Chapter Text
“Dad!” Maggie was the first one to spot the King County Deputy in tan running across the lawn from the woods, carrying his unconscious son’s limp body. His face was desperate and his eyes on fire, yelling Hershels name when he approached the porch. His hands and shirt were red with his son's blood. The whole farm erupts into chaos when they notice the stranger bearing down on them.
“Beth!” Jimmy’s boots were thudding up the stairs, her heart leapt into her throat, watching the man tear across the lawn. Even from a distance, she could tell he was an Alpha. He was fast, effortlessly carrying the child while his strong legs carried him up the hill towards the house, shirt dark with sweat. Impressive.
“Beth, hurry, your spray!” Jimmy raced into her room and shut the door behind him. Beth jumps away from the window and into action. She snatches up the bottle of pheromone perfume from her desk, spraying it on either side of her neck, her wrists, her armpits, and down her underwear. Anywhere she might smell.
Jimmy takes and opens a second new bottle from the stash in her closet, walking around her room, spraying everything. When he finishes, he goes back out the door and into the bathroom she shares with Maggie, spraying down everything in there too. She does a second round of spray around her room, just for good measure.
Sequestered away at the farm, they didn’t encounter anyone for weeks after the fall, aside from the occasional sick and crazed people that Otis caught and put in the barn with her Mom and brother. Beth hadn’t needed to wear her pheromone spray while it was just them, but her dad insisted she keep taking her hormone suppressant medication.
Its not that Beth stinks, Betas without the AO variant gene can't smell her, per say, its more of a chemical charge that Alphas with the same variant can sense with specialized olfactory senses. She thinks the sick people can smell her too, when she was in charge of feeding them, they would get riled up before she got anywhere close to the barn.
Taking the hormone suppressant pills and wearing pheromone spray makes her scent-neutral, just like a beta. Before the fall of society, medication and pheromone cloaking was the only way to be safe as an unbound Omega in society. After the fall? Beth was a burden and a hazard, she knew she was.
Her cycles made her impulsive and moody, and every season she would be entirely useless for a week, and that was with the suppressants.
Omegas like Beth were incredibly rare, even before the plague. Most of the world's population was made up of Betas, maybe 8% were Alphas, and less than 1% were Omegas. Since the beginning of human history, Omegas were a commodity traded among the uber wealthy Alphas of the upper crusts of society. They were incredibly valuable and sought after. Families who had Omegas born to them could become rich overnight selling their Omegan children to Alphas for pleasure and breeding.
It's all very barbaric, primitive. Beth was raised on a farm, she grew up aware of how animals bred and reproduced. She and her siblings all laughed when the ducks chased each other around feverishly in the spring, they watched foals be born with breathless hands over their mouths. She understood the mechanics of birth, heat cycles, and sex when she got her first period at 14.
With her first blood, she presented. She got everything other girls got, but it was worse. Blood, pain, nausea. She developed a pair or secondary endocrine glands, or, she matured into them, so said the Omega specialist. At first Beth thought they were mosquito bites, small and pink, on the inside of both her wrists, and on either side of her neck where it meets her shoulder, right above her collarbones.
They hurt. For almost three months, they ached deeply. They calmed down enough so they didn’t show through her skin, but Beth was always aware of them. Rubbing on her shirt collar, sore under her bracelets and sleeves.
Always under her skin, reminding her what she was. She could never be a normal girl again. Being an AO was a secret you kept quiet, a shameful genetic disorder. It was like being born with the opposite of an STD, she had something worse. She has something between her legs that can make the giant horny meatheads of the world fight to the death over her. She doesn't want that, she doesn't want an Alpha.
When Beth presented, she wanted to die. She was only fourteen, and she really didn’t want to be some strange man’s baby-making machine, she didn’t want to go into heat. Everyone learns in sex-ed what Alphas, Omegas and Betas are. Beth was so relieved the chances of her being an Omega were so low. There were no Alphas or Omegas in her family, the chances of her being one should have been next to none.
“Please don’t sell me, Ma, please don’t send me away.” She’d cried and begged her mother, the only person who she could stand during her unwilling first heat at sixteen. As if it wasn’t hard enough, just being sixteen. Everyone in the house besides her Mom and Maggie went away for the week.
When the heat, haze and intense sexual neediness burned out of her, Beth unlocked her door and let her mother in. She sat with Beth in the fort she made of her bedroom furniture and held her, draping cool damp cloths over her daughter's head.
“We’ll never sell you, baby. You’ll always be safe here with me and Daddy.” Beth had cried and cried, until she got hot again and her mother left, letting Beth take care of herself, alone.
“We’ll never let anyone take you. You’ll always be our precious daughter. No money in the world could buy you away from us.” And that was that. Beth was extremely fortunate to be so loved. Beth could never tell them how horrible it really was, being alone. Her body ached, she was hot and cold and feverish, and the aching loneliness and emptiness begging to be filled inside her. Her mother bought her things Beth would have never been able to ask for.
At the time it was horrifying, but in hindsight it was almost funny at first to imagine her Mother and Maggie, stiff upper lips walking into a sex store and buying her a dildo, vibrator, and modest silk pajamas and robes for every day of the week. They wrapped them up like birthday presents and the three of them had giggled like mad when Beth unwrapped them.
It was hard, but she got through it. After her first heat concluded, her parents took her to an Omega health specialist and had her put on a heat suppressant and birth control to regulate her hormones. She had pheromone sprays in every form and a hoard of girly perfumes to put over them.
Now it was sad. The last gifts her mom got her were sex toys. She's a horrible daughter. She'd rather have a terminal illness than be an Omega.
They told everyone at school she had pneumonia.
With her medicine, she was just like a Beta, but mentally she was never the same again. She thought it was just her anxiety at first, but all of her senses are enhanced now. Betas mostly smell like sweat or urine, but the Alpha boys at school smell divine. She doesn't know how to describe it, what it does to her mind. She didn't pay much thought to the tall, popular guys before, now she knew them all by scent. She could smell them before she could see them around the corners at school, she could tell who they were sleeping with. They were players, all of them, with reputations for countless girlfriends and side pieces.
She didn't like guys like them, she didn't like Alphas at all. They scared her, she lived every day in fear of being outed, or dragged away and bonded against her will. It was always at the back of her mind, everywhere she went.
Beth didn’t want to be raped didn’t want to be bitten, not ever. Not by anyone.
It was her moms idea to ask her doctor about the birth control implant, and Beth vehemently agreed. Now not even a rapist could get her pregnant, with the godsent piece of plastic, slowly releasing hormones under her skin for five whole years.
She started dating Jimmy, and that helps too. He was her neighbor almost her whole life, a trustworthy and easy going Beta, strong as well as tall for his age. She and him went to school together, and she stuck by him. She loves him, finally her angst has someone to fixate on.
With the pills and the implant, she can be normal. It's all she wants, to be normal.
Then the world ended, and Mama and Shawn got sick. Her mother, the only one who could overlook Beth’s designation, went rabid. Daddy and Otis had to lock her and Shawn up in the barn.
When Beth wanted to die, to end her miserable, painful existence, she told herself to keep living for her Mom. To live for the day Mama and Shawn could both get better once a medicine or vaccine was made for them. Her dads hope was infectious, the way he talked about it makes everything make sense.
Then when they all thought things couldn’t get harder, Otis shot the child.
Jimmy finishes spraying down the bathroom and comes back into her room, joining her at the window to watch two more men run across the lawn towards the house.
“Move!” A second Alpha booms, and Beth jumps out of her skin when his voice cracks through the air like a whip. The one yelling is broad at the shoulder and narrow at the hip, dragging Otis up the way to the house by the back of his fishing vest. The second Alpha is still yelling when they get closer, his voice a charged Alpha tone that makes Beth shiver with dread.
When Jimmy notices she’s shaking, he reaches out and pulls her into his arms. He pets her hair and kisses her forehead.
“Are you ok?” He asks her. Beth’s trembling like a leaf, but she nods against his collarbone. Crossing her arms, Beth rubs her thumb over the implant under her skin, touching the tiny lump under the skin of her inner arm soothes her. Her legs feel like jelly, and she closes her eyes and breathes in the smell of Jimmy's deodorant.
“Yeah, Alphas around just scares me.” She whispers, and he rubs her arms and smooths her hair, trying to comfort her. Her hands and face are starting to buzz nervously. She has to make a concerted effort to take deep breaths.
“Good thing Maggie found all those sprays at the pharmacy.” Jimmy says, still holding the yellow bottle in his hand. “You’ll be ok, alright? I promise.”
“Mhm.” Beth hums, tucking her hands up under her chin and wiggling closer, letting her boyfriend hold her. It’s an empty promise, but she doesn’t bother disputing it. She wants to have hope, she really does, but she can’t help but feel like something else is gonna go wrong. Even if Mom and Shawn get better, what will be next? Looking out at the edge of the woods, her heart lurches fearfully. What’s going on out there, beyond their peaceful farm?
Downstairs, the little boy is screaming and crying, then Rick is screaming too, and her father's voice rises to shout him down. After a while, everything goes quiet, and Patricia comes up to her room to check on her and Jimmy.
“It’s ok, Rick is bonded. Maggie went out to find his wife and bring her here. The other Alpha left with Otis to get more medical supplies, so it's just Rick now.” Patricia’s voice is wavering, her eyebrows drawing together with worry. Beth pulls away to Jimmy and reaches out to squeeze the other woman's hand in hers.
They’re all worried about Otis’s going out there with a stranger, only a small part of her is relieved there's only one bonded Alpha on the farm now. It's much safer. The thought of having multiple unfamiliar Alphas in the house might be too much to bear.
“His wife is a real Omega?” Beth asks. She’s never met another Omega before, never heard of one ever bein’ around.
Statistically, there could only be about a dozen of them in the USA, and that was before the radio and tv blackout swept the country and cut everyone off from one another. She figured most of them, like her, were in hiding. Even a bonded Omega isn’t safe just because she’s bonded. Alphas will still try to force themselves on Omegas in heat, their smell drives them into a frenzy.
Patricia nods, looking bright and excited, like another Omega around might be nice for Beth. Aside from this woman’s child having just been shot, Beth doesn’t even know what she’d ask another Omega.
Was it horrible, being bonded? Did you get to pick who you were bonded to? Does it hurt when they knot inside of you? How bad does it ache when your children are injured? It makes Beth shiver despite the heat of the summer.
“Apparently. The man's name is Rick Grimes, and his son is Carl. It's probably safe for you to come on out.” Patricia leans in and takes a deep breath of her hair. “That stuff really works, you don’t even smell like anything at all.”
Beth creeps out of her room and glances in on the unconscious little boy, his father leaning over him, the back of his son's hand against his lips. He doesn't even turn his head and look her way, if he heard her walk up.
“Is he gonna be ok?” She whispers to her father. His mouth puckers and smooths again, settling in a smile that's meant to be reassuring, but she can see the truth behind it. Her father doesn’t have much hope for the little boy.
“He’s lost a lot of blood. And there's a lot of things we will need for him if he’s gonna live.” Beth blinks her tears back and looks back at the father and child. It's too sad, the world they live in.
“He's lucky, a very healthy boy, there’s a slim chance he'll pull through.” Her dad runs a hand over his head, looking at her with his worried eyes, like he has so much to say and isn’t sure how he wants to say it. He was a healthy boy, Beth thinks.
“Bethy, I don’t trust this man in the house. People in grief do strange things. While strangers are around, lock your door, stay with Jimmy, don’t wander too far.” Fear is a dull knife in her belly. She trusts her dad to keep her safe, and when he lifts his arms to her she snuggles in against her fathers chest. His arms around her and his familiar, comforting scent balm her shaking.
“Don’t take any risks, and you’ll be ok.” He reassures her, and she nods her head, rubbing her cheek on his arm.
“Yes, Daddy.” She says obediently. She doesn’t want to be bonded, or raped. There are risks of taking the suppressants her whole life, Beth knows that. The Omega doctor who prescribed them to her made sure to tell Beth exactly what would happen to her in morbid detail.
Eventually, they’ll make her sick but it's her only choice now. If she takes them long enough, the heats will go away entirely and she'll sterilize herself. She’ll take long term sickness over being raped, bitten, and bred against her will. When she was a little girl, she dreamed of being a mother, having her own children. She tries not to think about how she’ll never get to have that.
Maybe it's for the best. If she had a child with the world in the state that it's in now, it would probably get sick like her mom and brother.
She closes her eyes and nestles even closer against her father, sighing and taking a deep breath of his familiar scent, like fresh grass, farm animals and sanitizing soap.
She hates what she is, she hates living in fear.
Maggie returns with Rick's wife, and Beth is scrambling to the window when she hears horses hooves approaching the house, wanting a glimpse of the other Omega.
The woman dismounts the horse before Maggie even pulls the horse to a stop. She’s pale and her hair is brown, that’s all Beth can make out from this distance.
Rick is running to her, they collide, hands smoothing over one another to ensure they are safe, then she’s pulling out of her husband's arms and running towards the house where her son is.
It makes Beth feel strange. They look like a normal couple to her, but what else would a bonded pair look like? She guesses she thought they would be more overly affectionate with one another.
She goes out into the hallway and listens to the muted conversation below.
Rick's wife Lori smells like lilacs and sunshine. Beth catches a glimpse of wavy brown hair and pale arms from behind. Lori's tall and willowy, just like Beth is. She and Rick are embracing one another and crying together, murmuring in low tones. Rick smooths his hands over Lori’s neck, his thumbs grazing her glands, and the bloom of pheromones, even from upstairs makes her blush. She claps a hand over her mouth and nose and listens.
Beth’s surprised when Lori slaps Rick's hands away. Her scent turns angry, enraged, so heavy that it's potent in the air. Their comforting words turn sharp and they start arguing heatedly before her father ushers them outside. Maybe Lori isn’t the kind of Omega to just rollover and submit, like the stereotype.
Beth backs away and returns to her room to hide.
The next morning, the news breaks on the farm that Otis was killed by walkers trying to get the medical supplies for Carl.
Shane returns alone in the middle of the night, but Hershel keeps the news to himself until he and Patricia successfully patch up Carl with the supplies Shane brought back.
Poor Patricia screams and cries, Maggie and Beth hug her between them on the couch in the living room. With Otis gone, there's a gap in the work that must be filled. Beth doesn’t have the luxury or privilege to hide up in her room anymore, she has to help, and she wants to help.
She meticulously sprays herself down with pheromone spray then rolls up her sleeves and gets to work as usual. She feels better when she works. She’s not as strong as Maggie or as knowledgeable or skilled as Patricia, but she does what she can to fill the gaps Otis’s loss has left.
Everyone looks at her hesitantly when they gather to go pick up stones to bury Otis, but she insists on helping.
“Otis meant something to me too, I have to help put his memory to rest. For myself, and for Patricia too.” They don’t have a body to bury, but they’ll stack up stones and pray over them, sending his soul up to the lord. Jimmy gives her his work gloves and she marches out with the rest of the group to fill the wheelbarrows with stones. Patricia slows at her work and Beth watches her drift away to the side, shoulders hunching and her hand wiping at her face. Beth drops the stone she carries into the wheelbarrow before going to Patricia and wrapping her arms around her.
Shane is with them, picking up the heaviest stones. Beth is distantly aware of the alphas at all times. He shaved his head in the bathroom when he got back. Shane even smells a little different now compared to when he first ran up to the farm, and he looks different too. His eyes are a little wilder, darting all over distrustfully.
He doesn’t notice Beth at all, his gaze passes right over her like he doesn’t even see her. She tries not to let it bother her, but it does. He only seems to have eyes and ears open for Lori. Everywhere she goes, Shane follows her with his eyes and points his shoulders at her.
Lori glares at Shanes back like she hates him, but at Rick like she appears wan and fawning. Beth's can't help but wonder what they all went through to make them act how they are now. The three of them are so obvious with their feelings, even the betas in the group must be able to tell, if they didn't already know.
Beth’s guess is Lori cheated with Shane and got caught. If Shane encroached on her without her initiation, she thinks Rick probably would have killed him. That hasn't happened, so it must not the that. What could it be then? She's not stupid enough to ask.
They’re still gathering stones when the sound of a motor drifts over the wind. Beth hears it first, turning to see a caravan rolling out of the trees and into view. A new green car, an RV, and a lone man on a chopper come racing up the drive, the bike in the lead.
Beth's eyes are on the man on the motorcycle, the bike blaring and snarling its way over the hill. It's almost obnoxiously loud in their newly quiet world, an odd choice considering the state of humanity at the moment. A bike that loud says without words, come fight me, here I am.
The group goes still, gathering together to watch the strangers approach. Their cars look to be filled with equal numbers of men and women, a mismatched group of all colors and ages come together to survive.
Something strange stirs in her chest when the man on the motorcycle gets closer. He doesn’t look the typical Alpha stereotype from a distance, but up close he’s hard muscle rubbed with dirt and tanned skin glistening with sweat. His shoulders are broad, torso tapering down to his narrow hips and long legs. He has the easy, fluid confidence that all Alphas have. Beth swallows the dry lump in her throat.
Rick didn't tell them his group had a third alpha. With three, it must have been easy for them to survive this long. Her heart picks up its staccato beat. She's curious about this one too.
Beth always thought guys with motorcycles were cool. She has a brief fantasy of being the woman riding on the back of that chopper, free and unbothered just like him. Maybe he’d have one hand on the handlebars and the other on her thigh, because in this fantasy she’d be his girl.
Beth walks back over to Jimmy while the caravan rides up to the house. The green car comes closest up to the house, while the RV hangs back.
The man on the motorcycle kicks his bike up into its stand, swings his crossbow over his shoulder and swaggers up to the house, the wind at his back. When he comes closer, she can smell their group on the breeze, stinking of unwashed bodies and fear. He swings his loose arms, all Alpha gracefulness in how he carries himself. When he comes closer, almost an arm's length away, she’s transfixed with her heart hammering. He smells like a wild animal in human skin, like loamy earth, blood, cigarettes and motor oil. Beth backs away and half-hides behind Jimmy while her stomach flips nervously.
She’s been around Alphas before, none of them were anything like him. The man with the motorcycle yells something out to Rick, his voice a gravely rasp carrying loud over the lawn. Beth can't even hear what he says when her stomach twists and drops. Watching him stride past them all until he comes to stand next to Rick, she's transfixed by the way he cocks his weight on his hip and shifts his broad shoulders to the side, pulling his crossbow higher on his shoulder, muscles bunching. She clenches her legs together when a rush of unbidden wetness blooms in her underwear.
Damn it. She should go back inside and hide, but she’s rooted to the spot, mesmerized. It's impossible to look away from him. Carrying five ways of dying low on his side, sweat plasters his long hair to his face and neck. The way he moves his hands and wrists has her all bent out of shape, she’s turned on just looking at him. She shakes her head to dispel the sinful thoughts, what is wrong with her?
“I’m going back in.” She whispers to Jimmy. As soon as she speaks, the wild alpha lifts his head and peers around like a periscope.
She can see him scenting the air, his head scanning every one of them. She forces herself to keep moving away from him, acting casual. Can he smell her, can he tell?
She scampers inside, her heart is pounding and her hands are shaking. She climbs the stairs back to her room and kicks off her jeans and underwear, wiping between her legs, spraying more pheromone blocker, and changing into fresh clothes.
What was that? She’d never smelled anything like him before. It had to be her out of balance hormones, she hasn't been exposed to a mature Alpha in weeks, she must have forgotten what they're like. Being bombarded with three alphas at once was probably messing with her biology. Her next cycle was only two weeks away, hopefully Rick's group would leave before that happened.
She wouldn't go into a full heat, but her ovulation cycle would still make her intensely needy. Her mind would be clear, but for a girl who grew up in a household where sex was a bad word, the aftershocks of her body’s cycle was immensely humiliating.
The fewer people around the better.