The Male Omega

Chapter 3: The Impossible Omega

Chapter 3: The Impossible Omega

By the time Rowan got me back to Mara’s rooms, I could barely think straight.

Every step there had felt wrong.

My body was too hot, but the air against my face felt freezing. The scents around me kept shifting too sharply—wet earth, old timber, smoke from nearby fires, Rowan’s coat, my own skin. Especially my own skin. I could smell something changing there, something unfamiliar and deeply wrong, and every time I caught it, panic slid colder through me.

Rowan had half-pulled me up the healer’s steps.

Not because I had collapsed.

Because I had slowed too much.

Because the closer we got to answers, the more I wanted to turn around and run.

Mara took one look at me when we entered and sent her apprentice out without a word.

Then the door shut.

Then it was just the three of us and the smell of burning herbs.

I sat on the edge of the narrow bed while Mara moved around the room with efficient hands, setting out bowls, heating moonwater, sorting bundles of crushed leaves. Rowan did not sit. He stayed standing near my shoulder like if he stepped too far away, something would come through the walls and take me.

I wanted to tell him he was making it worse.

But I wasn’t sure that was true.

“Drink this,” Mara said, handing me a cup.

The liquid inside was dark and bitter. I swallowed anyway and nearly gagged on the taste.

“It’ll steady you a little,” she said.

“It won’t stop this?”

“No.”

That answer landed too quickly.

I looked down at the cup in my hands.

My fingers were shaking so badly I nearly spilled it.

Rowan took it from me before I could.

Neither of us said anything about that.

Mara came to stand in front of me. “I need to check your pulse.”

I held out my wrist.

She touched two fingers lightly against my skin and went still.

Not shocked.

Just quiet in a way that made my stomach knot.

Her hand moved next to the side of my throat. Then behind my ear.

Then she stepped back.

I hated how careful she looked.

Rowan broke first. “Well?”

Mara didn’t answer him immediately. Her gaze stayed on me.

“Kyle,” she said, voice calm in a way that made the room feel even colder, “tell me exactly what you’ve felt these last few days.”

I swallowed.

“Hot,” I said. “And tired. Things smell too strong. Loud sounds hurt.”

Mara nodded once. “Anything else?”

I hesitated.

There had been other things.

Restlessness. Strange dreams. A crawling awareness under my skin that made even my own clothes feel unfamiliar. I had ignored all of it because I had not wanted to ask myself what it might mean.

Now I wished I had told Rowan sooner.

“No appetite,” I said finally. “And… I feel wrong.”

Mara’s expression did not change, but Rowan’s did.

He looked away hard enough for me to know the words had hit him.

Mara set her hands together. “I need to scent the air properly.”

The room went silent.

Heat rushed into my face.

No.

That was too intimate. Too humiliating. Too final.

I started to shake my head before I even realized I was doing it.

Rowan’s hand landed on my shoulder.

He didn’t press.

He just stayed there.

“Kyle,” he said quietly.

I couldn’t look at him.

Mara waited.

That somehow made it worse.

If she had forced it, I could have hated her for it. But she stood there giving me the dignity of choice when the truth was that none of this felt like mine anymore.

I closed my eyes.

“Do it,” I whispered.

Mara moved closer.

I sat very still while she leaned near enough to scent the air around my throat, my hair, the space where my pulse beat too fast. Shame made my whole body burn hotter. I wanted to curl in on myself. I wanted Rowan to leave. I wanted Rowan to stay. I wanted the floor to split open and swallow me before anyone said the words I was already afraid of.

Mara drew back.

That silence again.

That awful silence.

Rowan’s voice had gone flat. “Say it.”

Mara looked at him once, then back at me.

“You’re differentiating,” she said.

The words hit me strangely.

Not like a blow.

Like a c***k opening somewhere under my feet.

I stared at her. “No.”

It came out too fast. Too small.

Mara did not argue with me, and somehow that made it worse.

“You’re in a late differentiation,” she said carefully. “That’s why it came on so suddenly.”

“No,” I repeated.

Because if that was true, then everything else might be true too.

My whole life, I had been told—by silence if not by words—that what I was had already settled. Fifteen came and passed. Sixteen came and passed. Seventeen. Eighteen.

By nineteen, no one waited for anything else.

I was a beta.

I had built my life around that small certainty.

Now Mara was taking it from me with one calm sentence.

Rowan crouched in front of me so suddenly I almost flinched.

“Kyle.”

I looked at him because not looking felt worse.

His face was pale with anger and fear.

But not disbelief.

That hurt more than Mara’s words.

“You can scent it too,” I said.

It wasn’t really a question.

Rowan’s jaw tightened.

“Yes.”

I laughed.

One short, thin sound that didn’t sound like me at all.

Mara looked away for a moment, giving me what little mercy she could.

I stared at Rowan and felt the room tip sideways.

Differentiating.

At nineteen.

My body was changing now, after everyone had already decided what I was.

After I had decided.

I should have been asking what rank.

Maybe some part of me already knew why I wasn’t.

Because the answer was in Rowan’s face.

In Mara’s caution.

In the way the room had gone too quiet around the word.

I swallowed hard. “Into what?”

No one spoke for a beat.

Then two.

Then Mara said, very gently, “An omega.”

The room disappeared.

Not literally. I could still see the shelves, the fire, the old woven rug by the bed. But all of it had gone far away at once, like I was looking through water.

An omega.

I couldn’t make sense of the word attached to myself.

No.

No, that was impossible too.

It did not fit. It did not belong. Nothing in my life had prepared me for that shape. Not my body. Not my place in the pack. Not the way people already looked at me.

“Say something,” Rowan said quietly.

I shook my head once.

I couldn’t.

Because if I said it out loud, I would have to hear it in my own voice.

Mara exhaled slowly. “Kyle… there’s more.”

I looked at her.

I knew before she said it that whatever came next would be worse.

“There are no recorded male omegas in the Blackthorne Pack,” she said.

The heat under my skin went cold.

Rowan swore under his breath.

I stared at Mara without blinking.

At first, the words didn’t land properly. They hung in the air like something spoken in another language.

Then they did.

Male omega.

Not just omega.

Something the pack had no shape for.

No place for.

No mercy for.

My stomach turned so violently I bent forward before I could stop myself.

Rowan caught me by the shoulders.

“Easy,” he said.

Easy.

I almost laughed again.

There was nothing easy in this room.

Nothing easy in the way Mara looked at me with pity she was trying to hide.

Nothing easy in Rowan’s hands shaking where he held me.

Nothing easy in the simple fact that by tomorrow, if the report was sent, I would no longer be forgettable.

Not because I had become important.

Because I had become wrong.

When I lifted my head, Mara had already moved to her writing desk.

I stared at the paper she pulled forward.

My voice came out hoarse. “What are you doing?”

She paused.

Then answered with the honesty I suddenly hated. “The formal notice has to be sent to the Blackthorne estate.”

I went still.

Of course it did.

Late differentiations were reported.

Omega differentiations were reported.

And this—

This would spread through the pack like wildfire through dry brush.

The Blackthornes would know first.

Then the elders.

Then everyone.

I looked at Rowan.

For the first time since we had gotten here, he looked helpless.

That frightened me more than the diagnosis.

“Don’t,” I whispered.

Mara’s expression tightened. “Kyle—”

“Please.”

It was humiliating to beg.

I did it anyway.

Because once the report left this room, my life would split into before and after, and I already knew I would never get the first half back.

Rowan stood slowly.

His face had changed.

Not softer.

Harder.

He turned to Mara and said, voice low with warning, “No one outside this room learns before I say so.”

Mara met his gaze. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Try.”

My breath caught.

I had not heard Rowan sound like that since he left the hunters’ guild.

Mara looked between us both, then lowered her eyes for just a second.

“I can delay it until morning,” she said.

It wasn’t enough.

But it was something.

Rowan nodded once.

I stared at the floorboards and tried to breathe through the scent of herbs and fire and fear.

By morning, the Blackthornes would know.

And once they knew, I thought, the rest of the pack would decide exactly what kind of thing I had become.