms.
Yoongi hated being an Omega—but he never hated his appa for trying to help. For a few years, he started to believe that if this was what a heat entailed, he could deal with it. It wasn’t preferable, and in no way did Yoongi want or look forward to his heat rolling around quarterly, but if he had to fall victim to his designation and lose his control, he was glad that his appa was there to ease him through it and soothe him when he came out the other side, rugged and weary.
But heats did not stay innocent with the childlike need for comfort— no, they most certainly did not.
When Yoongi turned nineteen, something shifted—and it didn’t shift gently, rather it tore through his body like a blade wielded with no mercy. His next heat hit like a wildfire and burned through his body, ravaging his senses and leaving him wounded, both mentally and physically.
It wasn’t sudden, but it was definitive. Something in him shifted—something deeper than just hormones. His Omega, once childlike and confused, had grown razor-sharp teeth. Its cravings had evolved from vague longing to a raw, insatiable need that no amount of cuddling or familial scenting could ease. And more than that, his father’s presence, once a balm that soothed the ache of his hurting and confused Omega, now grated against every primal instinct in his body. He didn’t want to be held… he wanted to be taken.
He wanted an Alpha.
He wanted scent, touch, teeth—things he’d spent years pretending he didn’t need, desires that he’d spent years actively working against. But now, every nerve in his body screamed for it and it was unbearable. Not just because the need went unanswered, but because the truth behind that need unspooled inside him like a shameful confession.
No Alpha would come. There was no Alpha. No bond. No knot. Just empty air, cool sheets, and the echo of something he’d spent so long rejecting.
So he writhed for what could have been hours or even days, clutching at pillows, soaking the mattress in sweat and slick, moaning until his voice cracked. He was half-delirious and his body was wound tightly– with frustration, with loneliness and a desperate craving for a touch that would never come.
And then Gwanhee walked into the room.
He meant well just as he always did. He still saw his pup, small and hurting, in need of soothing, but at that moment, Yoongi wasn’t his innocent pup anymore.
The second his father crossed the threshold, Yoongi snapped. His Omega surged to the surface like a live wire, screaming that this was wrong, wrong, wrong. His father’s scent, once a comfort, now burned like acid in his lungs and singed the hairs of his nostrils. The space that had once been a sanctuary became a cage, filled with the suffocating presence of someone who could no longer give him what he needed.
Yoongi thrashed around, tangling his legs in the sweat-soaked sheets, he smashed a glass of water against the wall, he threw anything he could reach and screamed until his throat felt torn and his voice was indecipherable.
“Get out!”
“Don’t touch me!”
“You’re making it worse!”
It wasn’t rejection; not of Gwanhee, at least. It was Yoongi’s Omega rejecting what it deemed as meaningless touch from an Alpha that couldn’t give him what he wanted. Gwanhee stood frozen as his expression crumbled—not from offense, but from heartbreak. Because he understood, not fully maybe, but enough. Enough to know that he couldn’t help Yoongi any more than he already had when it came to this.
So he left.
Gwanhee left and Yoongi collapsed in on himself, sobbing into the sheets like he was dying. His Omega howled for an Alpha it didn’t have, his heart cried for his father who was no longer welcomed in his nest. He ached in every possible way—body, soul, spirit.
He’d never felt more alone.
After that, Gwanhee never came back during Yoongi’s heat. Instead, he lingered just outside the bedroom, his scent wilted with helplessness, but he never crossed that boundary again. He didn’t ask questions or try to talk about it in the aftermath. Maybe he couldn’t stomach it– maybe neither of them could.
They became strangers in those days. Orbiting each other like stars that used to share gravity but no longer did; both of them grieving the ease of their relationship that no longer existed. There were nights Yoongi laid curled up on the floor, naked and shaking, whispering nonsensical pleas and begging for his appa when he knew that the man couldn’t help him anymore.
But the door never opened.
Following that traumatic event, Yoongi had done everything he could to avoid his heats—every desperate, unsustainable thing.
Once he got to college, with no one watching over his shoulder, no Appa hovering in the doorway with concern disguised as casual interest, he let himself stoop to low, desperate measures that never would have flown when he was still under his parents’ roof. There was a guy who lived three doors down in the dorms—tall, lanky, constantly reeking of half-washed bedding, stale slick, and cheap body spray—who sold suppressants that were disguised as candy. They were off the grid, unregulated and probably cooked up in the basement of some frat house by a twenty-year-old Chemistry major, but Yoongi wouldn’t have cared if they were sourced from a filthy alleyway that was crawling with rats and diseases as long as they stopped his heats. So, he just paid in cash and silence and took the devious tablets religiously, week after week.
It worked wonderfully at first.
The familiar dread that once shadowed the approach of his heat—calendar days circled in red like little bombs—started to dull. He could breathe through the weeks without a looming sense of bodily betrayal and could attend his classes without fear that the stench of some sweaty Alpha would send him spiralling. For the first time in years, he felt like he had control of himself; it was almost like it had been years ago, before his presentation. His body, his instincts, his choice.
Until his parents found out.
His father had always known how to read between the lines of Yoongi’s silence and sullen glares. He didn’t need to see the pill bottles to put it together. The diluted scent of lemon and mint tinged with chemicals, the flatness in Yoongi’s eyes and the way he seemed to vibrate underneath his sallow skin were more than enough clues. Gwanhee found his stash when Yoongi was on a visit home for winter vacation, tucked inside an old shoebox under Yoongi’s bed. There was no confrontation, no dramatic screaming match, instead just a look, sharp and gutted and then a trembling hand gathering up the pills like he was holding something radioactive.
Yoongi had never felt as ashamed in his pathetic existence as he did in that moment.
His mother had cried as she whispered how dangerous that stuff was, how it messed with an Omega’s balance, how he could be ruining his body for good. How it would only make things worse.
And she was right.
They made him quit cold turkey. It hadn’t taken long at all for his body, so used to drugs and their effects, to start to go haywire in their absence. Gwanhee sat beside him the entire day after, holding his hand while he shook through the early withdrawal, through the migraine and cold sweats, like his body had suddenly noticed it was missing something.
And then the heat hit.
It was nothing like it had been in the past, not even like that infamous horrifying one at nineteen, when his Omega had first rejected his father's scent and presence like it was poison. This one was worse. It was a devastating hurricane that ripped through his body compared to the docile thunderstorm it had been before.
The pain started early, low in his gut– a pressure that curled inward like barbed wire. Within hours the slick came, pooling in his underwear and soaking through sweatpants, leaving him sticky and humiliated before anything had even started. His thighs trembled when he stood and his hole clenched pitifully around nothing, pulsing like it was begging to be filled.
He tried to ride it out curled up in bed with eyes squeezed shut and teeth clenched so tightly that they felt like they’d crack. Yoongi told himself he could handle it, that it would pass just like it had before. He just had to suffer through it.
At some point through the haze, he tried touching himself.
It should have helped. That’s what every resource said—every pamphlet, every online forum. Self-stimulation was meant to dull the edge and send his body into climax, which would, in most cases, soothe the worst of the symptoms. It had worked when he was younger, before descent into suppressants when his heats were still somewhat manageable. But this time?
Nothing worked.
His fingers moved on autopilot—stroking, spreading, pressing inside. His cock was hard and angry, dripping against his twitching belly, but every stroke was too mechanical and every sensation dulled by the throb of non-satisfiable want. He tried fingering himself, curling his fingers just right, rubbing over his prostate the way he remembered used to feel good, but in that moment nothing was right. Not the angle, the depth, hell, not even the shape or size of his bony digits.
He kept going anyway, because the alternative was just stewing in his pain and misery without making any efforts at all to dull it. The overflow of lemon-y slick made it easy, too easy, to slip his fingers in deep, scissoring and pumping, while his other hand worked his cock in desperate pulls. He moaned, choked, sobbed, begged aloud without meaning to; begged for relief– for release. For an Alpha that didn’t exist.
But, his orgasm stayed just out of reach. Over and over, he hit the edge only for his body to shut down at the last second. Yoongi found himself convulsing not with pleasure, but with frustration. His hands grew numb, his thighs shook, his hole ached, and his cock throbbed red and wet and untouched by climax.
After a while, he tried grinding against the mattress; rutting like an animal, humping with mindless abandon until his knees gave out and he collapsed face-first into his sheets. He even went as far as to press a vibrator just barely inside his hole despite his abhorrence of giving in to the help of toys focused towards Omegas. He soaked his pillows with sweat and slick and tears, but none of his primal efforts or actions mattered because there was no pleasure, no relief.
Yoongi was alone in his pain. And the worst part? Deep down, some part of him knew that it would happen again; knew that this was his reality now.
After that disaster, his eomma and appa insisted that he was to transfer to a local college, only a short bus ride away from his house. That way they could ensure that he didn’t return to his bad habit of popping suppressants and so they could support him through the heats that only got worse and worse as each one came and went.
After each heat, his body came out more battered than the one before and his mind more wrecked. There were days when he couldn’t look at himself in the mirror, not just because of the visible toll that his heats had on his body but because he could no longer recognize the emptiness that stared back at him.
It hurt his mother to look at him. He saw it every time her eyes lingered on his deteriorating frame, her gaze glossed over with worry and helplessness that she couldn’t mask. Try as he might, Yoongi could not ignore the way his father hovered and treated him like glass in the weeks that followed his heats, as if he was terrified that his son would collapse at any given moment. His older brother, Geumjae, had long since moved out and started a life of his own with his mate, but even he wasn’t immune to the shift. Whenever he came home for the weekend or holidays, his eyes would land on Yoongi with a soft, muted pity—the kind that came from not knowing how to help, but still wishing he could.
It all came to a head years later, after the first heat Yoongi went through following his twenty-seventh birthday. It was as though his body had decided enough was enough; like years of suppressing, denying and resisting had finally reached a boiling point. His Omega wasn’t just restless anymore—it was furious. It revolted in the only way it knew how: by punishing him.
That heat was unlike anything before.
He was consumed, lost in it over four straight days of agony that were spent howling, writhing, and clawing at himself in desperate, mindless hunger. His instincts screamed for an Alpha that wasn’t there and his body burned with the need for a knot, for the weight of a mate against his sweaty skin, for the ache in his womb to be soothed by the presence of pups that would never be fucked into him. This heat didn’t just hurt—it devoured. Pleasure never came, and neither did sleep. There was only the ache and fruitless attempts to soothe it.
When his appa had cautiously knocked on his door four days after his heat had begun and received no response from Yoongi, he entered only to find his son collapsed on the floor, covered in sweat, slick, and deep scratch wounds that had been inflicted upon him by his own nails. Gwanhee reacted immediately, only taking a spare moment to wrap Yoongi delicately in a blanket to preserve his modesty before scooping his prone body up and rushing him off to the emergency room.
It was three days after Yoongi had been admitted to the hospital when he finally regained consciousness. His body ached like it had been wrung out and discarded—every joint stiff, every minute movement laced with unimaginable pain. The light from the window was dim, filtered through drawn curtains, but the quiet tension in the room was unmistakable. His eomma dozed lightly in a chair beside the bed, her hand still curled around his, but it was the figure on the other side that stood rigid, upright, and far too still, that drew Yoongi’s attention.
His appa looked like he hadn't slept in days.
“You scared us,” Gwanhee said quietly, voice low and raw. His eyes were red and puffy which spoke to the fact that he must’ve been crying fairly recently. “You scared me.”
Yoongi blinked slowly, unable to summon a response through his hazy mind. But, he didn’t need to speak because his father's expression said it all.
“This has gone on for long enough,” Gwanhee said after a beat, his voice firm. “I’ve stood by. I’ve let you make your own choices, even though I saw that it was hurting you. But, God Yoongi, I can't do it anymore. You're breaking down, pup. You’re breaking your body and your mind… and I can’t just watch you continue to do this to yourself.”
In that moment, broken and beaten and exhausted, there was no fight left in Yoongi. Not anymore. Not after waking up in a hospital bed, ribs sore from convulsions and arms bandaged from scratching himself raw in a heat so violent his body could no longer endure it.
By late afternoon, the hospital staff had arranged for an Omegan Health Specialist to meet with Yoongi.
Dr. Choi Areum arrived with a tablet in hand and a clipboard full of forms. She was poised and professional, Beta-neutral in both scent and demeanor—an intentional choice, Yoongi knew, meant to avoid triggering his instincts. Despite her disarming scent of freshly laundered sheets, Yoongi bristled the moment she stepped in as if a feral Alpha was infringing upon his territory.
“The irony,” he muttered raspily, his throat still sore from the manic screaming of his Heat. “A Beta’s here to tell me how to fix being an Omega.”
Dr. Choi didn’t blink or hesitate in the face of Yoongi’s disdain. “I understand how it might feel that way. But I assure you, I’ve been working with secondary gender trauma patients for over a decade, and my team includes Omegas, Alphas, and Betas. This isn’t about designations. It’s about helping you heal.”
Yoongi rolled his eyes and turned his head toward the window, staring out at a young couple bringing their baby to the waiting car below. He watched thoughtlessly as the Omega stood from the wheelchair with help from his Alpha, clutching their pup close to his chest. As the two kissed sweetly, Yoongi forced himself to look away and focus back on the scene happening in his hospital room. Gwanhee remained seated beside the bed, his posture stiff. Eunji, now awake and seated upright, had one hand tightly wound around Yoongi’s wrist, her thumb gently stroking the back of it like she was trying to soothe a frightened child. Yoongi chuckled inwardly at the thought. He guessed that in her eyes he was nothing more than a frightened child.
“In cases like yours—where an Omega has spent years denying their instincts, whether by suppressing or mismanaging their cycle—we typically offer two treatment paths,” Dr. Choi continued. “One is a hormonal reset through carefully monitored supplements. The second is a therapeutic residency program that pairs unstable Omegas with a certified pack trained in rehabilitation and recovery.”
Before she could say more, Gwanhee cut in with steel in his voice. “No pills. He’s had issues with suppressants in the past. We’re not going down that road again.”
Yoongi scoffed. “Oh my god…issues… I wasn’t popping molly in my dorm room. I took suppressants because I needed them to function and not flunk out of school. I didn’t even like the damn things. It was years ago, I thought we were over it by now.”
“That’s not the point,” his father countered, gentle but firm with determination in his eyes. “It’s not just about the pills—it’s what they allowed you to keep ignoring. You’re paying for it now and I don’t want to put you in a position that your body will have to pay for again some time down the road.”
Eunji leaned forward, concern etched into every line of her face as she looked at Dr. Choi. “Please. Just tell us more about the residency program.”
Dr. Choi nodded. “It’s a short-term, immersive program. You would live within a licensed pack environment for anywhere from a few weeks to several months. You’d be surrounded by Alphas, Betas, and other Omegas in a home-style setting, with therapists and specialists monitoring your adjustment through frequent check-ups here in the hospital or at our program’s office. You’d be encouraged to engage in nesting, social bonding, and safe exposure to scent dynamics—all of which can be tools designed to re-establish hormonal balance and help your Omega feel safe again.”
Yoongi sat up with effort, every movement tugging painfully at the fresh scabs on his chest and arms as well as the IVs taped to the back of his wrist and inside of his elbow. “So what, you want to drop me in a house with a bunch of strangers and hope I magically learn how to be a real Omega? How to roll over, show my belly to the nearest Alpha, and let him stuff his knot in me?” He sneered, disregarding the way his mother gasped and his father cringed at his crass wording. “Fuck that. If it’s between that and a handful of pills, I’ll take the damn pills and be done with it.”
His voice rang louder than he intended and Eunji flinched beside him, but didn’t let go. If anything she held onto him closer as if she was her son’s only lifeline, the only thing tethering him to his hospital bed.
The silence of the room felt heavy and uncomfortable, interrupted only by the rhythmic beeping of machines and the chatter of the nurses’ station in the hallway. Gwanhee stared at him, long and hard. He didn’t seem angry, not even disappointed, just worn. Like something inside him was splintering just as much as something inside of Yoongi had splintered the moment he presented.
“You think this is about teaching you how to be the perfect Omega?” he asked Yoongi, his voice soft and low… sad, almost defeated. “It’s not. This is about showing you how to live without hurting while existing in the body that you have. It’s about giving yourself the chance to be whole instead of this half-baked existence you’ve been tolerating for years.”
Yoongi’s eyes burned, but he blinked quickly and looked away. “What if I don’t want to be whole like that?”
His father’s reply came without hesitation. “Then let them help you find another version of ‘whole’. One that doesn’t leave your unconscious and bleeding body on your bedroom floor for me to find and think you’re dead.”
No one said anything after that. For the first time in years, Yoongi didn’t know what to say because, deep down, a small voice inside of him whispered what he didn’t want to admit.
He didn’t want to keep living like this either.
Days later found Yoongi discharged from the hospital, packing a bag full of his belongings with the weight of being given away to strangers looming over his head.
His appa hadn’t given him much of a choice in the matter, but even if he had Yoongi knew that he would still be participating in the program if only so he didn’t have to see the disappointed look on Gwanhee’s face. Disappointing his appa felt like taking a knife and lodging it between his ribs, and Yoongi figured he’d disappointed the man enough to fill up three lifetimes already. Thus, that was how he found himself packing his life away into two duffel bags and an old backpack from his teenage years.
Tonight would be his last night at home, sleeping in his own bed, for a while. While Dr. Choi– Yoongi’s hackles raised upon thinking of the woman– had told him that the program lasted anywhere from a few weeks to several months, he knew that his stint would be on the longer end. He did not intend on rolling over and allowing some strange pack to groom him into a model omega. They had another thing coming to them if they thought they were getting some meek, broken thing– sure, he was broken, even he wouldn’t try to deny it, but meek was not a descriptor that Yoongi would ever use for himself.
He sighed as he shoved an old sweatshirt into one of his bags before reaching back to the pile of clothing that he had dumped haphazardly on his bed. He paused as his fingers brushed against a familiar worn piece of fabric. Yoongi felt moisture unwillingly well up in his eyes as he brought the shirt up to his nose, inhaling the scent of cedar. He remembers stealing it from the depths of a basket of dirty laundry months ago on a night that he had allowed himself a moment of weakness. The next morning, he’d shoved it into the corner of the bottom-most drawer of his bureau to be forgotten– until now. Somehow, even months later his father’s scent was still ingrained in the very fabric of the shirt which was an attestment to how often the man wore it. Without giving himself a moment to hesitate, Yoongi shoved the shirt deep into his duffel bag before continuing to pack. If he had to be passed off onto some rehabilitation pack without his own consent, then he sure as hell was going to bring a piece of home– of appa– with him. He’d be damned if some hot-shot Head Alpha with an inflated ego told him he wasn’t allowed to have Gwanhee’s scent with him.
Later that night as he laid in his bed, he tried to imagine what his temporary packmates might be like. He’d received a list from Dr. Choi of their names, ages and designations, but Yoongi was a firm believer in the fact that you couldn’t tell a lot about a person based on their designation alone– take him for example. As much as he hated it, he knew that he looked the part of an Omega with his delicate wrists and slim build, but his personality was the polar opposite, so he wasn’t inclined to make any rash judgments. Still, he reached over to turn on his bedside lamp and snatch the paper off of his nightstand to stare at the words on it for what felt like the hundredth time.
Kim Seokjin, 29 - O**
Kim Namjoon, 27 - A**
Jung Hoseok, 27 - A**
Park Jimin, 25 - O
Kim Taehyung, 25 - B
Jeon Jeongguk, 24 - A
**certified with the OPA (Omega Protection Association) as a trained pack member, specializing in the re-connectivity and recovery of at-risk Omegas
Yoongi stared blankly at the list as his mind ran rampant with thoughts. Six pack members– it was a large number in modern times. If one were to look back fifty years, it was typical for packs to have two to five members when including any children sired, but even then a pack of six non-related adults was nearly unheard of. It just made Yoongi all the more anxious. He’d been expecting a pack consisting of an Alpha and an Omega– maybe a Beta– who wanted to be do-gooders and take on a troubled Omega to help them feel better about themselves. Entering the den of a six-person pack, especially one with three Alphas, felt like throwing himself to the wolves– literally.
He wondered which of the Alphas was the pack leader. He assumed it wasn’t Jeon Jeongguk seeing as while Alpha status typically reigned superior, in the case of multiple Alphas, age ranking began to come into play. In this case, it was most likely that either Jung Hoseok or Kim Namjoon was the Alpha whose whims Yoongi would be subjected to.
His thoughts went to the two Omegas of the group next. There were only two Omegas to three Alphas, so that was likely the reason they were opening their home up to Yoongi for his “rehabilitation”. They were probably looking to even out the number and give the baby Alpha a chance to secure his own Omega, assuming that the older two were already claimed.
As if. They were fools if they thought they would manage to ensnare him in their little medieval pack. No, he would be running like the wind the second Dr. Choi deemed him ‘fixed’. And if that took playing along and acting the part of the docile, meek Omega that they thought he should be, then that was a sacrifice Yoongi was willing to make.