Chapter Text
Every day it drew closer.
Arthur was twenty. Twenty. The big 2-0. It was when your age stopped beginning with a one and started beginning with a two. It meant your life, should you live it out in full, was a quarter over.
But, for Arthur, it meant his life already was over.
In fact, now his life was beyond over. He was past twenty and his feet hurt for it. He hadn’t been deaf to the worried whispers of his parents when he’d come home for Christmas. He hadn’t been oblivious to the subtle frowns of his schoolteachers as they bid him farewell. The physician hadn’t been able to hide her surprise when she looked at his chart at a checkup months ago and saw he was nineteen and a half. Everyone knew what that meant but those that dealt with omegas specifically knew more than anyone.
Arthur wasn’t an idiot. When winter break approached and everyone was going home for the holidays, he knew it was the last time he would see his omega peers. And some of the smarter ones knew they’d be seeing him for the last time too.
Because, naturally, he would remain home and his parents would find him suitors and he’d choose one, finally, and stop milling about with sixteen-year-olds who only pretended to care about maths but were more interested in mates.
Omegas didn’t need to learn. They were taught to bide their time until they were taken care of—it was a distraction and a bloody good one. Even he had been tricked by it initially, up until he was fourteen, when his omega cousin arrived at their footstep in the rain, crying, and his parents had ushered her in. Not half an hour later, before the freshly made tea even had time to grow cold, men were at their door and they dragged her away, his cousin screaming obscenities at his parents for betraying her.
She had just turned twenty.
After that, he had kept his eyes wide open and what he saw astounded him. How could no one else see it?
When omegas disappeared, he was told they had found a mate—that they were happy, finally. And he, being an omega, needed to keep his mind on that mission too, for the good of humanity. His mother had been an omega, a sweet woman always, and she was birthed by a male omega, and so on. That’s just the kind of family they were.
His father told him that they were the lucky ones.
That Arthur was a lucky one, born last, the only omega amongst a myriad of alpha brothers.
He was ‘a catch’.
And now he dared the whole lot of them to catch him.
The morning of his twentieth birthday would have had cake and gifts and men in dark suits and he wanted none of that, so he left. He slipped out in the black of night with a sack of supplies and a bottle of heat-snuffing pills, and he ran. And he ran and he ran until months had passed and he was nothing more than a dirty mongrel.
But at least he was free.
And yet it grew closer still.
It was by no means paranoia; Arthur knew his intuition was right. Someone was trailing him, maybe miles behind, but they were there. Experimentally, he had left places only to circle back and find his ‘home’ disturbed. He knew by now to trust his gut.
Where did those omegas go when they didn’t find their mates? He had theories. The government called them crazed ideas and they were ridiculed often, but he had the sneaking suspicion that only meant they were right.
He obtained a gun, somehow. It had been an accident, really, but he held onto it. Thievery was never his strong suit, but when something was constantly after you then you learned how to protect yourself. After that came bullets—he was haggard, he was terrified—but at least he had bullets.
Arthur honestly wasn’t sure if he could use the weapon on another living creature, but it wasn’t a terrible idea to turn it on himself if the situation warranted it. It was wonderful having that kind of out on hand at all times; he could be truly free, forever, should he want it.
But he wasn’t going to give up, or so he told himself until he got sick and the thing caught up.
It had been a cold—a stupid, stupid cold.
Regardless, his senses had gone muddy and his limbs weak from malnutrition and dehydration and he’d wavered in his flight, stumbling and coming to rest in an abandoned warehouse, breathing in dust and covered with a blanket that had seen better days. Maybe if he slept, then he would feel better. Just an hour. Just two.
And then he awoke, light streaming in through the cracks in the ceiling, to the sound of a door somewhere and he floundered with his gun, pressing it into the unpracticed hold of unsteady fingers as his lungs shuddered to take in air and his heart rate escalated into a panicked frenzy.
It was here. It was here.
He abandoned his sack and his pathetic scrap of a worn blanket and squeezed himself into a corner behind an empty crate.
Maybe it wouldn’t find him.
And maybe, if it did, he could try and kill it.
Alfred had breezed through life.
Ever since an early age, achieving had come naturally to him. As a child, he had excelled through school, accumulating a wealth of friends and impressive grades. Always the top of his class, always voted the most likely to succeed, always wearing the brightest smile. That was Alfred F. Jones—charismatic, intelligent, optimistic, alpha—he was gifted and, hey, it’d be stupid not to take advantage of it.
He’d led an ordinary life, ticked all the right boxes, no questions asked. It wasn’t until he’d packed his bags and moved to university, leaving a bare bedroom and a weepy mother, that Alfred’s perception of the sunny little world he lived in changed.
University had been a douse of cold shock for the young alpha. He wasn’t ashamed to admit he’d lived a somewhat sheltered life in the pretty suburbs with his alpha-omega parents and omega twin brother. His family, in all their wisdom, had immersed their household with the unquestionable, ingrained rule of society—to know one’s place in the clockwork of life—and abiding by those rules granted contentment.
Alfred agreed, wholeheartedly, with their philosophy. Rules were there for a reason and instincts were the foundation of civilization. Alphas, betas, and omegas each had their own responsibilities to be fulfilled. But, as he had learned, there were those who didn’t care to comply with their natures.
Those that rebelled against the system.
Namely, omegas.
It had baffled him at first, why an omega would want to run away from a life of happiness with a mate and children and security—it was pretty weird. That’s what omegas were inclined to do, after all, settle and nurture their offspring. Then words like ‘inequality’ and ‘discrimination’ and ‘injustice’ had floated past Alfred’s ears and it had suddenly made sense to him—these omegas needed help finding their way.
Omegas were gentle creatures, easy to rattle, and without the right upbringing it was understandable that they would spook and feel there was no choice but to flee from home. Or, as it usually went, go on a mad goose chase across the country. Omegas just weren’t equipped to survive alone, not without an alpha counterpart.
Which was why Alfred had made the heroic decision of dedicating his life to the misguided omega strays.
Fresh from university—well, as fresh as a student could be—Alfred dove headfirst into the brutal training of becoming an omega tracker, a specialist branch of the police, a career comprised solely of locating and capturing runaway omegas. It was a courageous, rewarding job and, he wasn’t going to lie, it also attracted a lot of omegas which was always a bonus.
Alfred soared through the program, being the fine specimen of alpha he was, and it wasn’t long before he was receiving praise for his first case on the job: a twenty-one-year-old female who had been fudging her records and had eventually resorted to jumping from motel to motel. Alfred caught the girl in just a few hours and had her reunited with her promised mate before the night was out.
Job done.
Alfred was proud with the knowledge that he was doing the right thing, that he’d strove to spend his days realigning those less fortunate than him on to the path of the straight and narrow. Discovering the omegas, half-starved and quaking, their eyes sunken and their scents sour with fear, only strengthened Alfred’s belief in the decency of his profession.
It was just another day at the office when Alfred was assigned the Kirkland case. His boss was quick to dole out the facts—a run-of-the-mill circumstance. Unmated omega turns twenty, omega runs away from home. Nothing Alfred hadn’t seen a million times before.
The approximate location they were given, from a tracking device that was fixed under every omega’s skin at birth, was miles away from the guy’s home. There was no doubting this omega was running on fumes by now.
Alfred didn’t bother hiding the excitement thrumming through him at the thought of catching an omega that’d hightailed it that far. Determined little guy.
With his keen nose, and Alfred had a damn sensitive nose even for an alpha, and the use of the tracking coordinates, it was never finding the omega that was the difficult part—it was coaxing them into safety without causing them any harm or having the omegas bolt off.
The further they traveled, the more evident it became that the Kirkland kid did not want to be found. But he was going to be, whether he liked it or not, because, after weeks of pursuing the omega like a pack of ravenous bloodhounds, Alfred had led his team directly to him.
The omega’s coordinates stilled in a vacant, industrial warehouse, blipping sure and steady on the screen, and Alfred knew from experience the omega had most likely succumbed to sleep, too weak to continue.
For the sake of disturbing the omega as little as possible, Alfred ventured into the dark warehouse alone, his team at the ready outside. Omegas that had been missing for such a long period of time were notoriously prone to unpredictability and, if they felt cornered, violence.
Hushing his breathing, Alfred braced himself for the aspect of the job he hated most—seeing the broken creatures for the first time.
And Alfred could see him too, jammed into a narrow space, compressing his bony body in on itself, his hand tremoring like a crashing drug addict around the handle of a pistol.
Reaching for his tranquilizer gun, Alfred knew with absolute certainty that this omega was going to be volatile and fight until the bitter end.
Arthur felt a fear so visceral it became tangible coils that wrapped around his skin and warped his senses, mind reeling at the barely audible touch of footsteps on old concrete before a figure peered in at him momentarily. All he could see was the brief glint of light reflecting off of glasses, but it was enough to tell him all he needed to know: it was here, it had found him, and now it was going to drag him away kicking and screaming.
“Go away.” Arthur heard himself ground out, his voice a mangled thing almost more animal than human. “Go away.”
His hands shook violently and before he knew it he had squeezed the trigger. Something hot met his arm and he yelped, but as far as he knew he hadn’t hit anything if the pang of old metal was any indication. Regardless, the echoing blast made his mind ring, sound suddenly cutting out in his ears.
His breathing quickened.
God, he was going to get dragged off to one of those facilities—he’d seen the pictures, too. You couldn’t fake that. Omegas in medical gowns with thick collars and defeated faces, some fat with children they never wanted in rooms with a small bed, toilet, and dingy grey carpet. If they weren’t ‘compliant’ enough they stayed in the facility ‘for the sake of the omega and child’ until birth. If they weren’t ‘compliant’ enough, they could end up living there forever, fed meals in a guarded room like prisoners, as though they might try to suffocate themselves with a spoon, while their offspring was off with some alpha in a home they would never know.
Some wised up, they said. And some became born again, suddenly declaring that they had learned their place and they were happy to be mated—fulfilled—and no longer wanted to be separated from ‘their alpha’. But the internet couldn’t hide the dirty truths that filtered up in dark, secretive places.
Omegas were raped, their bodies invaded, drugged, shackled, whatever it took to get them to bear children. For good of society; for the good of humanity.
Know your place.
Arthur didn’t want that. He didn’t want a forced family. He didn’t want to be toyed with like he was someone’s plaything or possession. He’d seen those omegas in public that smiled through the misery, a weariness so intense it sat in their eyes like a plea at all times.
It was a far cry from the chittering excitement of teenagers rounded up in an omega education facility, awaiting the happy day they could receive their brand of ownership from their alpha master. Alphas didn’t care about omegas—they were simply possessions. They were incubators.
Panic spiked high and hard, invading his scent and spreading out like a wave. It was an instinctual response, pleading for some alpha, somewhere, to save him, however unintentional and unwanted it was. Desperate tears streaked Arthur’s cheeks. He didn’t need a hero.
He had a gun.
And so, fearing the worst, he made to turn it on himself.
The voice was small, graveled against a dry throat, but the words were coated with frightened, blackened conviction.
The presence of a gun smarted against Alfred’s nerves, teasing his instincts closer to the surface. Nothing ended well when unstable omegas and guns were involved, and Alfred had lost some good alphas to bullets holes.
Couldn’t these omegas understand that Alfred was doing what was best for them?
Alfred heard a click and, before he could draw another breath, a bullet clattered against a creaky metal shutter, ricocheting in an erratic mess of directions. The alpha’s heart lurched in his chest, his mind plunging into a heightened state of survival, and he ducked behind a crate. He was sure a wounded cry had followed the gunshot and it didn’t take much to add two and two together—the omega had no idea how to handle a gun. Unsurprising.
He waited for his pulse to level, listening to the stuttered breathing of the Kirkland kid, and planned his next move. Of two things Alfred was sure. The omega was most likely irrational with panic, fraught with a searing injection of terror, and his hearing was impaired from the gun’s explosion of sound.
Now was the best time to confront him. He was at a clear disadvantage.
Alfred was just in time as well, because the stupid thing was pointing the fucking gun at his own head. He dove towards the smaller male, movements practiced and precise, and twisted the omega’s arm in a way that would spread sharp pain across his bicep. As expected, the guy hissed, his fingers slackening and dropping the gun into Alfred’s awaiting hand.
A crackle of agony shot through Arthur’s arm as it was tugged in an unnatural direction by a hand with firm, iron fingers, and while he couldn’t hear the cries that bubbled up in his throat, nor the sound of anything more than a muted shuffle and a headache-inducing ringing, he could still smell.
His senses scrambled for purchase: acidic gunpowder, rust, dirt, and an alpha—oh Christ, they’d sent an alpha. The enemy, all spice and fire and intoxicating medleys of a thousand other things combined in a dominating presence that weighed down on him and made him want to lay flat like a whipped dog and show his belly. His father was an alpha; he knew how they controlled you. They grabbed you and shoved you around and yanked you and, if they really wanted to keep you, then they bit you too. But their scent was the most traitorous thing. It was biological warfare on any omega with a semblance of a backbone.
‘Dear, I think we should consider—,’ Arthur’s mother, dinner, a fond look at her mate from across the table.
‘I told you I’m tired. Shut up.’ Arthur’s father, busy eating.
And a wave of something in the air that made all of Arthur’s nerves stiffen, just as they did in the other omega present. Compliance. Obey. Scent. A command.
No, no, no.
Arthur kicked and twisted and, his arm be damned, and clawed at the other human, the alpha, hoping to hit something, anything, even if he was pinned back and trapped in this small space, even if his gun was removed from him…
Even if this was the end.
He was going to fight.
Alfred was met with an onslaught of fists and feet and even teeth at one point, the jabs fitful and desperate, only occasionally making contact and never having any sort of debilitating impact. The blows were akin to whispers of silk across his skin. The omega was willowy, sickeningly thin, and he writhed underneath Alfred, blindly looking to run, to escape the inevitable.
Damn, this guy was determined.
“Hey, calm down,” Alfred tried to reason with him, voice low and dulcet in a way he’d been trained to know was placating against an omega’s nerves. But, in this instance, it didn’t help at all. “Listen to me, I’m trying to help you. I’m gonna take you somewhere safe—”
The omega only persisted in thrashing, slithering about like a cornered snake, and Alfred was left with no choice but to shove his weight on the smaller male, putting an end to his moving limbs. He pinched the thin skin at the back of the omega’s neck, hard, rendering the man limp, helpless to the potent, deep-rooted influence of an alpha.
“I didn’t want to have to do that… and I didn’t want to have to this either,” Alfred said, jabbing the tranquilizer into the skin of the omega’s arm. “But it’s for your own good.”
A neck grab. The last-ditch utility of alphas everywhere. It was playing dirty, Arthur thought, because his body stilled against his own command, muscles not going stiff but relaxed, as though this was the most peaceful thing in the world.
Yet his heart thundered in his chest as though it was trying to escape his body, and fear prickled at his every nerve. This tactic could be abused, too, and it was being so now as far as he was concerned. But nature dictated that it was either listen or be killed, primal and base as that was, and his physical vessel chose self-preservation in the form of mutiny against his brain.
He felt the needle that pricked his arm, stinging and drudging up memories of getting vaccinations as a child. Oh, how he had always hated shots. Oh, how he had bawled like a child…
But wasn’t he currently crying? Or were the hot tears streaking his cheeks all some kind of illusion, a dream, because now reality was fading into sleepy darkness as, for the first time in nearly six months, his mind went blessedly quiet.
And the black of nothingness embraced him.
The omega surrendered to sleep within seconds, the assortment of chemicals pulsing through his system, seeping heavy into his heart and slowing its function until he was in a near comatose state. It wouldn’t last too long, but it was long enough for Alfred to get him secured into the van.
Wrapping an arm underneath the omega’s knees and curling another around his back, Alfred lifted the man up, almost reeling from the lightness. He couldn’t have been heavier than a small child.
He emerged from the dark murk of the warehouse, finding his team hovering around the vans, similar to vultures over an old carcass, guns held with steel grips.
“Got ‘em!” Alfred declared, smile flourishing with a warm fizzle of pride, and he received a smattering of cheers from his colleagues. “You can get going, guys, I’ve got it covered from here.”
Gilbert, one of the more rowdy trackers, smacked Alfred on the back, almost dislodging the unconscious omega from his arms.
“We heard a gunshot—we almost came in after you. Everything go okay in there?” The white-haired man questioned, lips twitching with boyish anticipation. Guns, fights, omegas—what more could an alpha want? “Didn’t get shot, did you? Should I check for bullet holes?”
“Nah, I’m fine,” Alfred said, Gilbert’s grin seemingly infectious. “This little fella here was the only one who nearly got shot, but I got the gun out of his hands. I don’t know how he survived this long…” Alfred mused, sparing a glance at the omega’s face, now illuminated by shimmery, dawn sunlight. Alfred hadn’t really paid much attention to the photo identification paper-clipped to the case file and he was taken aback by how pretty the omega was.
Alfred wondered what color his eyes were. He’d bet his last dollar they were as clear as blown glass.
It was almost disappointing, seeing him under the sun’s glare—the omega’s delicate features, soft eyelashes, and porcelain-pale skin—it only made the man’s absconding all the more difficult to understand.
What possible reason did this guy have to abandon his home and his prospects? He must have had alphas lining up for just a whiff of his scent.
“He survived. That’s the important thing. Otherwise, we’d be in trouble,” Gilbert responded, giving Alfred another clap on the shoulder. “Anyway, we got called in on another case, so we gotta go assist some dumbass a few cities over who, hilariously, scared a pregnant runaway into labor. See you at the office!”
With that brief farewell, Gilbert was already trotting around to his van as someone roared the engine to life.
“See ya!”
Alfred climbed into the back of his van, dropping the omega into one of the seats with all the carefulness he could muster. His body tensed, muscles tightening, when the omega’s head slumped forward onto Alfred’s shoulder and the omega’s scent assailed his nose—untainted by fright. It was sweet on the tongue, the smell of flower beds warmed by summer and fields of ripening fruit.
He must have lost his mind, banged his head or some shit… That was the only explanation Alfred could conceive of for the omega, who was essentially catnip for alphas, making his way out to the middle of nowhere and nearly killing himself in the process.
Ensuring he was strapped to his seat, nice and tight but not enough to inflict pain, Alfred locked the back of the van and jumped in the front, ready to close up the case and kick back with a beer and some awesome new action movie at home.