TGOF | MW [✔]

01.

"I'm sorry Wonwoo... but I believe you to be completely infertile."

These words struck Wonwoo like a physical blow. The news was a punch to the stomach and all the air was knocked out of his lungs as he looked into the lined face of the elderly healer, whose half-moon spectacles perched on his bulbous nose. There wasn't enough air in the room.

His heart pounded so hard it made his head hurt, and his lungs burned with the need for air even as he gasped breath after breath. It was like trying to breathe water. He felt his heart breaking, a hole being ripped in his chest. The first sob worked its way out and tore from his throat as bile rose, threatening to make him sick.

All Wonwoo had ever wanted was to have a child, a pup all his own. He didn't care who the sire was. It didn't matter. He'd wanted pups ever since he was old enough to comprehend what being an omega meant and understood that he would be the one to carry pups in his future mating. He had longed all his life for the day that he would be able to get pregnant. Of course, he'd wished that he would find someone who loved him, but there was very little chance of that. Whatever little chance that lingered was erased when he'd been promised to his fiancé. That thought made another hot wave of panic sweep through him.

Oh gods... what would his fiancé say when he heard this news? An alpha would never want to be with an omega who couldn't bear him pups.

The match had been the final work of Wonwoo's sickly father before his passing. He'd wanted to make sure his omega son would be well cared for and had brokered a deal with the Head Alpha of a neighboring pack to betroth Wonwoo to one of his younger alpha sons. Their mating was set for only a month away... but with this news, would Wonwoo even be wanted?

Wonwoo didn't love his fiancé. He didn't even particularly like him. Jinhyuk was overbearing and sometimes mean to him, but Wonwoo knew that without a family or pack to protect him, an omega would be cast aside. He'd be left an outcast of society, scraping by to make a living; but what living was there to be had all alone? An omega without anyone in his life to love him, hold him, and scent him would lead to a deep depression, soul sickness, and eventually death. Omegas were not made to be isolated and alone.

He'd seen an omega with soul sickness only once. A small homeless female, frail and too thin. Her eyes had been vacant but longing. It had called out to a part of him, and he'd wanted to go to her, but his father had pulled him away, down the road before he could. Wonwoo thought about her now and imagined himself falling into that same state of desperate longing and loneliness until he grew so weak and weary that he finally passed. It was a terrible fate to befall anyone.

Wonwoo had gone to the pack healer after his heat had failed to come for the sixth consecutive month. Wonwoo's heats had never been particularly regular, and he'd always had more intense symptoms than other omegas. The pains he went through were horrific, like his very innards were trying to claw their way out of him, and afterward, what should have been a minimal bleeding to signify that he didn't conceive was not normal either. He would bleed heavily for days, passing blood clots the size of his hands until it finally stopped. The healer of their old pack said that as long as he continued to have his heat, then he was most likely still fertile and just suffered more intensely than most.

"H-healer... you must be mistaken! How can this be?" Wonwoo gasped, hands clutched into the silk of his robes right over his belly.

"I'm so sorry. But I have seen your symptoms before. Every time in the past, conception was never achieved."

Wonwoo was still sobbing, shoulders shaking and eyes swollen from his tears. He was ruined. He would never be allowed to mate if he was infertile, and the healer was bound by pack law to tell the Head Alpha that his son's fiancé would not be able to bear children and continue their lineage. No alpha would have him like this.