2. Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Rollie
“You don’t have to go.” I reach for Seb’s hand as he brushes past me toward my dresser, currently covered in his various cosmetics. My best friend is a vain creature, but over the years I’ve come to suspect that’s an avian thing. My theory is that since their animal forms spend so much time tending to their pretty plumage that they don’t even realize they carry over that drive to primp and preen into their human forms.
Normally, I enjoy watching him apply his makeup and get dressed for a night out. Today, I know he’s going to make choices that hurt him, and I’m helpless to stop it.
“Pft.” Seb snorts derisively. “Sure, Rollie, let me just skip my clutchmate’s baby shower and see how well that goes down with my entire baby-crazed family.”
I roll my eyes. “It’s not even his first clutch. The twins aren’t even two yet, so it’s not like they need more baby stuff.”
“Clutchmates aren’t the same as twins. And that is so not the point of a raven shifter baby shower, Rollie. I don’t know if you’ve been, like, covering your eyes and ears when you visit the rave, but we like babies. I swear all my cousins are having clutches now too.” Seb tries to keep his tone light, but the bitter ache of knowing he won’t be joining them in welcoming a clutch of his own is clear to me.
“I thought you said only Bram calls it that?” I tease, trying to get him to crack a smile as he aggressively blends foundation to hide the bags under his eyes from lack of sleep.
“Yeah, well, he’s right; rave sounds better than the other options.” Seb sticks his tongue out at me, then pouts his pretty lips to apply a shimmery coat of gloss.
I get distracted for a second, thinking about what they’d feel like pressed against mine. I’ve never actually fucked Seb, but we’ve shared the occasional alpha and he sure can kiss.
“You know I can’t skip the shower. Bram will feel bad and then he’ll fuss and I don’t want to take away from his happiness.” Seb dips the applicator back into the gloss tube for a second coat.
“Yeah, I get that, but he has to realize it’s hard for you,” I say, only referencing his infertility obliquely because I know how much it hurts him. From the force with which he stabs the application wand back into the gloss and twists it closed as though he’d rather be wringing my neck, I wasn’t subtle enough. He tosses the tube back among the other bright jewel-toned makeups in his collection.
“That’s exactly why I have to go, Rollie. He knows, and he worries. I won’t have him feeling bad about me when he should be excited about this new baby.”
“Okay, but like, isn’t it a bit soon for more babies?”
“Not really? Leighton will be two next month, and Kyrie’s hatchday is a month after that.”
“And wasn’t Myra’s birthday last month? Are they going for a birthday kid for every month of the year?” My attempt at a joke falls flat. The due dates line up though if I’m mathing right.
“That’s so not a thing.” Seb jabs a long, brightly lacquered nail toward me. “Don’t let Bram hear you suggest it—just to be safe. I love my niblings, but twelve is a whole heck of a lot of diapers.” Seb gazes up at the ceiling as he applies mascara. “I’m going—end of discussion. You don’t have to come with me if it’s such an issue.”
“No, I want to go with you.” I sigh, shoulders slumping in defeat. Looks like we’re going to the party. “I just don’t want to see you hurting, Seb.”
Seb shakes his head at me. “It’s fine. I haven’t seen the babies since Myra’s birthday party. I’m overdue for a visit. Now that Cory’s pretty much settled on masc pronouns, I’ve got actual competition for favorite uncle status. I mean, assuming Elric ever makes their pronouns official so that Cory can announce to the flock without upstaging them.”
It takes me a second to connect Seb’s grumbling with the raven shifter coming-of-age tradition of having an official gender reveal when kids settle on their adult names and pronouns. They call it a fledging party because it means the young shifters are growing up and getting ready to leave the nest soon. The official part of the proceedings is fairly simple, but the significance of being accepted with a more adult role within their flock makes a clear difference to the raven kids.
Most avian shifter babies gestate in their bird form and don’t have obvious physical gender differences when they hatch. Their digestive tracts aren’t developed enough to shift between avian and mammalian forms until they’re several months old, so their custom is to use neutral pronouns until a kid picks their own. It seems strange to me, but I also kind of love it.
“Yeah, do you think Elric is any closer to having their fledging ceremony?” I ask, since it’s a foregone conclusion that they will have one, and that seems safer than getting into it with him about his mental health again. At least I know his family cares about him as deeply as I do, even if they’re at just as much of a loss as to how to help him with his self-destructive tendencies.
Seb shrugs expansively. “I think our moms are going to have a chat with Elric about it, cause Cory won’t do his ceremony until Elric has their moment. Cory is still young for it, but he seems to be set on his adult name and pronouns. He’s been antsy to make it official. Sometimes fledglings are in a rush for their first flight, and sometimes they need a little nudge to jump into the unknown.”
I’ve always envied how easily Seb’s two moms accept all their kids and treat Bram’s mate—a big, bearded, genderqueer bear shifter alpha named Ty—with equal respect and kindness, no matter their current gender presentation. The entire family accepted Ty’s daughter, Myra, as their own, just as much as her younger half-siblings.
It’s the polar opposite of how out of place I’ve felt in my family home since puberty’s failure to arrive revealed my status as an intersex beta. My genetics meant I was never going to fit into the gender binary constructs of shifters or static humans.
“Cool. Guess we’ll have another party to look forward to soon then,” I smile at him, safe in the assumption that he’ll fold me into his family like he has for years.
Seb grins at me as he pulls more sparkly bangles out of his drawers. He selects several to slide onto his wrists, adding them to the two I gave him over the winter holidays. He saves one particularly gaudy bracelet to offer to me. I take it, because trinkets are his love language. And maybe mine too. I love that he always wears at least one of the things I’ve gotten him along with gifts from his clutchmates and other family members, literally wearing our love on his arms.
“Mhm, make an extra batch of your iced tea for that? Lydia has been asking for your recipe,” Seb says. She’s one of his cousins who always makes sure our glasses are full of the spiced liquor that’s ubiquitous at these flock gatherings once the hatchlings are sent off to their beds.
“Of course. It’s nothing fancy. Tell her it’s lots of fresh brewed tea and even more sugar.”
Seb shakes his head at me, looking amused. “Nope, you can’t just share the recipe, Rollie, that’s part of the fun. Besides, you’re what makes it special; my cousins ask for your tea because they want to be sure you’re there with me.”
Oh. That’s nice. The tacit reminder that I’m wanted and I belong here. His family has taken me in, and sure they tease us about when we’re going to admit we’re practically mated, but that’s all in good fun. The point is that they’ve always welcomed me, from the first time Seb introduced me as his friend.
Sometimes I wonder if my parents would have understood me better if they had similar customs to the raven shifters who have made Four Corners into the home I needed and dreamed of finding. My folks were disappointed when I turned out to be a beta. That wasn’t something they ever put into words. I just knew from the ways it changed how they treated me compared to my siblings.
They only spoke about my medical issues and my indeterminate secondary gender in hushed whispers that I wasn’t meant to overhear, but I knew. They weren’t quite sure what to do with a kid who wasn’t alpha or omega. With our gaze, alphas are supposed to be big strong protectors and omegas are supposed to be sweet loving nurturers. And then there’s me, not really fitting either of those boxes and desperate for approval.
There’s not really a set stereotype for a beta shifter like me—beta is basically the default catchall term for any shifter who doesn’t fit neatly into the alpha or omega labels. So everyone around me assumed I couldn’t have a place among other shifters once I was grown. I saw my parents bursting with pride over Blake. My older alpha sister’s achievements were always celebrated. They doted on Alan, my younger omega brother. So I tried to be like them, and I failed where my siblings succeeded.
My parents meant well. They did what they could for each of us. My siblings got support in pursuing their dreams, and I got shuttled between doctor appointments that were meant to fix me. It took moving away and years of Seb helping me to unpack all of their subtle digs to realize that I was never broken in the first place.
They made sure Blake had everything she needed to pursue her passions. She earned a basketball scholarship to a small private shifter college and then went on to law school. What a wonderful provider she’ll be when she meets the right omega. And no question that when Blake settles down, it will be with an omega. Preferably a raccoon like us, but another small mammal shifter would also be acceptable to the gaze.
They helped Alan and his mate buy a house when he gave them their first grandchild. They weren’t thrilled that he chose a lynx alpha for a mate—a predator, really, Alan? But they changed their tune when he put his tiny bundle of half-lynx cub joy into their arms.
I got the cold hard reality that I wasn’t the child they wanted me to be, and I never could be. I didn’t have a place in our raccoon shifter gaze, but I do in Four Corners.
“You ready?” Seb asks me, interrupting my ruminations. No, I’ll never be ready to watch him hurting over the dreams he’ll never hold in his arms.
“Yes.” I nod.
“Cool. Let’s roll.” He tosses me the keys to my car. We share it most of the time, but he rarely drives since the incident we don’t talk about.
The worst night of my life. We were so damn lucky that the worst that happened to him was a brief stint in the hospital, a misdemeanor on his record, losing his license for a month, and paying a fine. I close my eyes and count to ten. It’s less painful to think about my family than the night I almost lost Seb, so I let my mind wander to my parents as we drive toward Bram and Ty’s place across town. I love that Seb’s moms and siblings have folded me into their little flock, but it’s hard not to compare his loving family to mine.
The entire raven flock is a stark contrast to my gaze back home, who never made me feel as included and loved as Seb’s family does. Even back when I was still presenting as a beta, the flock welcomed me into their home, despite my lack of a clear-cut secondary gender. It’s still hard to believe my luck in finding them sometimes.
The ostracization back home was less obvious when I was a little kid, but it was always just under the surface. In retrospect, there were signs even before I had an inkling of what was to come. The uneasy glances between my parents when other members of our gaze made the usual inane comments tying my interests to my probable future secondary gender. How they never teased me about a future mate the way they sometimes did when my siblings had playdates. How there were less than six months between my birth and Alan’s and distant relatives we only saw at holidays always commented on what a blessing Alan is since my folks had planned on having two kits.
The little things that didn’t really register as a child, but hit like a sack of bricks once I learned the truth they’d been hiding for my entire life. Lies on top of lies that made it so hard to believe Seb’s family really could just all love each other the way they do, and wrap me up in that love along with their son. Even when I came out to them as a trans omega, their care never faltered.
My folks still don’t know I’m an omega. I don’t visit and only call on holidays. They handled my transition from daughter to son better than my beta status. Raising a son was something they had a script for—a pattern to follow. When you can shift your entire body, some cosmetic changes don’t seem so huge. Especially since being both intersex and a beta already meant I wouldn’t be giving them any grandkids.
“Oh yeah!” Seb interrupts my thoughts as I pull into the cul-de-sac his brother lives on. “I almost forgot! I got our omegestrol refilled.”
We both take omega hormones. Mine are because I’m a trans omega so they help me to present as an omega to other shifters. His are to treat creep. The condition affects shifters across species. It’s a hormonal disorder that makes them infertile. For avians, it also causes them to present with alpha traits unless they’re on lifelong omega hormones.
“Any luck with getting it changed back to the generic we were getting before?” I ask, hopeful. The brand we switched to a few months ago hasn’t been working as well for Seb. His scent keeps slipping more toward the musky notes of an alpha. Like it gets lately when we run out of meds or need to ration doses between refills from the shortages.
Seb gets so dysphoric about the things creep stole from him that I’ve been worried about him not getting the correct dose. Even switching brands hasn’t entirely gotten him back to usual. Beyond losing his heat cycle, most of the changes are subtle. His pretty hair is thicker and glossier and seems to grow a bit faster. His jawline is less refined while his aquiline nose seems even more prominent.
Seb’s scent changes when his hormones aren’t in the correct range. That’s the most obvious warning that he’s not doing well. His shoulders and arms bulking up from his usual flights around town are the second most noticeable change. That and the sexual effects. We’ve been going through more bottles of lube since he buys a ton to compensate for producing less slick and having a higher libido.
That last might be his depression worsening more than the creep advancing. I don’t have firsthand knowledge, but some omegas with unmedicated creep even develop an alpha’s knot. That’s rare though, and it usually means the shifter in question can get an omega pregnant.
Seb’s creep might not be quite that out of control, but the new formulation we’re on doesn’t seem to agree with either of us. It gave me a bunch of digestive issues and headaches. The worst of the weird cramping and headaches I got around New Years when we first made the change have settled down now that I’ve been on the new meds a while, but I’ve noticed that I still get the headaches on occasion.
The cramps were weird. Kind of like the very brief menstrual cycle the doctors of my youth were able to stimulate for a few months with intensive estrogen therapy to jumpstart the puberty that was never going to happen on its own. That was before I asked for testosterone instead.
It’s a weird dichotomy that my inner omega is euphoric at the symptoms that mimicked a heat even while I have visceral memories of how much I’d hated the super femme branding around my short-lived use of Blake’s stash of menstrual products.
Seb shakes his head and my heart sinks. “Sorry. I asked, but it looks like no dice on switching back to the other brand. The manufacturer still has it on back-order, I guess? I asked them to call if they get our usual brand back in stock, and they said they would. They also suggested talking to our prescriber about blood tests to assess if we need a dose adjustment, so that’s not super helpful since your doc won’t even prescribe shifter HRT in the first place and I don’t really want to pay out of pocket for extra labs. But it’s better than nothing for now, right?”
“Right.” I swallow down my disappointment and the urge to nag him about his health.
“I wish I could do more to help, Rollie.” Seb pats my thigh. “I’d like to shake sense into your doctor about this, or at least make him refer you to a shifter specialist.”
My doctor here is a static endocrinologist, like the one I saw as a kid. He won’t prescribe me omega HRT since he doesn’t feel comfortable handling any potential interaction between shifter medication and the testosterone I’ve been on since my teens. So I can’t exactly ask him for bloodwork to monitor the medication that Seb gets for me through some sort of arrangement I carefully don’t ask too many questions about.
The static human endocrinologists my parents took me to see warned us that testosterone meant for static humans hasn’t been studied well in shifters. It might cause unpredictable and irreversible changes in an alpha or omega shifter. My parents were willing to accept those risks since shifter specialists were too few and far between for them to take me to another state for an appointment with yet another specialist who they didn’t think would change anything.
“It’s fine. I’m just worried that he’ll drop me as a patient and there is other routine monitoring I need him to access for me related to my weird genes. Helping me get the meds is more than enough.”
It’s more than anyone else has ever done for me. With the possible exception of my boss. Harvey took a chance on me when I first moved here and now I’ve worked my way up to the head manager position at the local grocery store that he owns. He even covered the costs for me to get an associate degree so I can take a more active role in the business and maybe even take over running the entire store some day. It’s nice to have people who believe in me.
“You deserve more than you ask for, Rollie,” Seb says, exasperated.
It’s not the first time he’s called me out on that. I rarely ask for anything, and generally only from him or Harvey. It’s just so much easier not to risk finding out that help still isn’t coming, no matter how much I need it. My parents’ toxic beliefs that betas like me are an aberration have always been an unspoken understanding hovering like background radiation over my life and coloring every interaction.
It’s why I had to leave when I graduated high school. I came to Four Corners and met Sebatian. Even then, I’d been steeping in that morass for so long that I didn’t even realize how many of my gaze’s attitudes I’d internalized until I saw other ways of living. My move to this tiny map dot town in Maine is the best choice I ever made.
“Maybe. Good thing I’ve got you looking out for me, huh?” I stick my tongue out at him. Seb rolls his eyes at me. He rolls his shoulders, a subconscious move that reminds me of his bird form resettling his feathers. He’s the best choice I ever made. Whatever capacity I can have him in my life is everything to me.
I’m so glad I didn’t listen when my family told me I was making a mistake moving here. When I told them I was moving to a shifter community after high school, Mom got a pinched look, like she was constipated. Dad asked if I was so sure that was a good idea. My sister asked me why in this shocked tone, as if I’d told her I was taking to my fur and living among the local static raccoons fulltime, or something equally outlandish.
My brother took all the attention off my plans when he ran off to go puke because he was already carrying his first kit and it was a rough pregnancy. We were in the same class at school and by all accounts we should have been close, but we weren’t. Once I learned the truth about my health history, the suspiciously close timing of our birthdays felt too much like he was our parents’ redo since I was defective.
“Always. You and me, Rollie. Omega solidarity,” He winks at me, softening the fervent intensity of his tone that makes his words feel like he’s making promises to a mate. Except I’m pretty sure Seb has sworn off mates, or anything serious with anyone he fucks regularly. What we have is more than I ever thought I’d have growing up. A partner in every sense.
“Solidarity,” I echo, taking one hand off the steering wheel to offer a fist bump without taking my eyes off the road since there are a bunch of kids in the neighborhood.
Seb helps me to understand myself. He takes care of me and lets me take care of him and we just fit together so seamlessly. My family made that seem like an impossible dream for me. They made it so hard to sift through the complexity of my identity as an omega. Sometimes I still feel like maybe I really am just ashamed of being born a beta. Maybe I just want to be an omega instead of actually being one. How can I know? I’ve gone in so many circles about that issue in the therapy my parents insisted on sending me to—to accept the facts as they saw them—that it’s kind of become absurd.
The therapy was okay, but it was a static therapist who just didn’t understand how integral a part of me it is to be a shifter and express my secondary gender identity as well as the primary one I claimed for myself. It was all such a giant messy tangle in my head until I spilled my guts to Seb.
He looked at me with such utter sincerity there was no room for doubt as he asked me, “Why does that distinction matter so much to you? If being an omega makes you happy, who cares why you feel that way?”
He was right. It doesn’t matter if some unquantifiable part of me is biologically omega, whatever that might entail. Whether I’ve got faulty hormone receptors or low hormone production. Whether I should have been born with functional gametes instead of the infertile static human parts I got. And even those were wrong until I went on hormones.
Like my parents, I had an easier time accepting that part of myself. It’s just that primary gender isn’t as central to who I am. It didn’t matter to my family. It’s more about how I chose to present to the static world, where being a shifter sets me apart more than being trans ever could. So, it was comparatively easy to change that versus something that my family has been telling me for years is fundamentally broken about me. Like maybe I just want to be an omega so I won’t feel broken instead of out of any innate sense of myself. Except I do feel innately omega in a way I can’t entirely put into words.
He sighs. “I still wish I could do more. You’re my best friend, Rollie.”
“That goes both ways. You’re my BFF forever, Seb. Say the word and we can bounce early,” I offer him an out that I know he won’t take.
I have to park down the street from Bram and Ty’s cute little house since several cars I recognize from the rave are already here lining the quiet street. I smile at him, wishing I could support him more through the next few difficult hours of celebrating something he desperately wants for himself. Facing the dreams that creep stole from him along with his fertility.
“I’ll be fine. I truly am happy for Bram and excited to meet the new nibling in a few months.”
“I know. You can be delighted for him and hurting for you at the same time.”
“Yeah.” Seb acknowledges, shrugging his shoulders again, like he can let the hurt roll off his back like water from his feathers.
Seb has been my guiding light for so long. The one who makes me feel seen and heard. Who makes it so I can breathe when the world seems too vast and the weight of my place in it seems too heavy to bear. I want to do that for him in turn. I can’t tell him that I adore him with every fiber of my being in so many words, but I do my best to show him. He reaches to open his door, the bangles on his wrist clinking together. I devour the sight of him wearing my bracelets, because he knows how I feel on some level, and he sees me as family.
Seb cuts through all the bullshit in my brain. None of the tangled vestiges of my internalized issues with my past matter when he lays the facts bare. What matters is that when I smell like an omega, I can breathe easier. When other shifters assume that’s who I am, that I belong with the other omegas and I can relate to their heat cramp woes and they treat me as one of them, I just have this giddy sensation in the depths of my soul.
Like for the first time, I belong and they can see me for who I am. And who cares why that is, so long as it brings me joy? Who does it hurt?
The first time Seb handed me a dose of omega hormones, I cried. And since being on them, I’ve never felt more like myself. More happy and fulfilled and just…real. I owe all of that to Seb. I’d do anything to make him as happy as he makes me.
If I could battle creep with my bare hands and give him back the life that his diagnosis stole from him, I would. I rub the bracelet charm he handed me before we left the house, taking strength from it. We can’t fix the world for each other, no matter how much we might want to. For now, the best I can do is to paste on a smile and take his hand as we walk into his brother’s baby shower. Ty greets us at the door, and I watch my best friend in the world paste on a sappy false smile to hide his pain while he watches Bram get everything I know he’ll never admit he wants with all his heart.