Scentless

"But my shadow rather grows even bigger, swallows me, and becomes a monster." – Interlude: Shadow – BTS

Yoongi was only four years old the first time he realized he was different. At four, all pups were separated from their mothers and moved into care facilities, freeing the omegas to be impregnated again, ensuring a steady supply of pups. Yoongi had been surrendered the day he was weaned, much earlier than the others, and had grown up with the other true orphans of the pack. The youngsters were cared for by older omegas, too advanced in their years to produce healthy pups but nonetheless valuable to the pack.

"Why don't you have a scent?" One of Yoongi's age mates asks, nosing around his neck.

Why don't I have a scent?

He'd never been asked that question before. In fact, he had no idea what the other pup was even talking about. Scent was the same as smell, wasn't it? Wolves didn't smell like anything. They were just... wolves. Maybe he just didn't understand what the word meant. He wandered across the cozy room which, for some reason, was lined with clothes from all the pup's mothers. It didn't take long to find the nearest caretaker.

"Gammovfer?" he asks, not quite getting the word right.

"Yes, Yoongi?"

"What is a scent?"

The question earns him a confused glance. "Silly pup. Didn't your mama teach you?" She touches her nose. "Scents are how you tell everyone apart. They're what make each of us unique."

Yoongi gazes up at her, head tilted in confusion, touching his own nose. He wasn't wrong then; scent was like smell. But what did a nose have to do with telling people apart? Didn't he use his eyes and ears for that? He walks away, no less confused, contemplating what the old woman had said.

The second time he realized he was different was on his tenth birthday. He'd long since learned to shrug off people's comments on his lack of scent, even going so far as to smear crushed berries and herbs on his neck just to avoid looks from strangers. And it didn't bother him that nobody, not even Hye, ever scented him. Even though that was a basic instinct for wolves. No, he wasn't lonely at all...

Now, though. Now, he was presented with a problem he couldn't pretend away.

All pups learned to shift between the ages of seven and ten. No exceptions. So, when his tenth birthday approached and he still had not managed to shift, he started to garner attention from the elders of the pack. He was brought to a pack healer along with his mother, whom he barely even recognized. They examined him from head to toe, making lots of notes and asking lots of uncomfortable questions about his bodily functions. He answered each with feigned disinterest, his tone flat and his expression blank.

For his mother, they had a different set of questions. Every one of them had to do with his sire – was it not her mate? ­– and the breeding that had resulted in his conception. That was the day he learned that his mother had been raped during her first heat, before she had been mated to her alpha, and it had resulted in his birth. Omega's rarely caught pups during their first heat, so that was unusual in and of itself. Add to it the fact that all she knew about his sire was that he was not a member of her pack, and they had more questions than answers by the time they were through. Normally, a wolf would never breed an omega that was neither their mate nor pack member. But she'd been too consumed by her first heat, desperate to be filled, to have fought back.

That was also the day he learned the first hard truth about his world. Nobody cared if an unmated omega was raped, so long as it resulted in a pup. Better to be bred by any passing alpha than let a heat go to waste. Everything was acceptable, so long as it was for the betterment of the pack. That day, for the first time, he recognized what he'd always seen in his caretaker's eyes. A deep, dark river of depression that ran through the lifeblood of the pack. From then on, he saw it in the eye of every omega and heard it in every cry for an alpha to 'please knot me.'