Chapter Text
Shane woke up with a start, immediately sensing that something was wrong. His large nest was empty, lacking the usual warmth he was used to. His heart beat grew faster as the omega inside him started to panic.
“Alana?”, he called out loud, his voice stuttering.
“Ilya?”
His omega was fully alert now. He got up from his bed, the unscented nest not doing anything to quell his anxiety, and stepped out of the room.
He could hear a faint noise from downstairs.
“Baby?”, he called again.
His ability to form full sentences was getting compromised, and all that gripped him was a deep need to reach his pack.
He could feel his omega taking over, his fangs extending, as he climbed down the stairs, two steps at a time and a low growl started to emanate from his throat.
“Shane? ……..awake?”, a morphed woman’s voice entered his ears.
He couldn’t make out everything she said, his senses getting more compromised by the minute.
In his golden omegan haze, he couldn’t recognise her face, only recognising a potential threat as he growled at the lady, low and threatening.
“Shane.…’s me, Rose” is all he heard, and he took a long, deep breath as the scent of the woman awakened something familiar in him.
“Rose?” He questioned.
The familiar scent caused his omega to retract a little.
“Rose, is that you? Where’s……where’s my….my”, his tongue slurred and he couldn’t will himself to form proper words, but needed to ask her questions.
His omega still remained unsettled, wanting him to throttle Rose to get answers from her.
How dare the lady enter his nest? Had she taken his family? Were they in danger? Where had she kept them? He forced his omega to push these thoughts aside, as he looked at Rose with large, scared eyes.
He was confused. All he could fathom was that his family was missing and an unknown alpha sat in his living room looking at him with concern in her eyes. He blinked rapidly, battling his omega who wasn’t letting him rise to the surface. He needed his omega to be calm right now, he needed a clear head to understand what was happening. His omega let out a long whine at the thought of his missing family, tears threatening to spill at his inability to scent his family.
“Shane, oh honey, they aren’t here. Alana is staying at Ilya’s place. You both divorced. It’s his weekend with her, don’t you remember?”
Reality spilled in when Shane heard Rose’s words.
Of course.
They were at Ottawa. At alpha - no, Ilya’s - place.
Ilya. Ilya Rozanov. His former husband. Former lover. Former alpha. And, more recently, the father of his daughter.
He let out a distressed cry. The omega inside him wanted to claw out his skin and bury himself deep inside the comfort of his alpha. He wanted to be bathed in Ilya’s scent and hear the soul-crushing, delightful laughter of his daughter. His omega whined once more as tears spilled out of his eyes in fast falling streams. Rose pulled him into a bone-crushing hug, as she pushed out pheromones of warm, comfort and safe.
It had been a few months since they separated, and Shane got like this almost every night for that time period.
He would sleep late, crying by himself in his empty, alpha-less nest, and get up in a strange haze, not knowing where he was or recognising anyone around him, dominated by his omega’s need to find his alpha.
It had started to get worrying when Shane had been unreachable for an entire day, only for Rose to find him that night as she burst open the door to his home. He was seated, pathetically crying and whimpering, on the floor near his couch, an old forgotten house slipper in hand, that smelled vaguely of Ilya.
Rose immediately knew what was wrong, by the distressed omega scent and his bright golden eyes that looked at her with a plea, as if she had hidden his family from him.
Omega Takeover.
It was a rare category of omega rejection sickness that occurred when an omega went through a period of intense distress that caused it to go feral in a final attempt to protect its carrier human.
It often started with periods of haziness and memory loss and progressed to complete omega takeover- where the human would only remain a vessel for the omega inside, pure animal, no speech, only recognising instinct.
In Shane’s case, the separation from his alpha and pup had been so agonising that he had contracted rapid omega takeover.
Rose had only learnt of it a few days ago, and she had been staying with him ever since, desperate to allay the symptoms as best she could.
An omega with the disease, if discovered by the government, was immediately locked up, as there was no proven cure, and feral omegas could be dangerous.
But Rose wasn’t about to let her best friend be locked up in a lonely clinic for the rest of his lifespan.
She had immediately locked in, going down a deep rabbit hole of home remedies over the last few days.
The Internet said that the omega must be made to completely forget about the alpha in question.
So that was what Rose had been doing. De-scenting Shane’s house, and trying to subtly rub her scent on any place that she could.
Rose had also asked Ilya to let Alana stay a while longer with him, afraid that constant reunions and separation from his daughter may alarm the distressed omega even more.
She knew Alana too might be suffering without her father nearby, but right now, she had a friend to prioritise, and an omega to keep hidden.