Chapter Ten
Four months go by in a blink.
Summer fades into autumn, into winter, the leaves along the river path turning gold and red as Hyunwoo and I jog with the dogs in the crisp morning air.
Kal and Machete lope ahead on their long leads, breath puffing white in the cold, ears pricked and tails high, and I keep pace beside Hyunwoo until the runs get shorter and the mornings get colder and my body starts telling me in no uncertain terms that things are changing.
I start to show. It’s a slight but unmistakable bump protruding from my lower belly, rounding out the flat plane of my abs into a gentle curve that’s visible when I lift my shirt and increasingly difficult to disguise beneath my workout clothes.
I catch myself turning sideways in the bathroom mirror, pressing my palm against the firm swell, feeling the taut skin stretch over something that wasn’t there before.
It’s small enough still that a baggy hoodie hides it, but I know it’s there.
I feel it when I bend over to tie my shoes, when I sit down too fast, when I roll over in bed at night and there’s a new weight settling low in my pelvis that shifts with me.
Other changes creep in gradually and then accelerate.
I’m tired all the time, a bone-deep fatigue that no amount of sleep seems to cure, my body diverting energy to the life growing inside me at the expense of everything else.
I fall asleep on the couch after dinner with Machete curled against my side and wake up hours later with a blanket draped over me that I didn’t put there.
I nod off between clients at the gym, sitting in the break room with my head tipped back against the wall, jerking awake when Yeeun nudges my shoulder and asks if I’m feeling okay.
I can’t keep up with Hyunwoo during our morning workouts anymore, having to drop weight and reduce reps while he watches me from across the weight rack with poorly concealed concern, his brow creasing when I set down a barbell I could’ve pressed easily two months ago.
Our evening runs with the dogs get shorter.
I flag after two kilometers when I used to do five without breaking a sweat, and Hyunwoo slows his pace to match without being asked, shortening his stride so I don’t have to jog to keep up with his longer legs.
I’m sore and achy constantly. My lower back protests after long hours on my feet at the gym, a dull throb that settles into my spine by mid-afternoon and doesn’t let up until I’m lying flat.
My hips ache at night, the joints looser and less stable than they should be, and I’ve started sleeping with a pillow wedged between my knees because the pressure helps.
My appetite has increased so dramatically that Yunhee can barely keep up with my consumption.
I eat full meals and I’m hungry again within the hour, craving things I’ve never wanted before—sweet things, rich things, combinations that make no logical sense but that my body demands with furious insistence.
Last week I ate an entire jar of pickled radish dipped in chocolate hazelnut spread at two in the morning while sitting on the kitchen floor in my underwear, and when Hyunwoo found me there he didn’t even blink, just stepped over my legs to get a glass of water and went back to bed.
My chest is changing too. A slight rounding of the breast tissue has appeared, subtle enough that most people wouldn’t notice under my loose workout shirts but visible to me in the mirror.
A soft fullness where there was only flat muscle before, tender to the touch.
My nipples have enlarged and darkened, the areolas wider and more pronounced, and they tingle with a strange sensation that makes my shirts feel abrasive against them.
I’ve started wearing undershirts with softer fabric to reduce the irritation, something Hyunwoo noticed and quietly replaced my entire supply of basic tees with softer cotton alternatives without saying a word about it.
I found them folded neatly in my dresser one afternoon, tags still on, the fabric so smooth against my fingertips that I knew immediately they cost more than anything I’d ever buy for myself.
But the most distressing change—the one that hits me where it hurts—is below the belt.
As the pregnancy hormones redirect my body’s priorities, flooding me with progesterone and estrogen while my testosterone plummets, my male anatomy is starting to take a backseat.
One morning as I’m in the bathroom preparing for work—Hyunwoo’s bathroom, because I’ve regularly started sleeping in Hyunwoo’s bed at night out of convenience, or so I tell myself—I look down while washing my hands and examine myself with growing dismay.
My cock looks noticeably smaller. I thought I was imagining it at first, weeks ago, chalking it up to paranoia or the angle or maybe my growing belly was creating an optical illusion.
But as the months have gone by it’s gotten progressively smaller, shrinking incrementally as my omega physiology fully asserts itself.
Now as I cup it in my hand I realize with a cold jolt of horror that I can fit the entire thing in my palm—shaft, head, everything—with room to spare.
I can no longer deny it. I’ve shrunk to omega size, the small, compact anatomy that most male omegas have naturally, that I’d always been spared from.
I make a dismayed sound and Hyunwoo, who’s in the adjoining bedroom getting dressed, looks in through the open doorway with his brow creasing.
“What’s wrong? You feeling sick?”
I rake a distressed hand through my hair, but there’s no point in hiding it since I’m standing stark naked by the sink, still damp from the shower. My face burns hot as the words come out in a miserable whine. “My dick is tiny now. Like, actually tiny. Like, fits-in-one-hand tiny.”
Hyunwoo lifts his brows and drops his gaze, his eyes traveling down my body to my cock with open, unabashed interest. He studies it interestedly.
I slap a hand over myself. “Don’t stare at it!”
The corners of his mouth twitch upward. “What’s the problem? It’s cute. Like a little—”
I curse at him so viciously that Machete, who’s been dozing in the bedroom doorway, lifts her head in alarm.
I flip him off with my free hand and slam the bathroom door in his face hard enough to rattle the frame, then hunch over the sink and groan, looking down at my shrunken appendage cradled pathetically in my palm.
I used to be proud of my size. Bigger than most omegas by a significant margin, big enough that the women I’d been with never knew my secondary gender from looking at it.
Now it looks like it belongs on a different person entirely.
Hyunwoo’s voice comes through the door, infuriatingly calm and reasonable. “It’s perfectly normal, Yuggie. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. Omegas are always small anyway, it’s standard for your secondary gender.”
“Not me,” I fire back through the door, my voice cracking with indignation. “I was never standard.”
A beat of silence, and then his tone shifts to something so cavalier I want to rip the door off its hinges. “What do you need it for right now anyway? It’s not like you’re using it for anything functional at the moment. I’m the one doing the heavy lifting in that department.”
I glare at the closed door with enough force to bore holes through the wood. “How about I take a few inches off yours in compensation, see how confident you are then, you bastard.”
His laughter comes through the door—genuine and completely unhelpful—and I mutter something deeply nasty about alphas and their oversized monster cocks and the cosmic unfairness of gender dynamics as I grip the edge of the sink and stare at my reflection.
My face is flushed, my eyes glassy with frustration, and below the slight swell of my belly my cock sits small and soft against my thigh like it’s given up on me entirely.
I know it won’t go back. Hyunwoo will probably try to tell me it will—that my testosterone levels will recover after the pregnancy and everything will return to normal.
But I know better, even if I’m not the smartest person in most rooms. The only reason I was ever as large as I was came down to excess testosterone from my athletic lifestyle and my suppressed omega secondary traits.
Now those traits have fully expressed themselves.
The floodgates opened during my heat and never closed.
My slick production has become constant and copious, soaking through regular underwear within hours, my scent has shifted to something unmistakably omega-sweet that makes alphas on the street turn their heads when I pass, and I have a sinking feeling that once I’m no longer pregnant my heat cycles will be regular and frequent too, not the two-or-three-times-a-year events they used to be.
My body has finally become what it was always supposed to be.
The oversized masculine omega was the anomaly. This is the correction.
The bathroom door opens and I whip my head around to glare at him.
Hyunwoo holds up his hands innocently, palms out, and comes forward slowly, like he’s approaching one of his dogs after they’ve gotten spooked by a loud noise.
He hooks an arm around my bare shoulders, pulling me against his side, his shirt soft against my damp skin.
“Don’t mope,” he says, gentler than his usual teasing register. “Your body’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do. Growing a healthy baby and adapting to support it. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
I sniff unhappily, not leaning into the embrace but not pulling away either. “You wouldn’t be so cavalier about this if it were your dick shrinking.”
He laughs, the sound vibrates through his chest against my shoulder. “That would never happen,” he says, with absolute unshakeable confidence.