Cold. Ice cold. Completely frozen.

Dongwoo wondered if this was what death felt like, feeling so much and then nothing, entirely nothing at all. He was numb. He couldn’t sense his knees hitting the floor with a loud thud, nor the streams of tears trailing down his cheeks.

For all he cared, he could be dead or dying. It would be just the same.

His life began to flash before his eyes.

He was thirteen again, and his small trembling hands were clutching onto piece of paper. “No, this can’t be right, seonsaeng-nim. It can’t be!” Dongwoo protested. His eyelids were growing hot with tears brewing behind them. He was afraid, confused, and defiant. He couldn’t accept this as his fate.

One in a thousand, he repeated in his head. Those were the chances of this happening, one in a thousand.

“I’m sorry, Dongwoo-goon. Those are the test results,” his doctor said, kneeling down next to him. “You’re an…”

Then the teacher was gone. Dongwoo was now fourteen, laying down on his bed with a large book laid out in front of him. His fingertips were tracing the ancient letters.

“Alpha…beta…gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta, eta, theta, iota, kappa, lambda, nu, mu, ksi, omicron, pi, rho, sigma, tao, upsilon, phi, chi, psi…omega…why can’t I be a ksi? Then I could be seksi! Kyakyakyakya!”

Dongwoo lifted his head from the book. Suddenly he was sixteen and in class. He swallowed hard and shot glances at the girl to the right of him and then to the girl at the left. A throat cleared from in front of the room. Dongwoo snapped back into attention. Even the teacher was female.

“Weak, fragile, submissive,” the woman spoke as she walked down the aisle of classroom. Her heels clicked harshly against the tile. Each step echoed ominously through his ears, like the ticking of the clock. The teacher dictated the time here. But then she stopped at Dongwoo’s desk, looking down at him. Her glasses slipped down the bridge of her nose as the corners of her lips quirked upwards. “Female,” the teacher added in a light tone. Several girls in the class let out a snigger, and Dongwoo squirmed under the gaze of his teacher, feeling hot with embarrassment. The teacher let out a slight laugh herself and pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. “These are stereotypes of an omega, and as you can all see for yourselves, they are wrong.”

She walked back up the aisle of the room and spun on her heels, facing the class once again. “First, let’s address the elephant in the room, or boy,” she joked with a warm smile. Dongwoo was mollified, releasing a breath he had been holding for too long. The teacher was truly an expert omega to have such a calming effect on him, and yet there was still something strict and utterly authoritative about her. Dongwoo didn’t want to do anything that might set her off.

“Population control,” she answered with a shrug, leaning against the chalkboard. “Our bodies react to the needs of the species. You have learned this before from your biology classes, but you’ve learned it in the context that many females do become betas and infertile when the population in the area had become too high. But rarely, very rarely,” the teacher emphasized as her eyes narrowed on Dongwoo. There was a sparkle of curiosity in her eyes. She was, like most of the other girls in the class, fascinated by his presence. “One in a thousand chance, a male becomes an omega.”

“We know this already, seonsaeng-nim!” a girl spoke up from the back of the classroom. Her hand was in the air, commanding attention. It was Sojin, one of his closest friends. A smile broke out on his face at her coming to his defense. “They told us when Dongwoo’s results came back.”

“Freak,” another girl sneered from behind Dongwoo. It wasn’t anything new to him. He had actually grown accustomed to it so much so that he didn’t even flinch. He let it roll off like water, flowing off of his back.

And the slur hadn’t escaped the teacher’s notice either. “And this is exactly why I’m bringing it to your attention.” She lifted herself from the chalkboard and took a step closer to the class. “If we are to accept that all omegas are female, are we also to accept that we are weak? Submissive? That alphas and betas are first, and we are dead last. Well, are we?” she asked now focusing her attention on a girl in the front row who had giggled at Dongwoo’s nickname.

“No, m’am,” the teenager yielded.

“Precisely,” the teacher remarked with a crooked smile, a canine bit into her red lip. “There’s seems to be more than one stereotype that I need to dismiss.” She stepped backwards and announced to the class, “We are omegas, not because we’re last, but because we are at the opposite ends of the spectrum.  And also because we have the final say, especially when it comes to mating, child bearing and rearing. Don’t let the bravado of alphas and betas fool you. They are the weak ones when it comes to their precious omegas.” And this time the teacher delights in the giggles filling her classroom, and for the first time Dongwoo joins with the rest of his classmates.

“But sadly, there are also other falsehoods that need to be addressed,” and with that statement, the room fell silent. “We all do not mate for life. If the population gets too low, your mate might take another. You might take another. And then mates, of course, can also be separated by sickness and death…infertility,” the teacher paused. Her eyes fell on Dongwoo again. His eyes grew wide. This, he hadn’t thought of yet. He was only sixteen. Of course he had fantasies about meeting and falling in love with his mate, but nothing about what would follow afterwards.

The teacher’s eyes left his. “The number one priority is always the survival of the pack. Never forget that.” Accompanying that ominous statement the bell rang, dismissing the class.

Dongwoo gathered his belongings and dragged his feet across the smooth tile floor. His mind was swimming with thoughts, mostly worries. “Dongwoo.” His head perked up at the sound of his name.

“Yes, m’am.”

“Given your situation, the chances of your mate leaving you drastically goes up,” his teacher spoke the harsh truth as kindly as she can. “You have to protect your heart. Be careful.”

“I…I know, m’am,” he responded, clutching tightly onto the straps of his bookbag. He could feel his shoulders tense. He was completely tense. Dongwoo always had the tendency to express everything he felt with his entire body, and he always felt too much.

But then he felt hands fall upon his shoulders, doing their best to gently massage away the tightness. He raised his head and saw the warm look on his teacher’s face.

“Just because you can’t have a child, it doesn’t make you any less of an omega.”

Her face the blurred, blending into the background. Everything was growing hazy, dark, and hot. Dongwoo was slick with sweat. The air around him was scarcely breathable. It was thick, thick with musk and pheromones. But he needed to breathe. He was gasping for air, shivering. But he wasn’t cold. No, his body felt as if it were on fire. And like always, he was feeling way too much, more than he had felt in his twenty years of life.

A loud groan slipped passed his lips. He tried his best to hold it in, but now he could feel his whole body going limp, wracked with pleasure and pain, void of energy and control.

“Sh!” he heard a hiss blow past the shell of his ear. “Be quiet or they’ll hear you.”

“Taehwan-hyung…sorry,” Dongwoo slurred, drunk from his high. Taehwan was Woohyun’s brother’s friend. In fact, they were both in the Nam household at the moment, supposed to be enjoying the party the brothers were throwing. But Dongwoo unexpectedly went into heat. He had miscalculated. He didn’t think that it would come for another month. He didn’t take the necessary precautions. Then Sojin had gone into heat, and it wasn’t uncommon for omegas with a close-bond to go into heat at the same time. Dongwoo had caught it.

Dongwoo tried to escape into Woohyun’s mother’s bathroom, searching for some expired suppressants that he could shovel into his mouth by the handful, hoping that it would cool down his heat. But as he was pouring pills into his palm, Taehwan’s strong hands gripped his shoulders and pulled Dongwoo into a warm embrace. The alpha had hunted down the scent of the heat within seconds of it starting, and now he was deeply inhaling it from the crook of Dongwoo’s neck.

Dongwoo was told that omegas were in control when it came to mating, but that night, their hormones called the shots. He sent the pills clattering onto the floor and spun around, latching onto Taehwan’s lips with his own. And Dongwoo was just grateful that it was Taehwan, a hyung that he had known for years. A nice hyung who often treated him and was always kind to him. A hyung that Dongwoo might’ve been harboring a crush for. And so Taehwan finding him that night was the best that he could have hoped for. That night, they became mates.

But now, right now, Dongwoo was pulled back into reality. He finally realized that his forehead was grazing the floor and his hands were clawing fruitlessly at the floorboards. On his knees, bowing down, completely submissive, Dongwoo was begging. “Don’t…” he choked back a sob. “Don’t do this.”

Taehwan stood over him. “The bond has been broken for over a week. You should know. You have to know,” he insisted.

And Dongwoo did know. He felt the bond weakening months before, and recently it was hanging on by mere threads. But two Mondays ago the threads snapped, and it all fell apart. Dongwoo fell apart right along with it. He hadn’t been eating. He had barely been drinking. Woohyun had noticed it, but there was nothing that he could do. Woohyun was only a beta, and Taehwan was the alpha, the leader of their small pack.

Fingers grabbed at the edges of Dongwoo’s sharp jaw, forcing the omega’s head up slowly. Taehwan scanned Dongwoo’s tearful face with pity. “I love you, Woo,” he said, and Dongwoo believed that he was sincere. It just wasn’t the love that he wanted or needed. Dongwoo averted the other’s gaze, fixing his eyes on the corner of the room, but he immediately regrets it. He had forgotten. Sitting in that corner was Sojin. Her head was buried in her knees, ashamed. “But I love her too, and she’s better for me,” Taehwan continued. “She’s pregnant.”

“I know,” Dongwoo responded in a strangled voice. “I can smell it.” He pulled himself up until he was sitting on top of his heels. He threw his head back and stared at the ceiling. He took in a deep, shaking breath. “I could smell it the moment she stepped inside.”

“Then you know what I have to do,” Taehwan said in a soft voice. Dongwoo laughed. Even when he was throwing Dongwoo out on his , Taehwan still spoke with such false kindness. But…the number one priority is the survival of the pack…screw the pack! What about me?

“Please…please don’t do this, hyung,” Dongwoo begged. “I have nowhere to go.”

“Your parents will take you in,” Taehwan answered so quickly.

Dongwoo opened up his mouth, about to respond with whatever his sluggish tongue could muster, but he was cut off. “Dongwoo, please,” Sojin begged from the corner. She finally had lifted her head. Sojin stood up, slightly stumbling, and made her way to the alpha. But Dongwoo could see her strength returning with each step. And by the time she reached Taehwan, she was standing up straight, her shoulders were back, her chin was pointed up as she looked down at her old friend. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

Omegas really did seem to have the final say because after hearing that, Dongwoo finally gave in and stepped outside of the house, outside of his pack. But before slamming the door closed, he cursed, “F**k you both.”

After all, he was an omega too. He had to have the last word.