Chapter Text
When Zoey looked back on her presentation as an omega it seemed, more than anything, like an unfortunate inevitability rather than a shocking revelation. Not that it felt like that at the time, of course.
Up until then, Zoey had been gunning to be an alpha. She was fourteen years old and already had a rapidly developing sense that she was never going to fit in with her peers; an ever growing cognizance that she was simultaneously too much and not enough.
An alpha presentation, she reasoned, would at least provide her some amount of authority to be the obnoxious person other people seemed to perceive her to be. Would it sting any less when others shied away from her mid-ramble or cut her off with a clipped response that showed they didn’t care about what she had to say? Maybe not.
But at least she would be able to apply some salve to the wound. Alphas were, after all, generally allowed to take up more space than anyone else. She might not be any less annoying, but said annoying tendencies would at least be more understood and allowable. Justifiable.
Zoey had always gotten the impression that alphas’ inherent social and material value outweighed whatever personal flaws they might have. All too often, she noticed mated pairs or packs where it felt like the others were just tolerating their alpha, rather than loving them. There was an equal and opposite exchange occurring in which the alpha’s ability to protect the others and earn them social status allowed for said alpha to be a dreadful person.
Not that Zoey wanted to be a dreadful person. It just seemed like a degree of privilege that she might benefit from since other people did, in fact, seem to dislike her more often than not. If she was an alpha then all of her rambunctiousness and ill timed remarks would be seen as both acceptable and worth enduring.
Being a beta would’ve been okay too, but Zoey felt it in her bones that wasn’t in the cards for her. She could appreciate the way that betas seemed to be shunted to the side, always the bridesmaid and never the bride as it were, but the rest of their temperament just didn’t seem like it could possibly be her. All the betas she knew were steady and solid. How could Zoey, with a mental state more akin to ever shifting sand, possibly fall into that designation?
All Zoey really knew was that she didn’t want to be an omega. The expectations of omegas seemed like an impossible standard for her to meet. Omegas were, at their core, meant to be desirable. Meant to be wanted. Their own desires hardly seemed to matter. The point of an omega’s existence was to sit prettily and hope someone came along and got caught in the snare of their beauty.
Omegas weren’t allowed to want. Or, at the very least, they should expect that wanting things would only lead to disappointment. Zoey had heard one too many horror stories of omegas that ended up as the modern day equivalent of bitter spinster maids to be comfortable with the idea of ending up with that presentation.
Zoey certainly had her fair share of evidence that she was never going to be wanted, after all. Always picked last whenever the teacher told the class that they could choose their own groups for assignments. Sitting by herself on the school bus while others crammed themselves three to a seat just to avoid her. Eating her lunch in a bathroom stall so she could avoid the burning shame of not being able to find a table that would permit her presence. How could an omega like that possibly survive?
So she had decided that she was going to be an alpha. She was definitely going to be alpha. Undoubtedly. Certainly. There was no shot that the universe would set her up to be the butt of such a cruel joke, right?
Right. About that. Zoey knew vaguely that secondary gender presentations could happen as early as thirteen, excluding those rare cases of precocious puberty. Her own family tree tended to err on the side of younger presentations than average, which was a pattern Zoey was all too enthusiastic to perpetuate. The sooner she got her alpha designation was the sooner she would have an explanation for why she was the way she was.
She went to sleep each night with a restless fervor churning in her gut, expectant of the day she’d wake up and find that her canines were beginning to ache in the early stages of elongation. She was bizarrely eager for the telltale sign of cold sweats as her body struggled to acclimate to alphas’ naturally higher body temperatures.
Maybe it was because of that hypervigilance searching for alpha puberty signs that she failed to notice the growing list of omega ones she was exhibiting. In hindsight, they were pretty textbook. She’d long grown used to her peers constant dismissal of her bids for attention, but suddenly they began to needle sharply at her like she was a fragile pup all over again. It no longer felt like a dull disappointment. Her brain began categorizing her social failures as threats to her very safety in the world.
Her magpie tendencies also exacerbated around that same time. She’d always been a fan of trinkets. Her bedroom walls were plastered with memorabilia from every live show and concert she’d managed to worm into attending. Her messenger bag was weighed down by keychains from family vacations going back as far as she could remember. But, as her presentation grew closer, those hoarding impulses ramped up even higher.
She simply didn’t think to question any of it. Whatever reason there was for her sudden compulsion to use her alpha brother’s body wash in the shower was none of her business. So what if she suddenly soothed by the scent of her loved ones cloaking her skin? Surely it didn’t mean anything that she felt the abrupt and intense need to shrink herself down smaller in the hallways when her peers that had already presented took up too much space. For all her youthful ignorance, it was just too subtle of a shift for her to know any better.
Until the scales tipped too far for her to ignore it. It happened on a Saturday. She’d stayed up far too late the night before working tirelessly on fan edits for one of her favorite kpop groups. While Zoey hadn’t managed to make any long last friendships in the real world, she had gained a meager audience in certain online fandom spaces. The positive reinforcement of that virtual engagement was a little more loadbearing on her sense of self worth than she was comfortable admitting.
So it was strange, given her late night, that she woke up so jarringly early in the morning. The sun wasn’t even up yet and the idea that Zoey wouldn’t sleep til noon on a weekend day was basically unheard of. But her mind was buzzing like a live wire.
Something just felt wrong. There was a clawing anxiety in her chest that she wasn’t safe somehow. Her room, typically a constant source of comfort, felt far too large and completely unprotected. The shadows in her room seemed to flicker ominously; a foreboding reminder that she was alone.
Even in her frenzied state, Zoey recognized that she couldn’t very well wake up her family members over these feelings. But maybe she could at least gather some of their stuff from around the house to soothe herself? Zoey had never thought too much about the scents of her packmates before, but they suddenly felt incredibly relevant.
Her brother’s letterman jacket, slung over a dining room chair, was rolled up and twisted until it could serve as a sort of scent based ward at the edge of her mattress. Her mother’s bathrobe wasn’t nearly as saturated in scent as Zoey would’ve liked, given the older woman’s beta designation, so Zoey plastered it across the center of her bed in an attempt to distribute her pheromones was widely as possible. The throw blanket that typically lived on her father’s favorite chair was held up by push pins against the dry wall of her bedroom so that his alpha scent could hover over her shoulders as she curled up in her nest.
Her nest. The horror hit Zoey so quickly that it would’ve bowled her over had she not already been pressed flat against the mattress. A sound pressed its way free from her throat unbidden; a distress chirp escaping despite her best efforts. This couldn’t be happening.
Everything changed after that. Her mother found her a few hours later when she noticed her missing bathrobe. By then, Zoey was nearly delirious with the overload of hormones coursing through her veins. Presentation heats weren’t sexual and her family wouldn’t have been susceptible to her regardless given their pack genetics. But they had to support her somehow.
Even in her fugue state, Zoey could detect their discomfort with her presentation. While her dad had held her against his chest without complaint, loosely cradling her as her mom pushed back her sweaty bangs, she was still able to smell the stress underlying in his scent. She’d never been able to detect such nuance in others’ scents before. She wished desperately that she’d never developed the capability.
Her mom’s mouth was pressed into a thin line as she went through the motions of calling their extended family members for advice on what to do. No one in their household was an omega, nor had any of them spent time with one during their heat. Zoey hadn’t been the only one banking on her being an alpha. They were prepared for that. Not this.
She was too young for suppressants. It turned out that there were, in fact, some downsides to presenting so early. The earliest you could be prescribed suppressants was sixteen and that was only permitted in accordance with rigorous medical examination and approval from physicians after in-depth discussions of the myriads risks with the child’s family. Their whole pack was in agreement that those limitations were a damn shame.
Scent blockers helped, but not nearly enough. School became a whole new sort of nightmare. Zoey had grown accustomed to the fact that she had nothing to offer to her peers. That her inability to pretend to care about normal teenage things for longer than a few minutes and her constant tilt back into infodumping about her current hyperfixations had made her a social outcast. She didn’t have anything they wanted.
But, suddenly, she did have something to offer them. It just wasn’t something she actually wanted to give. The amount of backhanded compliments thrown her way was truly astounding. She stopped using her locker entirely just to cut down on the number of opportunities her sleezy alpha peers had to corner her and insist that they’d suddenly realized she was worth giving the time of day. The ache in her shoulders from her overloaded school bag was a sacrifice worth enduring. Because they didn’t really want her.
It was even worse than she’d imagined, really. The cruel irony of suddenly being desirable while knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that they didn’t really want her as a person was dizzying. In a way, she had gotten what she asked for. Her weirdness was acceptable up until a certain point. But only if she gave them what they wanted. Her existence as an omega wasn’t enough, not the way it would’ve been if she’d been an alpha. She only had value so long as she let them have their way with her.
And she simply could not do that. She was even more cut off from the world around her than before. Her life was bisected at that point. There was a before and after. Before her presentation, when she’d held out hope that she might eventually be worth something to others just as she was. And the after, when she learned the hard way that the worth she craved came at a cost she couldn’t bear to pay.
So it was just a countdown to sixteen, ultimately. A countdown to when suppressants could hide the shame that curdled in her chest.
Life at home had gotten worse too. She learned early on that her nesting compulsions weren’t particularly beloved. During her heats, which thankfully were rare given how young she was and hadn’t yet tilted sexual, her family permitted her taking their personal belongings to soothe the ache. But she clamped down on her cravings the rest of the time. She was already asking too much of them just by existing as she was. She’d never be enough.
If there was anything resembling a silver lining through all of this, it was the fact that her online support was still alive and well. She had a meager following but had managed to integrate her music interests into her fandom blogs without losing all manner of engagement. As few in numbers as they were, there were people out there that liked her lyrics and her voice and were even impressed by her rapping. There were people out there that thought she was good. And they didn’t even know she was an omega.
Her favorite people to interact with were other fans of the Sunlight Sisters. That band, Zoey knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, would remain her favorite until the day that she died. She’d had countless interests come and go over the years, but the Sunlight Sisters remained unshakeably at the core.
The fandom was small but mighty. It was unavoidable that the public’s interest in the group had dwindled, given their abrupt and tragic end about a year before Zoey was born. On a personal level, there was something about it all that just felt written in the stars. The idea that it was mere coincidence that this thing she loved so profoundly just so happened to meet its end just before she was around to love it felt impossible. It might’ve been silly, but the timing and tragedy of the whole thing just made her feel that much closer to the group and their members.
There were certain things within the fandom that Zoey generally tried to avoid. The circumstances of Miyeong’s death were, in Zoey’s opinion, none of her goddamn business. Or anyone else’s. She tried to keep up with Celine, her admitted bias, in the beginning. But the way the press constantly pressured her for details about Miyeong’s mysterious death and their third member’s abrupt disappearance from the public eye was hard to stomach.
There was also the matter of Miyeong’s daughter. Evidently entrusted to Celine, Zoey had always felt weirdly drawn to the girl. Only a year older than her. A quiet and polite child that the press lauded would someday be a star just like her mother. The princess of pop, they called her. But her real name was Rumi.
Celine brought Rumi with her to award shows and red carpets from time to time. But they both seemed reticent to give the public too much information to work with. Their answers were practiced and perfectly diplomatic. Their smiles never quite reached their eyes. So Zoey tried to respect their privacy as best she could.
But music was always where Zoey felt she had free reign. She’d remixed the Sunlight Sisters’ tracks and covered their songs more times than she could count. If anything, her loyalty to them was actually fucking up her ability to curate a larger audience. Various social media sites’ algorithms would only push her hyperspecifically targeted content onto so many other folks. She would’ve been better off covering current top hits and following trends like everyone else. Zoey just kept doing her own thing.
And, eventually, that paid off. Zoey wanted to do a remix of one of the Sunlight Sisters’ most infamous and admittedly least popular songs. One that, despite the public’s distaste for it, Zoey admired.
It was a song that was released shortly before Miyeong’s sudden mystery pregnancy and untimely death. It was a love song, told clearly from Miyeong’s perspective, about a man that everyone later understood to be the eventual father of her child. Zoey had always liked the song but, after her presentation, felt inalienably connected to it.
Miyeong had been an omega, too. The song told the tale of her gilded cage as an omega; which was a topic rarely addressed so bluntly in the public eye. It spoke of a man she loved, one that had set her free, but brought into question whether or not he had ulterior motives in doing so. The song gave you the disconcerting sense that, while she was grateful to him, she would never truly be able to fully trust him.
Zoey related to that sentiment a lot. She couldn’t imagine a world in which she’d ever be able to fully give herself over to a partner or trust them with her whole heart. She presumed that romantic love, should she ever get to experience it, would be conditional. That she’d still need to keep her guard up.
But the song stuck with her. What might have been her lover’s actual motive? Was there any possibility that his feelings had been true?
Zoey felt like, if she could understand the man herself, she might be able to find some sort of solace or sense of peace in her own mind. And maybe, in a way, it would pay respect to Miyeong’s own experiences posthumously. The song had never done particularly well on the charts, after all. It was too controversial of a statement to imply that an alpha’s claim over an omega could be anything less than innately correct. Especially back then.
So Zoey tried to give him a voice. She sang Miyeong’s sections of the song to the best of her ability. They had fairly similar ranges so she was able to pull it off decently well, or at least Zoey hoped so.
Then, she’d written her own rap verses to narrate Miyeong’s lover’s response. She sought to flesh out his character, as it were. To further enunciate his simultaneous charm yet untrustworthy nature. To explore all the possible reasons he might have been drawn to her in the first place and whether or not he could be trusted at all. What might you owe someone who set you free, regardless of their intent behind doing so?
She posted the video of her singing the completed piece a few weeks prior to her sixteenth birthday. It blew the fuck up.
Overnight her follower count went into the six digits and the video itself was in the millions. The clamor around it was, to put it lightly, deeply overwhelming.
The actual content of people’s reception to it was a mixed bag. Many people were simply impressed with Zoey’s skills which was an unbelievably gratifying thing to see. It seemed that the surprise throwback to a retro group had also generated a large nostalgia based response. It reignited the conversation of what the song itself had been getting at in light of how the world had shifted and changed since then. The public’s response was, as compared to its original early 2000s release, more nuanced.
There was a lot more sympathy towards Miyeong than before. Zoey felt a fragile warmth in her chest at that. She’d always felt bad that a piece that was clearly so personal had received such a negative response, especially given that Miyeong had died not even a year later. But there was a lot of contention as well.
Zoey knew she was in over her head when people started reaching out to her for interviews. Her brother caught wind of it before that, as his own friends saw the video and started asking questions. Zoey faked being sick to avoid going to school for a few days before her parents figured out what was going on.
They insisted she deny every interview request. Her dad even took her phone out of fear that she’d respond to the comments on the video and give the wrong impression. When Zoey didn’t respond to the press, though, they turned to her classmates. And those bastards were all too eager for a moment in the limelight.
She’d always tried to be careful about how much she said about herself online. Never came out as an omega or said where she was from or how old she was. Those attempts at discretion were obliterated the moment a microphone was shoved in front of her classmates’ mouths.
Suddenly, Zoey had friends. At least, according to what her peers claimed in their interviews. There was an embarrassing dissonance between what different people said about her, since their descriptions of her personality and interests were all complete bullshit. The inconsistencies were hard to ignore.
No one wanted to admit that she was a social outcast and a freak when they thought being her friend might cement their place in social media history. But they weren’t very good liars.
Ultimately, Zoey hoped she could just ride it out. Surely, within a month or so, people would forget all about it. Then she’d get her phone back and she could start posting content again with an audience that was hopefully larger than before, but not so big it caused any more uproars. And, by then, she would be on suppressants which would help with her making good judgment calls. Her parents were quite emphatic that she clearly needed the assistance.
She knew her parents were getting phone calls and emails and letters about all of it too. She just didn’t know the full extent of it in terms of the volume of inquiries or who it was exactly that was reaching out to them. Maybe if they’d ever bothered to listen to her rambling they would’ve put it together themselves. If that had been the case, Zoey was certain her parents wouldn’t have ripped up and thrown out letters addressed from Sunlight Entertainment Studios.
Even if they had realized, though, it wouldn’t have prepared Zoey for what happened. There simply was no universe in which she could’ve been properly braced for what happened just a week before she turned sixteen.
She’d heard the knocking at their front door before anyone else did. It was absurdly early in the morning and it felt a bit like the day she’d presented. Her omega presentation had permanently altered her body’s circadian rhythm. It didn’t matter how late she went to bed; her body wanted to wake with the sunrise. So, ostensibly, no one else had been awake to hear the knocking.
Her hair wasn’t combed. Her mouth was still zinging with the sharp bite of her minty toothpaste. She probably had gunk in the corners of her eyes. All that to say, she didn’t exactly look her best as Zoey opened the door and saw fucking Celine from the Sunlight Sisters on her goddamn doorstep.
And it wasn’t just Celine standing there, either. Celine herself was a sight to behold. Standing tall and sharp in a tailored linen blazer and sunglasses too dark for Zoey to see her eyes. But despite her lifelong admiration of the woman, Zoey honestly had barely noticed her. Because, just a few steps behind her and flanking either side, were two girls who stole the very oxygen from her chest.
One of them she recognized, of course. Rumi Ryu. It had been a few years since Zoey had seen a photo of her. She was taller, of course, and a little gangly. Her soft jawline was offset by her sharp eyes and broad shoulders. Zoey caught the faintest whiff of something sharp and woodsy clinging to her. Eucalyptus, perhaps, with a hint of mint. Zoey’s mouth began to water.
The other girl was not familiar, but she was a sight to behold nonetheless. Tall and foreboding. Her jaw was hard where Rumi’s had been soft and even from a distant Zoey could see the warning clench of tendons present there. Zoey felt distinctly underdressed before the taller girl’s discerning gaze. Her scent was woodsy as well, but warmer. Grounded. It felt oddly mature, like bourbon or tobacco, but not quite. Zoey wished for nothing more than to get close enough to properly identify it.
It wasn’t just their scents that were pulling Zoey in. There was something that felt truly profound shifting within her. Zoey blinked rapidly, trying to banish the bleariness from her eyes, and only grew more confused. She could’ve sworn she was seeing physical ripples of wind. It was like the air itself suddenly had fingerprints. They were pulsing magenta in time with her heartbeat.
She was right, of course, though she didn’t know it yet. Both about what she was seeing and what these girls would mean to her. But Zoey’s first glimpse of the Honmoon was largely trampled over by how abruptly everything else in her life tilted all at once.
Celine’s proposal, once Zoey’s parents were awake enough to understand it, was virtually unheard of. This wasn’t how people were picked to be idols. There were rigorous auditions and people spent years training for them. Also, notably, said auditions did not include random American high schoolers. This wasn’t how things were done.
None of that seemed to concern Celine. The immutable persuasion she wielded was truly daunting. Zoey might’ve been a child and therefore unaware of the greater inner workings of how custody arrangements worked, but it was hard to believe that they reached such a rapid conclusion. Much less one that placed Zoey in Celine’s care.
For one thing, there was the fact that none of these women seemed to actually like what Zoey had done to the song. They were all affected by it, certainly, and clearly impressed as well. Celine was nothing if not detailed as to what elements of Zoey’s work indicated her apparently abundant talent.
But Zoey wouldn’t say any of their reactions seemed positive beyond that. They recognized her competency, sure, but that didn’t exactly make for a warm reception. The unfamiliar girl, whose name she would later learn was Mira, had the best poker face. Celine and Rumi were easier to read in general, but that didn’t mean Zoey actually understood what their reactions meant.
It was as if both Celine and Rumi believed that they had a moral obligation to overcome whatever hang ups they had about the insensitivities of Zoey’s alterations to the song. That they were supernaturally deigned to focus on her raw talent instead. Zoey would find out later that they both, in fact, believed exactly that.
It was another thing entirely to comprehend how willingly her parents had parted ways with her. Because, in the weeks following her departure from California and her pack, Zoey had a hard time squaring it. This was the only home she had ever known. They were her family. How had her parents so willingly deposited their child into the hands of a stranger?
It wasn’t that Zoey didn’t want this opportunity. Far fucking from it. It felt like a fairytale come true, honestly. A genuinely once-in-a-life time experience. But there was a little voice in the back of her head that couldn’t let go of how easily her parents had given her up. Was she really that much of a burden?
The only real hiccup in the whole process had been the matter of Zoey’s suppressants. Or lack thereof, as that was where they ultimately landed. Celine was insistent that Zoey not start them yet, given the fact that once the girls debuted (because they would debut together, Zoey would have them with her, she wouldn’t be alone) they would have to be on suppressants for a very long time.
Managing the lifestyle of a touring popstar was nearly impossible while contending with hormonal cycles, after all. Putting Zoey on suppressants at such a young age, through the next several years of training, while knowing that she’d end up on them for the indeterminate future once they debuted? That was intolerable as far as Celine was concerned. It was too dangerous to her health.
Zoey couldn’t help the fact that she felt deeply cared for and protected by Celine throughout the whole process. Celine was an alpha through and through, but she didn’t seem to see Zoey’s designation as a weakness or burden the way that her father and the rest of her pack did. She didn’t even necessarily seem to like Zoey all that much, but she cared about her anyways. Because it was the right thing to do. That was more than Zoey had realized she could even ask for.
Celine did have a bit of an uphill battle convincing her parents that Zoey would be safe with them; it was a fair concern given the fact that, alongside Celine, both Rumi and Mira were alphas (which was something Zoey couldn’t think about for very long without getting lightheaded). But it was pretty much smooth sailing after that. Zoey had no friends to say goodbye to or grand birthday plans, so there were no barriers to them leaving the moment the ink on the contract had dried.
Zoey would never forget the surreality of it all. Sinking into the cushy fabric of her seat in the private jet that Celine retained for her personal travel purposes and staring out the window as her home grew further and further away. It might’ve been a bittersweet moment, if not for the surprise that Rumi and Mira had in store for her.
It wasn’t much. A squashed cupcake with melted buttercream icing and a single candle that they weren’t actually permitted to light given the whole being on a fucking airplane thing. But to Zoey it meant everything.
These two girls, who barely knew her and one of whom had a very valid reason to actively dislike Zoey, had gone above and beyond for her. They’d taken a look at her undoubtedly pitiful little life with no friends and inattentive packmates and decided that she was worth celebrating regardless.
It was unavoidable that Zoey was going to get teary eyed over the whole thing. She was a happy crier, goddammit. And the panic in the older alphas’ eyes in that moment was sweeter than any dessert could ever have been. For once in her life, somehow, Zoey knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her reaction could never be too much.
Though Zoey hardly suspected it was intentional, that simple act did wonders in priming her to accept the complete absurdity that came shortly thereafter. Demons were real apparently and Zoey was cosmically ordained to slay them through secret ancient martial arts and top 40 hits. Sure.
At a later date, once Zoey had cemented her place in the pack and felt comfortable being contrarian, she would rag on all of them for how they’d delivered this information to her. Neglecting to mention the fact that they were not, in fact, staying at a normal ass house until they arrived at the Jeju compound had already been a wild choice.
The follow-up decision to tell Zoey about demons immediately upon their arrival, while she was still trying to reattach her jaw from where it had fallen clean off its hinges at the sight of several dozen acres of sacred training grounds and a meticulously maintained ancient hanok, was even bolder.
Things weren’t easy in the beginning. Zoey had felt a burgeoning hope that, for once in her life, things might just fall into place. The siren call of Rumi and Mira’s scents and the way they folded so seamlessly in with her own crisp lemongrass had made her feel like it was obvious that they were meant to be together. But it wasn’t that simple.
Zoey could admit that she hadn’t fully considered the ramifications of her modifications of Miyeong’s song on Rumi. When she’d written the rap verses, Zoey had been so wrapped up in her imagined reality of Miyeong’s romantic relationship that she’d sort of neglected to remember the very real pregnancy that had come after. Which, to be fair, wasn’t something Miyeong had known about when she’s written the original song either.
No one had known anything about the man that fathered Miyeong’s child. He was a ghost as far as anyone could tell, which was an impressive feat given the fervor with which media outlets were chomping at the bit to figure out his identity. But nothing ever came of their searching.
And now that Zoey knew Rumi personally, she understood that his anonymity plagued her as well. Rumi seemed to lack on any real specific details, at the very least. Zoey knew that Celine hated him and had clearly tried to sell Rumi on the idea as well. Rumi didn’t seem to hate him exactly, but there was a clear and entirely reasonable hurt that clearly wracked the girl.
So it was maybe not the best introduction that Zoey had functionally given Rumi’s deadbeat dad a voice after seventeen years of silence. Rumi was basically an orphan that Celine had adopted and she wouldn’t even let Rumi call her ‘Mom’. Brutal.
It wasn’t as if Rumi was overtly rude. She was cordial with Zoey during their training sessions and mandatory shared meal times and clearly felt the pull of the Honmoon trying to drag them all together. But she was reticent to give away much of how she really felt about all of it. Even Rumi’s scent, as addictive as it was for Zoey, remained faint and restrained unless something truly rattled the alpha.
And Mira was no easier. She’d been found about six months prior to them discovering Zoey and seemed to have a fairly impersonal relationship with Rumi as well. They had a mutual respect for one another, but it would be a far cry from the truth to say they actually trusted each other on any meaningful level. And neither of them had significantly developed their mystical capabilities in their many months of being together.
Rumi and Mira were both incredible fighters, to be clear. Zoey nearly swallowed her tongue trying to choke down her instinctive submissive keening when she saw them spar for the first time. They’d started with wooden swords and Rumi had made quick work of besting Mira. But then they’d moved to hand-to-hand combat and Mira had Rumi pinned in a devastatingly short amount of time. The thought of being so thoroughly conquered by either one of them would become a mainstay in her sordid late night fantasies.
Zoey certainly had a lot of catching up to do in terms of fitness. It was nothing short of humiliating to be starting from ground zero when her teammates showed such clear natural combat skills and innate physical prowess. They brought her down to the gym early on, hoping the familiarity of the equipment would help Zoey get more comfortable, and she could barely lift the bar.
But then they’d started their Honmoon training and Zoey found a much needed reprieve. She thrived. The Honmoon had so much to say and Zoey was nothing if not a devoted listener. She could feel it all around her and hear its chatter in her ears like a constant white noise, warm and reassuring. It was a soothing balm after so many years of unwilling isolation. A sort of constant companion that would never leave her.
It was no wonder, really, that Zoey was the first one to summon her weapon. Her shin-kal materialized in her hands with an ease that Zoey had never experienced anywhere else. All at once, it became clear why Zoey was so much smaller than her alpha teammates. Because what she lacked in stature she made up for in speed and agility. Her body was the perfect vessel for her weapon style and she took to it instantly. For once in her life, she was exactly how she needed to be.
The ease of her summoning did not improve her standing in the group, however. Rumi, for all her prim and proper training, had clearly been stewing with resentment from the beginning over the fact that she hadn’t summoned her weapon before either Mira or Zoey were found.
Zoey personally had an ongoing theory that it wasn’t even possible for her to do so before the full trio had been identified, but Rumi had no interest in hearing about that. She clearly took it as a personal failing and was full of quiet rage.
Mira’s rage was notably less quiet. She’d stormed out of the training yard and disappeared from the grounds entirely until the next morning. Celine had come down on her with vicious precision. The compound had never looked cleaner than it did by the time Mira had finished the million and one chores Celine had assigned her as punishment. She wasn’t even allowed inside until she was done.
And it was then, as Mira leaned her elbows against the back porch railing to alleviate the pain in her lower back, that things finally shifted. Zoey had been hiding out in the yard, tucked up against the base of her favorite tree on the property. It was some sort of evergreen and its scent was a close enough facsimile to her teammates’ pheromones that it soothed the constant ache of yearning that lived in Zoey’s chest.
She wasn’t even sure if Mira knew she was there. Zoey sat for a long time and simply watched her. Took in the dust riddled abrasions on her knuckles where she’d gripped sponges too tightly. Watched as sweat slowly dripped its way down the sharp lines of her temples. Mira looked something like a goddess, Zoey thought, soaked in the late afternoon sunlight. And then her gaze had suddenly turned toward Zoey.
“How did you do it?” Mira had asked. Her voice was rough and authoritative, but something more vulnerable simmered beneath the surface. Zoey blinked stupidly.
“Summon your weapon. How did you do it?” Of course. That was all she wanted. Information. Cut and dry. It wasn’t personal. But Zoey’s whole body thrummed regardless with the fact that, for the first time, one of them wanted something from her.
It was clear that Mira had intended for it to be a quick conversation. A simple exchange that did not involve developing any sort of greater relationship. But, much to Mira’s chagrin, it wasn’t that simple.
Turns out you can’t reach into the cosmic depths of your hunter ancestors’ sacred past and get your sick ass soul weapon without being vulnerable about your insecurities. Who would’ve thunk it.
Zoey would look back on this memory, many years later, and ponder how Celine had ever convinced them of her twisted mantra in the first place. How could it be possible that their faults and fears must never be seen when the Honmoon so clearly demanded authenticity from them? But that was a realization for a later date.
And so, despite her initial protests, Mira had no choice but to open up to Zoey. She was still cagey as hell and quick to snap, but she let Zoey in. Zoey was starved to know anything at all about her and now she finally had something to work with. She collected details about Mira’s personal life much like a particularly enthusiastic crow might gather up shiny bits of debris off the street.
Mira was the youngest child in her family and had one older brother, just like Zoey. Zoey learned that Mira’s family was so wealthy it was actually inconceivable. Zoey came to understand Mira’s family’s servants knew her better than her parents ever would. Her favorite foods, her allergies, her anxieties and fears and how to assuage them.
And if Zoey had thought her parents reacted poorly to her presentation then Mira’s parents reaction was nothing less than nuclear by comparison. She’d been a black sheep all along and her alpha designation was just the final nail in the coffin. It was as though her presentation had confirmed what her family had already decided was true a long time ago; that Mira was an incorrigibly difficult person and she would never change. Never fit into her family’s precut molds and demands for obedience. And, in a way, they were right.
But that didn’t mean they’d been justified in how they handled it. Didn’t mean that Mira was defective or wrong or worth any less, though Mira hadn’t quite realized all of that yet.
Mira told Zoey, voice strained and eyes avoidant, that she’d arrived to the compound in the dead of night with nothing more than the clothes on her back and a freshly broken nose. Celine and Rumi had found her weeks prior but hadn’t managed to actually recruit her yet. Mira found her way there all by herself. The mere idea of Mira’s beautiful face congealed with rusted blood would haunt Zoey for the rest of her days.
Things with Mira were a little easier after that. Mira was, it turned out, actually a very good listener. Zoey had assumed that Mira hadn’t heard a single thing Zoey had said since she’d first joined the group. That she hadn’t cared to absorb any of her inane chatter or nervous ramblings about her hobbies and interests. But Mira had been listening all along.
She was actually disarmingly attentive to Zoey. A steadfast beacon of support, for one thing, but more than that was the fact that she had decided to simply give a shit. Zoey had never felt like her words were anything more than an annoyance to others. But Mira looked at her like what she had to say actually meant something.
And, much to Zoey’s fragile delight, it seemed like Mira might actually like what she had to say. She was subtle in her approval, but Zoey was all too eager to learn her tells and body language. A soft huff of laughter here. A twitch of a grin there. Zoey was nearly high on those tiny hits of affection.
By the time Mira actually managed to summon her gok-do, Zoey thought that they might actually be friends. The elation in Mira’s eyes glimmered with the purplish hue of the Honmoon and Zoey knew in that moment that she was well and truly fucked. There was no getting out of how invested she was becoming in all of this. But it really felt like she was getting somewhere. Finally.
But then there was the matter of Rumi.
It was a good thing that Celine had been away on a business trip the day that Mira summoned her weapon. In that brief moment, everything was perfect. Mira was genuinely joyous and Zoey was finally useful and all was right in the world.
The commotion of it all drew Rumi out into the yard. Mira had too much momentum to stop or hide her weapon, still mid-swing. Zoey felt as ice flooded her veins and her words lodged in her throat. The Honmoon flickered in Rumi’s eyes just like it had Mira’s. But Rumi’s face was carved with grief.
There was a voice in the back of Zoey’s mind that told her she should be afraid of Rumi. She was an alpha. She was older than Zoey. She had at least twenty pounds on her and it was undoubtedly all muscle. Zoey had once watched Rumi kick the head clean off a training dummy with all the strength of a three hundred pound linebacker, for fuck’s sake. Zoey’s hindbrain murmured insistently that it was time to bare her throat in apologetic submission or, if nothing else, run.
Zoey’s eyes flickered over to Mira instead, hoping to glean a hint of how this was going to go. The alpha finally came to a stop. The sound of her sneakers scuffing to a stop in the dusty gravel scraped far louder than seemed logical. The noise of it made the hairs on the back of Zoey’s neck rise up and she felt sweat pooling against her lower back in trepidation. Mira’s weapon did not dissipate. If anything, her grip on it tightened, willing it to stay with her through the tension. Finally, Rumi’s voice cut through the yard.
“Congratulations.” It didn’t land as cleanly as Rumi had likely intended. Her tone was carefully neutral but her voice cracked and warbled halfway through. Rumi’s scent, always so resolutely contained, was breaking through all her usual walls. The minty undertones of her scent became overpowering. Zoey could’ve sworn her nostrils were singed with the intensity of it.
Mira’s reaction wasn’t much better. “Thanks,” she said, voice clipped. Cut and dry. Unapologetic and unsympathetic. Zoey watched as Mira’s fingers, long and lithe and riddled with blisters, drummed against the handle of her gok-do. Zoey’s recent closeness with Mira allowed her to see the movement for what it was; a sign of nerves.
“Zoey helped me do it,” Mira added. Zoey’s head snapped up like a puppet on a string at that, neck twisting towards Rumi as panic lanced through her. This was not the sort of environment in which she was angling to receive recognition or praise. Not when it put her in danger.
Rumi’s mouth was pressed into a thin line. Zoey could tell she was trying to contort it into a smile, but the edges were pulled too taut and it creased the skin around her eyes with a sort of practiced anguish that would have been more appropriate on a grieving war widow than a teenager.
“That’s incredible,” Rumi said, “to not only summon your own weapon, but help Mira as well? You should be proud of yourself, Zoey.”
It was exactly what Zoey had always dreamed of hearing. But the context overrode the meaning. Zoey felt like she was caught in a funhouse mirror. Her desires had been met, yet twisted with cruel irony. The monkey’s paw had curled.
“I could help you, too. If you wanted.” Zoey knew even as she said it that her words weren’t going to land right. She hadn’t known Rumi long but she already knew the alpha wasn’t one to accept help from others. Celine had clearly drilled it into Rumi’s brain that self-sufficiency was key. Especially if she was going to be their leader. Zoey braced herself for rejection.
And yet. Rumi faltered. Her head had jerked slightly, as if she were preparing to shake her head no, but she stalled out. Her hesitation was palpable. Zoey tried not to read into it too much, but her heart fluttered with tenuous hope. Mira spoke.
“You should really consider it, Rumi. We’re supposed to be a team but, until now, I hadn’t bothered to actually try and work together with either of you. I’m not exactly a trusting person. But accepting help from Zoey just felt right. And clearly it’s paid off.”
Mira waved her gok-do back and forth to emphasize her point. The Honmoon hummed its ethereal approval and Zoey felt a wave of encouragement wash over her bones. Rumi’s jaw clenched.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” Zoey added carefully. “But we want to help you. We want to know you, Rumi. The only way either of us were able to summon our weapons was by getting honest with ourselves and our feelings. The Honmoon seems to feed off of it.”
It was as if Rumi’s brain bluescreened at the very notion. Her eyebrows knit together in a way that, if not for the situation at hand, would’ve been really fucking cute. Rumi nearly went crosseyed as she fought off the idea with all her might.
“That can’t be,” Rumi said, finally. Irritation bled into Mira’s scent at Rumi’s blatant rejection of her teammates’ best efforts. Vetiver, Zoey finally realized. That was Mira’s scent. The undertones of her pheromones, typically a slightly bitter but welcome refrain, blew out of proportion until Zoey’s head ached from the acridity.
“Yeah, well, it is. We don’t exactly have a large pool of people to test the hypothesis on, but we’re 2 for 2 so far on the concept. Whether you like it or not, you’re just gonna have to open up. Or you’ll never get anywhere.”
Zoey’s mouth twitched with agitation at how easy Mira made it sound. As if the alpha herself hadn’t agonized over letting Zoey know even the tiniest bit of information about her. An irritated chirp erupted from her vocal chords before Zoey could stop it.
Her teammates’ gazes cut over to her. Zoey’s face flooded with unbidden warmth and she felt abruptly twitchy. She fought to find the words to justify herself.
“I’m sorry. That was too much, wasn’t it? I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m sorry,” she blathered. Zoey rocked on her feet and wrung her hands together. The irritation on Mira’s face melted far faster than she would’ve anticipated. Rumi looked oddly relieved that Zoey was upset with Mira alongside her. Zoey took a shaky breath, then continued.
“I just don’t want you to think we’re trivializing this, Rumi. It’s hard to open up. And I know it probably doesn’t seem like it makes much sense but I promise you that it does work. I really think the reason we haven’t made as much progress as we’d like as a team is because we just don’t know each other. How can we have each others’ backs in the field if we’re basically strangers?”
Zoey could tell that Rumi was making an effort to not outright rejection the concept. Zoey was reminded of a picky child at the dinner table doing their best to swallow a bite of yucky food for the sake of politeness. In other words, Rumi was trying.
“It’s just hard to believe,” Rumi said, finally. It was her turn to fidget, it seemed, a generally uncommon mannerism from the well mannered alpha. She bounced lightly on her heels and her eyes flicked back and forth across the yard.
“What do you think would happen?” Zoey asked. Rumi blinked at her in confusion and Zoey could feel some of Mira’s anger giving way to curiosity. She swallowed thickly. “If you let yourself be honest with us? What are you so afraid of?”
Silence stretched on interminably. Mira and Zoey both fought against the urge to speak. It was clear that Rumi was working through something. She looked positively tortured.
“I’m not stupid,” Rumi murmured, almost too soft to hear. She wasn’t defensive despite her word choice. Simply factual. Oddly calm.
“I know I’m not supposed to do this alone. The whole point is that we’re a trio. A team. I know that we’re meant to work together and I can’t do it by myself. But how can I let you both in? Now? I’ve been alone for so long. I’ve had Celine, yeah, but that’s not… She doesn’t… I’m always trying to prove to her that I’m more than a burden. That I’m not a mistake. How can I be vulnerable with either of you when I’ve always known that my existence is wrong?”
Zoey felt her heart splintering into tiny shards. All at once, her brain was dumped with a rush of memories. Every speculative article over the identity of Rumi’s father and the presumably unsavory circumstances of Miyeong’s pregnancy. The grainy interview videos where reporters had needled Celine for her opinion on the situation and her barely contained rage when they mentioned Miyeong’s secret lover. The tragedy of Miyeong’s death and how Celine had been left with Rumi to take for in the aftermath. The way that Rumi, in some fucked up way, was a living memento of what one man’s choices had wrought onto the person Celine seemed to have loved the most.
Had Celine made Rumi believe she was a mistake? Zoey felt bile burning at the back of her throat as a wave of nausea overtook her. Zoey’s entry into the group was thanks to her giving a voice to the man that had poisoned the well of Rumi receiving love and affection from the only caretaker she had ever known. What had she done?
“I’m sorry,” Zoey said, voice thick with grief. It was as if her shame had materialized into a physical entity with twisting limbs and horrible claws. That shame was latching onto every action she’d taken up until now and contorting it until all Zoey could see was how she had harmed her team. How this was her fault.
Somehow, Rumi did not seem to be on the same page with her. The alpha’s expression was riddled with confusion and Mira seemed no less cognizant of the error of Zoey’s ways.
“You’re not a mistake, Rumi. Your existence isn’t wrong. It’s a blessing,” Zoey said finally, voice wobbly with her insistence.
“The modifications to your mom’s song were insensitive and cruel. Even if I didn’t know we were going to end up together like this, I should’ve realized what I was doing would have an impact on you. That it would hurt you. I hurt you, and yet here I am, asking you to open up to me after what I did.”
Neither of the alphas seemed to be understanding Zoey’s point. Her hindbrain was howling inside her mind. No matter what misgivings she might have had about her designation, Zoey knew she was an omega. Her whole existence was predicated on her being good. That was how omegas earned the right to protection and love from others. How they proved their desirability and their worth. And she’d royally fucked that up. She needed Rumi and Mira to see that.
“Wow,” Mira said, finally. Her voice was drenched with an even more potent sarcasm than usual. She whistled lowly and finally let her gok-do fade away into the ether so that she could clap her hands together, slow and patronizing. Zoey’s hindbrain stirred with outrage.
“That was an impressive twisting of the narrative. You somehow took Rumi’s childhood trauma and made it all about yourself, Zo. That’s an olympic level feat.”
Zoey couldn’t help the indignant growl that left her throat. Mira was hardly threatened by it. Her eyes glinted with a steely resolve. Rumi had gone deathly still.
“You’re right about one thing, Zoey. I’ll give you that,” Mira continued. She shifted towards Rumi.
“Which is the fact that you’re not a mistake, Rumi. I don’t know all the sordid circumstances of your birth. There wasn’t exactly a wealth of tabloids floating around my stuffy ass parents’ house. But that doesn’t matter.”
It was Rumi’s turn to be offended. Her shoulders tensed and her jaw ticked, clearly about to speak up. Mira bulldozed onwards.
“No child deserves to be made to feel like a burden. Regardless of how they were born. That’s an insane thing to put onto a literal fucking infant. And, furthermore, how could your existence be wrong? You’re a hunter. The Honmoon chose you to help save humanity from certain doom. Sounds like you’re supposed to be here to me.”
Mira’s gaze returned to Zoey. There was a persistent buzzing in Zoey’s head now. It was, she imagined, a sort of stress-induced tinnitus. She struggled to follow Mira’s words over the shrill whine. The alpha pointed at her for emphasis.
“And you. It’s not gonna help anything for you to try and contort yourself to take the blame for Rumi’s issues. Respectfully, you barely have anything to do with it. And whatever blame you might have in the situation was clearly an accident. Those happen. We’re fated to be together, whether we actually want that or not. So you have to trust that Rumi is going to recognize that you meant no harm and forgive you for what you did. It’s basically written in the stars that she will.”
The silence returned. It was just as heavy as before, but no one seemed to be particularly interested in breaking it this time. Zoey’s brain was reeling and the quiet gave her a welcomed window to simply process it all.
Mira might have a point. As incongruous as her claims may have seemed to Zoey’s downward spiral, she could understand it in a hypothetical way. If it wasn’t directed at her, Zoey would think that Mira was actually making a whole lot of sense. So what if Zoey had made a mistake? So what if she’d failed at being an omega? These were her teammates. They were supposed to be a pack.
The Honmoon shuddered softly and Zoey felt goosebumps rise up from her skin. It was oddly cleansing. Like a cosmic reassurance that Zoey could trust Mira’s words. That she might actually have meant what she said. That there were no tricks or illusions at play. No secret terms or conditions. Just care. Care that could, some day, maybe even look a little bit like love.
Zoey took a shaky breath and tried to imagine her guilt as a physical thing that she could slough straight off her skin. Zoey wanted Mira to be right. She resolved to, at the very least, pretend that she believed her. Maybe, eventually, she actually would.
“Okay,” Zoey said, voice soft and trembly. Her eyes flickered back and forth between Rumi and Mira. Rumi looked similarly shellshocked but Zoey thought there might be the tiniest glimmer of hope hidden in her eyes. Mira nodded sharply, as if Zoey’s acceptance of her speech had been a predictable inevitability. Zoey spoke again, still hesitant, but determined.
“You’re not a burden, Rumi. We want to know you. Even if it’s something as small as telling us your favorite color; just knowing you trusted us with that would make a difference. Please?”
Mira and Zoey waited with bated breath. Zoey willed the universe, whatever powers that be, to grant them this small mercy. They had to start somewhere.
Learning that Rumi could never decide between deep pink and vibrant teal was the beginning of something more beautiful than any of them could’ve ever imagined.