Chapter 1

The first thing the doctor said was, “You must have missed the signs.”

Which immediately told me she didn’t know me at all.

I didn’t miss the signs. I noticed when professors changed the tone of their emails. I noticed when baristas stopped remembering my order. I noticed when my roommate replaced the good toilet paper with the cheap kind and pretended it was an accident. Missed signs were for people who floated through life, trusting the universe not to pull the rug out from under them.

“I didn’t miss anything,” I said. “You’re just wrong.”

She smiled at me like I’d just said something brave and stupid, which made my jaw tighten. Then she tapped her tablet again, slowly and patiently, as if facts needed a moment to warm up before they could hurt me properly.

“It’s rare,” she said. “But not impossible. Late presentation does happen. Usually under stress.”

“Everyone is under stress,” I said. “That’s just being alive.”

She didn’t laugh. That should have been my first clue.

She turned the screen toward me, graphs blooming across it like a crime scene reconstruction. Hormone spikes. Scent markers. Compatibility indicators I had never bothered to learn about because they weren’t relevant to my life.

Or they hadn’t been. Yesterday.

“This explains the nausea,” she said. “The dizziness. The headaches.”

“That explains finals week,” I said. “Not a biological rewrite.”

Her smile thinned. “You’re presenting as an omega.”

I waited for the punchline.

None came.

“No,” I said. “I’m a beta.”

“You were a beta,” she corrected gently, which somehow made it worse. “You’re presenting now.”

Presenting.

Like my body had shown up late to a party it had actively declined to attend.

I stared at the white wall behind her head, the one with the motivational print about resilience. I wondered how many people had received life-altering news under that exact shade of beige.

“I’m twenty-one,” I said. “Isn’t that a little late for a surprise identity crisis?”

“It’s late,” she agreed. “But not unheard of.”

Twenty-one.

Old enough to drink, vote, sign contracts, and apparently lose my legal autonomy in a single afternoon.

“Your family will need to be notified,” she continued. “And you’ll need an alpha sponsor registered within twelve months.”

I laughed. It escaped before I could stop it, sharp and humorless.

“My family doesn’t have alphas,” I said. “We’re all betas. Aggressively average. You’re barking up the wrong gene pool.”

Her pause was brief, but it landed like a dropped plate.

“In that case,” she said carefully, “you’ll need to make alternative arrangements.”

Arrangements.

I left the clinic with a pamphlet in my bag and a ticking sensation just beneath my sternum, like someone had installed a countdown clock without asking permission.

The city looked the same, which felt personal. People walked past me with coffee and headphones, unaware that their bodies could betray them on a Tuesday. I wanted to grab a stranger and say, "Hi, quick question: do you know who owns you yet, or is that scheduled for later?"

Instead, I went home and called my mother.

She answered on the third ring. “Hi, sweetheart.”

“I’m an omega,” I said.

Silence. Then a sharp inhale.

“That’s not funny.”

“It’s not a joke.”

Another pause. I could hear the television in the background, my father’s favorite news channel murmuring about nothing important.

“You should get a second opinion,” she said. “Doctors are dramatic.”

“I already did.”

“Well,” she said, voice tightening. “You always did like attention.”

I stared at the crack in my kitchen wall, the one I kept meaning to fix but never did.

“They said I need an alpha sponsor,” I added. “Legally.”

“That won’t be us,” she said quickly. Too quickly. “We don’t want to get involved in… all that.”

“All what?”

“The bonding,” she said. “The expectations. It’s complicated.”

Something cold settled behind my ribs.

“I have a year,” I said. “After that, the state assigns one.”

She exhaled, relieved. “That sounds very official. I’m sure they know what they’re doing.”

We hung up not long after. I didn’t cry. I sat at the table and watched the light shift across the floor as it might explain itself.

The pamphlet was full of soft language and friendly colors. Omega welfare. Protective oversight. Guardianship, like it was a favor and not a leash. It talked about safety, the way people always do when they mean control.

I flipped through it once, then dropped it in the trash.

If the system required an alpha, then fine. I would choose one.

I wasn’t going to end up assigned to a stranger with a savior complex and a legal claim to my future. I wasn’t going to shrink my life because my body had decided to reroute itself without consulting me.

I showered. I dressed. I studied myself in the mirror, looking for proof that something fundamental had changed.

I looked the same.

Which meant the change wasn’t going to announce itself politely. It was going to show up sideways. In closed doors. Lingering glances. Rules were tightening when I wasn’t looking.

I grabbed my jacket and my keys.

If I needed an alpha, I was going to get one who was rich, powerful, and smart enough not to confuse ownership with entitlement. Someone who would sign the paperwork and stay out of my way.

The bar down the street was loud and dim, smelling of ambition and cheap cologne. I lasted fifteen minutes.

Alphas noticed me now. Not subtly. Not carefully. Like a problem they had already solved.

One leaned too close. One smiled like I belonged to him already. One asked if I knew how lucky I was.

I left before any of them could put a hand on me.

Outside, the air felt wrong. Thin. My head throbbed faintly, like my body was clearing its throat.

Compatibility mattered, the pamphlet had said. Fit. Resonance.

Great. Even my biology had standards.

I laughed softly to myself and headed for the train, the clock in my chest ticking louder now.

One year.

Plenty of time.

I wasn’t planning to waste it.