OMEGA'S PHEROMONES

ZEPHYR

My eyelids felt too heavy for me to lift. My body ached terribly, my throat dry like I'd munched on sawdust. My sides burned, a surge of Omega scent hitting me continuously. I felt so weak, in more pain than I'd ever felt.

I pushed my eyes open, my head a groggy mess as I glanced around, slowly taking in my surroundings — the green-painted walls, the heavy beeping machines. My blurry eyes moved only to realize my hands were cuffed to the bed.

 My Omega scent clung to my skin, stronger than anything I'd ever experienced, and no matter how shallowly I breathed, I couldn't escape it. I had spent five years pushing my body beyond its limits, enduring injuries that would have kept other cadets in bed for weeks. Yet a single night of differentiation had reduced me to someone who couldn't even sit up without feeling sick.

My survival instinct kicked in immediately as I sat up, assessing my situation, when the sound of footsteps echoed through the room, drawing closer to me.

My commanding officer and four other cadets from my rank stepped in, immediately blocking their noses with their palms.

One of the cadets reached for the scent-filtering mask clipped to his belt, while another kept his distance from my bed. Their reactions told me everything I needed to know. The academy had taught us how to recognize an uncontrolled Omega presentation, how to secure a room, and how to protect ourselves if a newly presented Omega's pheromones affected the people nearby. I'd sat through those lessons like they had nothing to do with me. I'd never imagined I'd wake up on the other side of the rules.

It didn't take much for me to realize Kade had reported me to the officials.

"That bastard… he ratted me out, didn't he?" I asked, my voice cracking, cold and weak.

The commander dropped his gaze. I was, after all, his top cadet, and I turned out to be… an Omega. I'd endangered them all.

“Unregistered secondary presentation, concealment of a prohibited designation. Endangerment of Crown bloodline protocol.” My jaw tightened as I listened to him speak.

“I didn't conceal anything. I was undifferentiated.” I retorted, making certain he knew that I understood the rules. His eyes moved from the decree toward me.

“Your records state that,” he agreed.

“Then you know I didn't hide an Omega designation for years. There wasn't one to hide. My differentiation occurred yesterday.” I snapped, becoming edgier by the minute. He nodded again, taking a step closer.

“And you're still legally responsible for the consequences of your actions.”

I was an Omega now. But I'd spent five years serving as a cadet while officially undifferentiated. The law didn't prohibit me from serving before differentiation. It prohibited Omegas from holding my position once their designation manifested.

My position had never been an ordinary one. I trained with cadets who were expected to enter the kingdom's military, and my record had placed me among the best fighters the academy had produced in years. I'd earned that position through discipline, skill, and more pain than I cared to remember. None of it mattered now. The moment my designation appeared, the law could strip me of my rank, my future, and even my right to remain on the training grounds.

The academy's rules concerning the Crown were worse. Anyone assigned to the royal household or permitted near the King's private quarters had to undergo designation checks and follow strict pheromone-control protocols. An unregistered Omega was considered a potential security risk, regardless of whether they had deliberately concealed their designation. I didn't know what made my presentation a threat to the Crown, but judging by the cuffs around my wrists, the officials had already decided that I was one.

"It makes no sense… I hadn't done shit, I'm only finding out now. You can't just read some bullshit and arrest me. I'm a victim too. What the fuck did Kade say?" I roared, yanking angrily against the cuffs.

"He claimed you attacked a High Lord unprovoked, and turned Omega mid-fight. He didn't mention what you allegedly walked in on — that's the funny part." The commander spoke in his same cold, unemotional tone, but I could see he felt sorry for me.

And even now, in my despair, in my weak state, I hated being looked down on, hated it as much as I fought and stood tall for rank and stature — being an Omega didn't change shit. I didn't need their pity.

The commander nodded to the two other cadets — Killian, whom I'd once beaten to an inch of unconsciousness, and Rain, the female who'd sparred me fair and square before backing away with only a few scratches. She was an Alpha as well. She looked sorry for me. They both moved to me and held my hands in place, the two cadets standing beside the commander bearing an unnecessary pride.

"You'll come with us peacefully to stand trial," the commander ordered, but it was pointless. There would be no judgment other than death. I myself had read the acts and laws, knew them by heart.

I looked past him at the three guards behind, hands already resting on their weapons, and something in me went very still and very loud at the same time, and I don't remember deciding to move. My body was already off the bed.

The first one didn't even get his hand fully off his sidearm before my forearm was against his throat, and I felt cartilage give under the pressure and then nothing, no resistance left in him at all, and he folded to the floor before I'd even registered I'd killed him.

The second one got a knife into my side, a hot line of pain I filed away as unimportant, and then his neck was in my hands and it wasn't anymore, wasn't a threat, wasn't anything.

The third turned to run for the alarm bell and I caught his collar three steps in, and I want to tell you I hesitated but of course I didn't. He ended up on the tile with his neck at an angle that necks don't bend.

The captain stood frozen against the wall, Rain was the only cadet left, and I stood there too, chest heaving, blood soaking through my shirt that wasn't entirely mine, and he looked at me the way you'd look at something that used to be a person.

"Run," he said quietly.

I ran.

The corridors blurred past me, guards shouting somewhere behind, alarms starting to shriek through the stone, and I hit the outer wall and went over it without slowing down, dropping into the alley beyond and keeping moving because stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant understanding what I'd just done with my own hands.

By the time the slum rooftops swallowed the cadet dorms' spires behind me, the wound in my side had soaked clean through my shirt, and my vision had started tunneling the same way it had on Kade's floor, red creeping in at the edges, my own biology threatening to turn on me again in the open, unregistered, with guards already hunting.

I had heard stories about what happened to Omegas who presented without registration. Some were taken to state clinics until their cycles stabilized. Others disappeared into facilities no cadet was permitted to visit. The ones who presented near the royal household faced even stricter scrutiny because the Crown considered uncontrolled pheromones a security threat.

But there was another reason the palace had become so particular about scent control.

Rumors about the King's condition had spread far beyond the palace walls. His ruts had become increasingly unpredictable, sometimes arriving without warning and lasting longer than the royal physicians expected. During those episodes, his temper reportedly became dangerous, and the palace guards were ordered to clear certain corridors and restrict access to his private quarters. Servants who worked near the royal wing were issued stronger scent blockers, and anyone assigned to deliver supplies had to follow the palace's precautions.

No one outside the royal household knew exactly what was wrong with him. Some blamed stress, others whispered about a failed bond or an Alpha whose instincts had become impossible to control. Whatever the truth was, the palace wasn't willing to risk another incident.

I had never cared enough about palace gossip to investigate it. The King was a world away from my problems, and I had more immediate reasons to stay alive.

I found the clinic by scent alone, some animal instinct dragging me toward the smell of antiseptic buried under rot behind a butcher's shop, and the woman who answered the door took one look at the blood on my shirt and the way I was breathing and didn't ask a single question, just pulled me inside and shut the door behind us.

"You're one of the new ones," she said, prepping a needle without waiting for permission, a cigarette hanging off her bottom lip.

"Sit. Bleed quietly if you can manage it."

"How long will it hold?" I asked, watching the needle, watching my own hand shake against my knee.

"A day. Maybe two if you're not sweating or scared." She glanced up, unimpressed.

"You've been both since you walked through my door."

The needle went in and the heat under my ribs receded, just barely, just enough that I could breathe without feeling like my own skin was trying to leave my body. I sat there while she stitched my side crooked and fast, and the question sitting heaviest in my chest wasn't about the guards I'd killed — it was what would happen after two days, when this stopped holding and there was no captain around a second time to tell me to run.

"There's a shipment going to the palace tomorrow," she said, like she'd read the question off my face.

"Real scent blockers. Not this garbage I just put in your arm. Made for royal staff, anyone near the King's bloodline." She tied off the last stitch and sat back.

 The palace used a different grade of suppressant from the cheap blockers sold in the slums. Its supplies were distributed according to designation, medical history, and proximity to the royal family. During the King's unstable ruts, those supplies became even more important. The palace couldn't afford to have staff losing control of their pheromones or triggering an already volatile Alpha while he was in that state.

The woman studied me for a moment before continuing.

"Deliveries like that go through the palace's service entrance. They need workers who can follow instructions, keep their heads down, and not ask questions. Most of the people taking those jobs are Betas or registered Omegas who have already passed their checks."

She looked pointedly at my bloodstained clothes.

"You, on the other hand, are a walking disaster. But you're still on the academy roster, and that might buy you a chance to get through the gate before anyone catches up with you."

"You're still a cadet on paper. Nobody's flagged your face to the gate guards, only a description. If I were you, I'd volunteer for that run before somebody remembers to update the roster."

I hated how much sense that made. Every instinct told me to keep running, put distance between myself and the corridor full of dead men behind me. But running meant staying unregistered and unmedicated, and in two days that meant becoming exactly the kind of danger that gets put down on sight instead of arrested.

Getting into the palace wouldn't make me safe. If they discovered my designation, I could be arrested before I reached the delivery room. If the academy circulated my name, I could be recognized at the gate. And if the King's condition was as bad as the rumors claimed, I would be stepping into a place where even a small mistake could have consequences.

But the palace had what I needed: proper scent blockers, medical supplies, and a chance to disappear into a crowd before the academy closed every route out of the city.

I didn't intend to stay there any longer than necessary. I certainly didn't intend to get anywhere near the King.

"Set it up," I said.