Chapter Text
Like everyone else on the planet, Al thought that putting a condom on a banana in the seventh grade was simultaneously mortifying and hilarious.
When they had to do it again in eighth just in case anyone missed that health class last year, Al understood. Al thought that STDs sounded mortifying and not hilarious. Al placed an extremely high priority on having a healthy penis, thanks.
Like everyone else, Al wondered why they had to take the gender studies course. Only two percent of the population were Alphas or Omegas, and they tended to breed true, so the chances of anyone without Alpha or Omega parentage completely blowing the genetic lottery and being one was negligible.
Al sat through it with his classmates. Every year their weird Phys. Ed. teacher went into more and more detail. Like everyone else, Al tuned out, except for the hilarious bits.
Like knotting. Holy fuck, what a shitstorm that must be for those poor fuckers - but it couldn't possibly be worse for them than it was for poor Mr. Simson, who had to stand up there in front of a class of thirty eighth graders and explain it.
Al was like everyone else. He was unique, sure, but everyone is unique, so whatever. He liked riding his bike, he liked computer games, and he hated the captain of the soccer team, Leo, who was exactly as much of a hot douche as his name implied. Al loved the captain of the swim team, because she was hot, sure, but once he had manned up and found the guts to talk to her, he realised that she was a wonderful person. Absolutely everyone agreed about this. There were six other kids in his class alone that were in love with Larissa. She was hot, smart, funny, confident and well-adjusted. She was a unicorn.
Al's crush on Larissa was precisely the same as everyone else's, so ... normal.
According to Al's mum, it was okay to be normal, even though she didn't agree, she thought he was very special (like every other mum on the planet thought about their kids, so thanks, Mum, for making everything even more normal).
Al's life was normal, as was his school, hobbies, crushes and friends. Al's teachers were mostly normal. Mr Simson was a weird douche and their principal was creepy, but having nothing but normal teachers would be abnormal, so the whole thing rounded out well.
Al's parents were normal. His mum was annoying but loving, and his dad never really talked to him or hugged him, so Al was almost certain that he thought Al was a massive disappointment, but hey, that's normal. Al was not getting beaten up by his dad like his friend Joey was, so life was pretty good.
Then ninth grade hit, and the usual Phys. Ed. health class showed up where they got lectured on safe sex. Then they had to mourn the loss of the banana as it was replaced by a somewhat realistic dildo. Anatomy was important, apparently.
Al was past mortification now, and just found it all hilarious.
The next week, the gender studies session happened, and it was all much more serious. "You're starting to reach an age where an Alpha might mistake you for an adult," Mr Simson said, and everyone was insulted.
Mistake? What a dick. Al was totally an adult, thank you very much.
"If you encounter an Alpha - you probably already have, you just didn't realise it - you have to follow their rules. The Ancient Houses have very strict codes about respect and honour and whatnot, and if you're not very careful, you can offend them badly. I can't stress enough how important this is. They'd never take it out on a child, but if they see you as an adult, you could accidentally challenge one, and that's exactly what you'd expect out of a medieval movie," Mr Simson was saying.
"What, like, a challenge to the death?" Al asked, because, what the fuck?
Mr Simson looked at him and nodded slowly, not even bothering to chastise him for not putting his hand up.
"But they can't just fight people to the death," Larissa said. "They'd go to jail."
"Well, sure," Mr Simson said. "Except that Alphas can use their voices to command people. Say they use that on a jury. Say they use that on the witnesses."
"Surely that's illegal too," Larissa said.
"Good luck proving they did it," Mr Simson said.
"I thought they could only tell Omegas what to do," Joey said.
"Omegas are susceptible - they'll bend over backwards to do what an Alpha says," Mr Simson confirmed. "But Betas - that's us - we've got a different range. Sometimes we'll be influenced. Sometimes we won't. We're influenced often enough that the Ancient Houses have a lot of power. They're richer than anyone should have a right to be, and they're politicians more often than not. They can command, and they feel entitled to. They leave us alone, to a point, until we do something that bothers them. Then they talk their way in and change our laws. They're protected. They're allowed to get away with kidnapping."
Al had heard the stories of young men and women, spirited away, all because they smelled good. "So that actually happens?" Al asked.
Mr Simson nodded. "I'm not supposed to call it kidnapping," he said gruffly. "But if they wanted someone to sugar-coat this and lie to you, they shouldn't keep making me do it. The Ancient Houses and the law call it involuntary scenting. They say they get a whiff of an Omega and they lose control. They then have to take that poor kid back to their place, on instinct, like a knee-jerk reaction. Personally, I think it’s insane."
"That is insane!" Larissa said, which was weird, because one of the reasons everyone loved her was that she never agreed with Mr Simson. She would just roll her eyes, do her own thing, and win all her swim races anyway.
She was gorgeous in a swimsuit. She was gorgeous all the time, though. Al genuinely believed that she would look good in a hessian sack.
"Look," Mr Simson said, in a serious, gruff voice that the class was not used to. "The chances of any of you having to deal with anyone from an Ancient House is slim to none. If you ever do, it'd be in the workplace, and there are crash courses that HR would make you take first, to cover their own asses - whoops, forget I said that, kids - and any Alpha that is actually out and about with us measly Betas usually has some idea of how different our worlds are. If you meet one in a mall, you'll be fine, just don't do anything stupid. If you meet one because you're working a job and you're at their house, you'll need to follow their laws, because they're insular, and they might never have seen a mall in their life."
"So, they're stuck in the dark ages," Larissa said.
"Honestly, it sure seems like it," Mr Simson said.
"What if one of us is an Omega? Or an Alpha?" Joey asked.
Mr Simson cleared his throat. "And here's the uncomfortable bit," he said to himself. "It's rare. But it does happen. From Beta parents, you get about twenty Omegas to one Alpha - it's not one to one, like male to female - so if you present, you're a whole lot more likely to present Omega than Alpha. You present, but before you even know you've presented, you'll be making pheromones that they can smell, and any time between five PM and six AM they're allowed to snatch you if they can smell you."
"What ... the ... fuck?" Larissa said.
Mr Simson pretended not to hear her and let her get away with it. This was the closest Al had ever been to actually liking the guy.
"So, the first you know about it, is that you've been kidnapped?" Joey asked.
Mr Simon smiled. "Luckily, there's tests," he said. "You're all still young. You can present anywhere between sixteen and twenty. Now, everyone gets to take one of these tests home - take it home, do not do it here. If you're caught doing it here, you will be suspended. If you tell one of your friends your results, you'll be suspended. Omegas stay safe by living in secrecy. You don't ask anyone about it, you don't tell anyone about it. Take the info packs home. Test yourselves. Tell your parents - don't ask them, tell them to take you to your family doctor, one you trust. Take those tests too. The blood tests are more accurate. If you're an Omega, the instructions for keeping your smell to yourself are in the pack with your tests."
"What if you're an Alpha?" Leo asked.
"Like you'd be an Alpha," Joey said.
"Says you, dumbass," Leo snapped.
"None of that," Mr Simson said. "If you're an Alpha, life pretty much goes on as usual. You would probably already know, though. You'd eat more than your friends, you'd be bigger, stronger, faster. People - even adults - would sometimes do as you told them to. Usually when an Alpha goes through the school system, the teachers all know it. I think they're the epitome of the phrase 'behavioural issues'."
"So it is Leo, then," Joey said.
Leo only seemed to take that as a compliment. It wasn't fair, really, that he had such a nice toothy smile.
It also wasn't fair that Al had two crushes at once. But he was in high school, and in high school love wasn't fair to anyone.
Take Leo, for example. Leo liked Larissa, but Larissa would never date him, because he was an asshole, and Larissa had taste.
"Can you tell if you're teaching an Omega?" Al asked.
Mr Simson shook his head. "The Ancient Houses portray Omegas as having a certain way about them. Submissive, sweet, mothering. Honestly, if you ever want to make yourself sick, go to a library and read one of their classic romances. It's enough to make a feminist puke. But honestly? No. It's trash. There's not a single one of you that's more Omega-ish than the others. It could be anyone. Not that I'd ever know, until you disappeared. You'd never tell me, and you ruddy well shouldn't."
Al went home that day, played his computer while he should have been doing homework, and received a text from Larissa just before dinner.
Good news, I'm not going to get kidnapped.
He sent her three thumbs up and a heart emoji, then he got really worried that she'd overthink that heart emoji.
Then he ripped open the information pack, thumbed through the leaflet on Omega-specific weirdness which was all completely terrifying, and took the little jar and test strip into the bathroom, because hey, why the fuck not, he had to take a slash anyway.
Suddenly, Al wasn't just like everyone else anymore.