Chapter Six
I’m in the break period. The easy part, supposedly—the week or two between attempts where Hyunwoo leaves me alone and we go back to being normal roommates who don’t have sex.
I should be enjoying it. Sleeping without a plug in my ass, sitting down without wincing, going to work without the constant low awareness from walking around full of someone else’s cum all day.
But I already know this break is going to end the same way the last three did.
I took a test yesterday. At the gym, in the single-stall bathroom during my lunch break, without telling Hyunwoo.
I’d bought it from the pharmacy two blocks over on my way to work, tucked inside a paper bag that I shoved to the bottom of my gym bag under my spare clothes.
I waited until Ye-eun was busy with a client check-in, locked myself in the bathroom, peed on the stick, and sat on the closed toilet lid staring at the wall for three minutes while the timer on my phone counted down.
One line. Negative. Again.
I wrapped it in three layers of paper towels and buried it at the bottom of the trash can under a wad of used hand towels so Ye-eun wouldn’t find it and start asking questions. Then I washed my hands, splashed water on my face, and went back to my 1:30 client like nothing happened.
I haven’t told Hyunwoo yet. He’s going to want to test me himself in another few days anyway, and I’ll act surprised when it comes up negative, and then we’ll have the same conversation we always have.
Him saying they need to try harder, me sighing and agreeing, both of us pretending this isn’t getting weird.
The thing is, I’m not entirely surprised it’s taking this long. I probably should have mentioned this to Hyunwoo before we started, but I didn’t think it would matter.
For years my doctors have told me I have an unnaturally high amount of testosterone for an omega.
Significantly above the normal range—enough that more than one physician has double-checked my secondary gender paperwork, flipping back and forth between the blood panel results and my registration card like they’re trying to spot an error.
“You’re sure you’re not a beta?” Dr. Kwon asked me the last time I went in for my annual physical, peering at me over her glasses with genuine confusion.
I told her I was sure, and she’d hummed and made a note in my chart and told me to come back if anything changed.
Nothing changed. I’m still an omega who doesn’t look, act, or apparently function like one.
I’m larger than omegas typically are—both in height and muscle mass.
My cock is bigger than average for my secondary gender, which is something I try very hard not to think about but which has come up in enough locker room comparisons over the years that I can’t pretend I don’t know.
My slick production is low and inconsistent, showing up when it feels like it and disappearing for weeks at a time.
And my heat cycles are rare. Sometimes only two or three times a year.
Sometimes less. I went almost eleven months without one last year and genuinely forgot what they felt like until a mild one hit me in the middle of a Saturday afternoon while I was grocery shopping and I had to abandon a full cart and speed-walk home before it got worse.
The doctors theorized that the elevated testosterone likely stems from my lifelong affinity for intense physical fitness and my sexual history being exclusively female.
Without regular exposure to alpha pheromones in an intimate context—and without the hormonal feedback loop that comes from being penetrated and knotted by an alpha on any kind of consistent basis—my body essentially never got the signal to lean into its omega biology. It just … didn’t bother.
I think it’s deeply ironic that the reason I’m so athletic in the first place is because of Hyunwoo.
He was the type of kid who couldn’t sit still for more than thirty seconds before he was climbing something, jumping off something, or running full speed toward something that would probably hurt him.
An unhinged wild child with more energy than sense, scaling the stone walls of the Seo estate like a monkey, swimming across the pond behind the gardens even though neither of us could properly swim yet, dragging me up hiking trails in the mountains behind the property that were meant for adults and laughing when I fell behind.
His parents’ staff used to joke that Hyunwoo had been born with a motor where his brain should be, and honestly, they weren’t wrong.
And little Yugyeom—an omega kid half his size at the time, the servants’ son who followed him around like a shadow because Hyunwoo was the only other child on the estate—had thrown himself into every physical pursuit imaginable just to not get left behind.
Judo, because Hyunwoo started taekwondo and I needed something to compete with.
Running, because Hyunwoo could outpace me on every trail and I hated the feeling of watching his back get smaller in the distance.
Swimming, weight training, obstacle courses we built out of garden furniture and stolen construction materials from the groundskeeper’s shed.
All of it born from the desperation of a small omega boy trying to match an alpha who seemed to have endless reserves of strength and speed that I had to claw and scrape for every inch of.
It worked, eventually. I got bigger. Stronger.
My body adapted to the demands I put on it, packing on muscle and height that omegas aren’t supposed to have, my testosterone climbing year after year as I pushed harder and trained more.
By the time we were in high school, most people couldn’t tell I was an omega at all.
By the time we joined the military together, I was outperforming half the alphas in our unit on the physical assessments.
To think that it’s because of Hyunwoo that I became so masculine in the first place.
That the very thing that makes me who I am—the size, the strength, the body I’ve spent my whole life building—is the same thing that’s giving us both difficulty making a baby together.
It’s hilarious. It’s fitting in the cruelest way.
The universe has a sense of humor, and it’s aimed squarely at my ass. Literally.
I don’t tell Hyunwoo any of that, though. He’s doing a good job of being patient, and he’s got his own problems to manage.
He’s been fielding his family for weeks now, spinning a story that’s getting more elaborate by the day.
He told his mother he’s seeing an omega—a nice one from a respectable background, very private, not ready to meet the family yet.
“She’s shy,” he’d said into his phone last Tuesday while I sat three feet away on the couch eating his honey butter chips, listening to him lie through his teeth with the smooth confidence of a man who’s been charming his way out of trouble since birth.
“Traditional. She doesn’t want to rush things, and I’m respecting that. ”
His mother had apparently eaten it up, because when he hung up he’d looked pleased with himself and told me that bought us at least another month or two.
His grandmother was less convinced—Hyunwoo said she’d demanded a name and a family background check—but his mother had run interference, insisting that pressuring Hyunwoo would only make him dig his heels in harder, which was true enough that even his grandmother had to concede the point.
The lie is doing enough to satisfy his family that he’s making an effort.
It buys us time to actually put a baby in my belly and secure the inheritance before anyone gets suspicious.
But we both know we don’t have forever. Eventually Hyunwoo’s family is going to want proof.
They’ll want to see the omega, meet them, verify the relationship.
Inspect the goods, basically, because that’s how the Seo family operates—everything is an asset to be evaluated and approved.
By which time I would ideally be heavily pregnant and almost ready to bail before anyone figured out that the mystery omega is Hyunwoo’s best friend, the servants’ boy who grew up running around their estate in hand-me-down clothes, and that we’re not actually together.
It’s a good plan. It just requires me to actually get pregnant first, which is proving to be the one part neither of us can force through sheer willpower.
I get home first tonight.
Hyunwoo texted around five to say he’d be out late—a business dinner with some investors interested in the glamping resort project, the kind of schmoozing event he usually hates but tolerates when there’s money on the table.
Don’t wait up, he’d written, followed by a photo of himself in a fitted navy blazer at what looked like a rooftop bar, his gold watch flashing, captioned with: Look how good I look. Tell me I look good.
I’d sent back a middle finger emoji and taken the bus home from the gym.
I let myself into the apartment with my key, drop my bag by the door, and I’m immediately greeted by Kal and Machete.
They do their usual routine—spinning in tight circles, shoving their noses against my shins, Machete’s tail going so fast her whole back end swings side to side while Kal lets out those sharp, excited yips that mean he’s been waiting by the door.
I crouch down and let them climb over me, scratching behind Kal’s ears with one hand and catching Machete’s face between my palms to accept the enthusiastic lick she plants across my chin.
“Yeah, yeah, I missed you guys too,” I tell them, wiping dog spit off my jaw with the back of my wrist. “Your dad’s out being a socialite, so it’s just us tonight.”