Ahkmenrah (a/b/o)

The first time you visit the museum, you’re six.

Your mother has one hand in yours, the other worrying at a museum pamphlet. There’s a tiny crease between her brows. It’s funny the things you remember, the things that stood out when you saw the world from three and a half feet off the ground. For instance, the smells.

At six, you haven’t presented yet; it will be eight more years until you feel the stirrings of your first heat, until your mother rushes you to the twenty-four hour clinic for emergency suppressants.

But even at six, you know the smell of alpha.

Doctors and scientists theorize that children begin showing signs of their sexual designation at as young as four years old. Future alphas and omegas in particular may experience a heightened sense of smell and a predilection toward aggressive or submissive behavior, respectively. You’re not sure about the latter theory—you remember bloodying Jonah Wilkes’ nose in second grade for stealing your ninja turtle backpack—but you have always had an acute sense of smell.

The museum is crowded with families and tourists, a heady mix of new scents to your young nose. Your mother is a beta; she can’t unbraid the individual scents and pick a strand to follow like you can. She lets you lead and you drag her, unknowingly, after a pleasant-smelling woman as she walks room to room. Your mother eventually catches on and scolds you for being rude. You don’t know what’s so rude about liking the way someone smells.

The woman drifts away and your mother takes the lead. You’re only a little put out.

You’re on the second floor when the smell sours.

At first, you cover your nose with your hand, and when that does nothing to staunch the scent, you bury your face in your mother’s cardigan. She thinks you’re being shy, that the actor performing a traditional African dance is making you nervous. You are too young to put the true reason into words, too young to realize for yourself that the underlying smell on this floor is alpha and fear and pain. There are others watching the performance, and you see uncomfortable glances and fidgets from some of the adults whose animal hindbrains are telling them the same thing.

The Egyptian exhibit is closed for renovations.

You don’t know why you’re relieved.

You are thirteen the next time you visit.

It’s a school trip this time, and you’re with a group of friends who are more interested in slipping away from the main group than listening to the tour guide. When they manage to break away unseen, you follow. A breathless laugh rises in your throat as you duck around the corner. Sarah, a girl who recently presented as alpha—and is insufferably proud of the fact—takes it upon herself to lead. Of course.

“Let’s go to the haunted exhibit,” she says, chin thrust out in adolescent rebellion.

“There’s a haunted exhibit?” someone asks.

“Duh. My sister—she’s a beta—” This is said with some amount of derision, as though a month of being an alpha has put Sarah above the likes of betas (who comprise most of the population, so that assertion is ridiculous, you think.) “—came here a couple years ago and two of her classmates fainted.”

Everyone looks skeptical.

“That’s not haunted. That’s, like, a gas leak or something.”

“No, I’m telling you, there’s something weird up there.” She’s pointing up, presumably towards the supernatural activity. “I’m gonna check it out. You guys can go back to the group if you want.”

Of course, no one wants to go back to the group, so you all traipse after Sarah.

“I don’t believe in ghosts, do you?” Peter, a boy from your pre-algebra class, whispers. In just over a year he will present as a rare male omega, only two months after you get your own heat.

“Not in museums,” you say. Ghosts seem like they should only belong in old houses and graveyards, not among wax sculptures and dinosaur bones.

You have vague memories of your previous visit, mostly flashes of sight and sound, but it’s the smell that brings it all rushing back.

Your ragtag group is on the second floor, following Sarah’s bobbing ponytail through the exhibits, when the first prickles of unease begin. It’s less like a smell and more like an awareness; it’s a shadow clinging to the base of your skull, whispering a warning to a part of your brain that is only just ripening. You have forgotten about the pursuit of ghosts, instead focusing on keeping your gait even and your breathing measured. There’s an empty cramping in your abdomen, one that you will grow to learn means compatible alpha and possible mate.

For now, you wonder if you’re getting sick.

You catch sight of Peter’s face and see the same slight panic in his eyes. You begin to think you should have stayed with the tour group.

“It smells in here.” Sarah is squinting around the room, nose wrinkled. You’re in the Room of African Peoples. You cast a longing look at a nearby bench. If only you could stop your head from spinning...

Sarah shrugs it off, not one to be deterred.

“It’s right in here,” she says.

“In here” turns out to be a replica of an Egyptian tomb, complete with a sarcophagus. The sight of it makes you sag against the wall, trying not to brush against the priceless artifacts on display. Peter looks almost green in the light.

“I don’t see anything. It’s just an exhibit.” Candice sounds bored.

“The weapons are cool.” Tasha tries to placate your alpha leader. She has a hopeless crush on Sarah.

Fear, fear, fear, help, why isn’t anyone helping, can’t they taste the fear?

You can feel it lying heavy on your tongue, like the aftertaste of a bitter medicine. You can’t see its source—you can’t really smell it either—because it permeates everything. It’s layered, fresh over stale scent, like it’s been circulating here for a very long time. You can feel your forehead beading with sweat.

“What’s wrong with you guys?” Sarah has directed her attention from her aggravated study of the room to you and Peter.

“S’nothing,” you say. “I’m fi—”

Peter interrupts you by fainting.

After being lead to the cafeteria for juice and given a chance to recover, you and Peter are sent to sit out in the bus. Sarah and the others get an infraction, but no one mentions disciplinary action to the two of you. You are too tired to be thankful.

You lean your head against the cool glass of the window and try to loosen the tense knot of anxiety that has taken up residence at the base of your neck.

When you close your eyes, you see the glint of gold on an ancient coffin and smell a blend of dust and terror.

Larry isn't sure why he thought this was a good idea.

Sure, guys like Don can have bring-your-kid-to-work days, but when he tries it there are thieving ex-night guards and killer statues and very pissed off mummies. He’s having a bit of a day night here.

“Dad?”

Great job, Larry, you've brought Nick into a war-zone. Really nice. A+ parenting.

“Taking care of it, Nicky.”

If by “taking care of it” you mean “continuing to make poor life choices,” then sure, you have it in the bag.

He doesn't know why his internal voice sounds alarmingly similar to his new boss, but he’ll worry about the implications later.

He can’t seem to get through to the giant, spear-wielding guards that he comes in peace—and would like to avoid leaving in pieces, please and thank you—and he really can’t be blamed for being born a beta; he can’t possibly smell the siren call of very not right that the screaming mummy is exuding. As far as he’s concerned, the angry dead guy is the lesser of the two evils.

And in a sense, he’s correct.

But fifty years of sensory deprivation does not a sane alpha make.

You always sleep poorly during the nights that you would have your heats, if not for chemical intervention. You can feel a phantom itch at the base of your spine, radiating out. It makes you over-warm and irritable, like the start of a fever. You wish it were a fever, because feeling this way for several days every few months is maddening.

It’s nights like this that make you wish you could walk the streets after dark without the threat of violence. You want to run off the jittery buzz in your veins, to jar your teeth with the force of your footfalls, to scrape your lungs raw with the unforgiving city air.

Instead, you curl your toes in your cotton sheets and press your clammy palms to your forehead.

I am not a wild animal. I am in control.

You count your breaths until they slow from their imagined run.

I am in control.

Out of all the suppressants on the market, pills are the most popular option, but yearly injections are available for the busy omega who can’t be bothered with daily doses. All of the heat suppressants have one thing in common: they allow for at least two (mild) heat cycles a year in order to regulate hormones and prevent medical crisis. Your own prescription has a week’s work of little pink placebos to be taken at your discretion in order to kick start your heat.

You flush them. You always do.

You have a vivid memory of the look on your mother’s face when you presented. Shock. Panic. And beneath it all, an undercurrent of horror. In her defense, your parents had never anticipated having an alpha or omega child, and being betas, they were completely unprepared. Your mother did the only thing she knew to do: she bundled your delirious fourteen-year-old self off to the nearest clinic and had them inject you with an emergency suppressant. It brought you off your hormone high, but at a price; you were lethargic for days after, your body attempting to come to terms with both the changes your presentation had wrought and the sudden introduction of strong suppressants.

It was a rough week all around.

When you had your first prescription for suppressants filled and saw the week off little pink pills, you knew you couldn’t take them. You couldn’t let your condition (mother’s words, not yours) dictate how you live your life. So you refill your prescription a little early every four months, and no one seems to notice. Your mother never comments that you don’t miss any school for “special reasons,” and your father can look you in the eye without embarrassment.

It’s a good thing.

(You ignore the heavy feeling in your limbs, the pounding ache behind your eyes, and the nights you can’t sleep.)

You are healthy.

And most importantly, you are in control.

And when the lies you tell yourself get to be too much, you imagine running.

But you can’t run from your own body.

“Woah, woah, easy there!” Larry knows immediately that he has made a mistake. The pegs on the side of the sarcophagus are hardly out of their latches when the mummy is bursting out, throwing the lid clear across the room.

I really hope the Egyptians used heavy-duty materials in their coffins, Larry thinks. But then, McPhee is already going to have his badge and his head, so what does it matter, really?

The roar the dead pharaoh lets loose is hardly muffled by his wrappings. Even the stone guards lean back a bit in the face of his inarticulate rage.

“Uh, sorry to bother you.” And if Larry’s voice sounds like a squeaky fourteen-year-old’s, no one can really blame him. He clears his throat. “Your guards were getting a little overzealous, but it looks like that’s under control now, so...” He motions to Nick behind his back as he edges around the figure.

He doesn’t even see him move.

One second Larry’s a few steps from the entrance, the next his spine is getting intimately acquainted with the hieroglyphics on the walls. The mummy has one hand around his throat, holding him slightly aloft.

Why is this my life?

There are words—not in English, and punctuated by sub vocal growls that he feels rather than hears—coming from beneath the cloth, and the grip around his throat loosens just enough for him to choke on a lungful of air.

“C—come again?” he rasps.

A shuffling sound from the other side of the room draws his eyes, and the wrapped head snaps away from him so fast, he wonders if it will detach completely. He imagines trying to explain a decapitated mummy and stolen relics to the police in the morning.

He did it to himself. No, really. And the tablet isn’t my fault. It was the old man, in the museum, with the candlestick.

Nicky peeks out from his hiding spot.

Oh no.

Larry may be a beta, but he knows a predator when it has its linen-bound hand around his throat.

“Nick, run.”

In his life, Theodore Roosevelt was a formidable alpha. In this strange half-existence, however, he is made of wax, and therefore a beta. A null.

He still recognizes the sound of an enraged alpha when he hears one.

Larry Daley, you brave fool. (Or possibly just fool, the jury is still out.)

Teddy knows that the pharaoh is alpha from the way that every creature that was once alive skirts his exhibit in fear. Every stuffed bird and beast—even Dexter—keeps well clear of the Egyptian room. He doesn’t know what the man did in life to deserve such a cruel fate—and there are few fates worse for an alpha than to be cut off from any sort of sensory stimulation—but he will not be the one to free the beast.

Of course, if someone else releases the rabid alpha...

Well. He feels certain Larry has it all in hand. (And if not, Teddy is only a panicked call away. His fellow beta need only shout.)

Larry is trying very hard not to shout.

Don't set off the already unhinged dead guy, Daley.

“Nick, run.”

The pharaoh has his sights—can he even see through those wrappings?—set on Nicky, who is cowering behind a wall on the far side of the tomb.

“Dad.”

And this is far, far worse than the old men making off with the tablet, or anything else Larry has faced to date in this hell-job. He’ll let himself be torn apart by wax Huns—or mauled by a mummy—before he allows harm to come to his son.

“Look, I know you’re angry—and who wouldn’t be in your situation?—but this is only my third night on the job and that is my son you’re growling at. So if you could dial down the alpha rage a few notches that would be great.” He doesn’t expect it to work. He’s heard about alphas going into fugues and berserker rages; you can’t reason with them. His best hope is to make sure the alpha’s focus is on him, to give one of the other museum inhabitants time to find them and get Nick the hell out of dodge.

The pharaoh backs off.

Larry’s left flexing his fingers in the silent anticlimax.

“Oh. Er, thanks?”

They're left in an uncomfortable standoff, Larry wondering if the alpha's going to use that scary, silent speed and just gut him. God, that would suck.

Instead, the mummy tears his wrappings off.

Larry doesn’t even have time to brace himself for the horror of a walking desiccated corpse, and he recoils before he fully registers the sight. A sight which is about as surprising as anything Larry has come across in the museum, but not unwelcome. Before him is a young man with wide, wild eyes, his chest heaving under the bandages that remain. The mummy—who is not a mummy—bares his teeth and advances again.

Out of the frying pan.

A deep growl—one that Larry feels more than hears—shifts into a precise English accent.

“Where is my tablet?”

...And into the fire.

You’re lacing your shoes before you’ve made the conscious decision to leave your room. You pull the laces so tight that they leave red stripes on your fingers, and you check yourself before you break the ties.

I am calm. I am in control.

You repeat the mantra to yourself as you creep past your parents’ door, as you slide your keys from the key peg, hand closed around the metal to keep them from jangling. You press the words against your teeth as you forgo the elevator and take eight flights of stairs two at a time. You hit the ground floor landing with a lie behind your eyes and an air of desperation to your steps. You feel trapped.

There’s a promise of snow in the air; yesterday’s accumulation is gray sludge in the gutters now, or slick spots on the concrete where the salt grit hasn’t touched. You rock back on your heels for a moment, considering. You’re on West Seventy-Second Street, and you could easily jog up Columbus Avenue and find a twenty-four hour coffee shop—there are plenty in the vicinity—and spend the night burying your overwrought senses in the aroma of coffee beans and the keyboard clicking of the art-types that frequent such places. But you don’t want to sit. You turn right and head toward Central Park West.

There are more pedestrians out at this hour than you’d anticipated. Most of them are betas. If you couldn’t tell their designation by the void where pheromones should be, you can tell by the astringent perfumes and soaps that they wear. You don’t think that betas realize how vile their chemical fragrances are to more sensitive noses. Even your parents use beta scents injudiciously. You’ve never mentioned that it burns your nose because, well, they’ve never asked.

You cover old hurt with the stretch of your leg muscles, pushing your pace to the point of pain.

You turn left on Central Park West, hoping to make it to the historical district before you have to turn back.

You don’t quite make it there before the smell hits you.

Alpha.

Ahkmenrah hardly remembers what it was like to live. There was a span of millennia where he had only his parents for company, and then the brief freedom of Cambridge. He had seen and smelled and learned so much in his time at the university, and then it was gone. At first he had assumed that his sarcophagus would be unlatched at the new museum, that he would wake up in New York as a free—well, relatively free—man. After the first night of silence, however, he realized that help may be a long time in coming, and he had screamed and yelled for his guards to release him, begged in every language he had learned from the books in the Cambridge that someone, someone would save him.

Silence greeted him, and silence kept him.

There is a several year span—likely whole decades—that he does not remember. He thinks he drifted in and out of a state not unlike a fugue, unable to die, but wanting to. Desperately. He does remember shredding his nails and fingertips on the lid of his tomb; he remembers bones breaking and his throat dying down to a whisper while he railed on and on and...

Or maybe that was just a dream.

He feels moments away from madness, and every second of inaction in the pursuit of his tablet pushes him toward a hazy, indistinct mental state that tells him to kill to claim to dominate. He needs the tablet so that he can claim his long-awaited freedom. He cares little for the trials of these beings who have heard his despair and done nothing. He will regain what is his and he will disappear into this strange, bright world with its sharp metal-human-chemical smells.

He does not anticipate the beta and his son. Larry—a guardian of Brooklyn, apparently—is strangely endearing with his rambling speech and his nervous heroics. (Ahkmenrah tries not to feel guilty about his previous aggression toward the man. He fails, despite his newfound general apathy toward living creatures.) He finds himself astride a large, dead beast with the smaller beta. He's discomfited with his urge to shield the boy.

The mad dash through the strange new landscape is the closest to being alive that Ahkmenrah has felt in millennia. He keeps an arm braced around the boy—Nick, he thinks—as they gain ground with the carriage, and inhales the new smells, the trees, the asphalt, the snow, the—

Omega.

You’ve only been drunk once—no one told you that the eggnog at the holiday party was spiked—and you remember how the feeling buoyed you through the rest of the evening. Your thoughts scattered like light through a prism, and you were either hyper focused or absent altogether. This scent, this... alpha... is as intoxicating as any alcohol. You can only parse out traces, but you feel it like a physical entity, and it’s a chemical reaction sparking through your veins. Your body temperature rises, your mouth dries and then rapidly reverses course. Your heart drops to your stomach, then lower, and you clench your thighs against the beat of it.

You are... not in control.

You’ve been in contact with alphas before, of course. Attractive alphas. Compatible alphas, even. Scent is everything to people like you, and the sweeter the scent, the better the match (biologically speaking.) But this scent isn’t sweet—it’s warm and reminds you of incense, if pheromones can even smell like musk and smoke. Even with the traces of it scattering to the wind and mixing with city air, it’s thick on your tongue. Heedy.

“You okay, lady?”

The voice startles you out of your haze, and you register your surroundings. Park. Street lights. Frowning pedestrian. Beta cologne over sweat.

“I... I’m fine. Thanks,” you say a little belatedly.

“You high?”

You know your pupils must be blown to hell. You can feel the jitters in your limbs, the way you clench and unclench your fists, craving... something. Someone.

The man doesn’t look like an officer, but he could be a plainclothes. Regardless, he doesn’t smell threatening. You wouldn’t normally depend on your nose for character judgment, but your senses are in overdrive, and you can smell the coffee—black with sugar—on his breath from five feet away. The alpha’s scent is beginning to fade, carried away by a shifting wind. You want to cry. You want to run until you find it again. Your nails are carving crescents in your palms.

“Hey. Kid. It’s four in the morning. Go home.” He stamps his feet against the chill that you’re just beginning to feel. “There’s some circus freaks out here tonight, and believe me, it ain’t something you wanna get caught up in.”

He mutters something under his breath. What you catch sounds a little like “some fucking Halloween shit,” so you’re unsure if he’s talking about strung out hobos, or something less... run of the mill. You’re tempted to risk it, anyway.

“Yeah, I’m gonna... go.” You turn away, taking deep breaths.

Where are they?

“Dunno which way you’re going, but I wouldn’t go north. It’s like a parade of freaks.”

You nod, absently scuffing your foot in a patch of snow.

Which way am I going?

The man leaves, but not before shooting you one last questioning glance. You ignore him, concentrating.

The cold is seeping into your clothes, now. It seemed to bounce off before, unable to penetrate the haze of alphaalphaalpha, but you can feel your senses dialing back to normal, your tunnel vision dropping away and leaving you shivering in a post-haze high. You feel silly now, and miserable for it.

Stupid hindbrain.

You covered sexual presentations in middle school health class, around the time you presented as omega. It was like double puberty—your hormones were livewires and liable to be sparked by anything. You remember bursting into tears over silly things, like when Andy Carmichael made a passing derisive comment about your jacket. There had also been a memorable incident when the cafeteria ran out of chicken. You’d really wanted those nuggets. And then there was the time that Terrance, a guy you hadn’t had much contact with previously, presented as an alpha in in the middle of pre-AP history. He had to be escorted from the class and put on emergency suppressants when he went into rut. You and several other omegas developed an intense, if short-lived crush on him, and you remember touching yourself at the memory of his blown pupils and the sudden bloom of alpha scent. Through all the acne, the body changes, the emotional outbursts, you knew basically what to expect. But this... this is different.

You’re afraid. Was this an isolated incident? Are you going to go heat-crazy over any better-than-average alpha on the street? You prize control, and nothing about this situation speaks well of your so-called restraint. The stranger was right: you should go home. You turn around, backtracking through your sludgy footprints. Your shoes are canvas, soaked through, and you can’t feel your toes.

The first rays of morning light greet you when you finally reach your apartment building. Your body stopped humming an hour ago. Your fingers are thick with cold.

For what it’s worth, you think, I should sleep easy now.

But your dreams are plagued with faceless figures that stay just out of reach. You try to shout, but you can’t hear your own voice. Your legs remain leaden. And over it all, the smell of sandalwood and smoke.

Ahkmenrah is furious.

Several things happen in quick succession after scenting the omega that nearly makes him fall from his undead mount. First, the small men who guided them from the museum crash their equally tiny vehicle, sending the bone that his mount single-mindedly chases into the snow pile with them. Second, the old man with his tablet veers off, leaving Larry, the man who seems to struggle with his guardianship nearly as much as he struggles with his horse, to choose between pursuing him or staying behind to... be utterly useless, Ahkmenrah assumes. He wisely chooses the first option, which is advisable, because the moment Ahkmenrah wrests the dead lizard away from its toy, he’s back on the trail.

“Um... sir?”

Ahkmenrah is a bit startled to discover that the little beta boy is still with him. He swallows around the scent of omegafemalewarmtharousal that assaults him from somewhere upwind.

“Yes?” he grits out. His focused, cordial mask is slipping, if it hasn’t already shattered on the icy ground.

“My dad went that way.” The boy inclines his head to the left.

Ahkmenrah realizes that the trail he’s following is not that of the tablet, but of the omega. He’s not... displeased with this notion.

The boy notices his hesitation.

“Don’t you need the tablet? You know, to... live?”

And that’s true enough, even if his instincts are telling him otherwise. Honestly, he hasn’t been at the mercy of his baser self like this since he was a young alpha... and he is by no means young any longer. This night has been a salvation and an agony in one. He clenches his jaw hard enough to ache.

“My apologies.” He barks a command to the fossil in his native tongue, and though the beast does not understand the words, the intent is clear. He guides with his knees, ignoring the grind of bone-on-bone.

“You’re an alpha.” It’s not a question.

“That is what your culture calls me, yes.” There are many words for what he is, some in languages as dead as he.

“How long were you... in there?”

“An age.” And no time at all. His perspective for these things is... skewed.

“Wow,” the boy breathes. He seems to think a moment, the only sound between them that of clawed bones over snow. “Are you, um... okay?”

And despite the cold in his limbs, and the ache of suppressed rage behind his eyes, despite the yawning feeling of impending madness just beyond a thin film of civility, Ahkmenrah quirks a half smile.

“Time heals all, Nick.”

He doesn’t mention that time usually does this by providing the sufferer with a healthy dose of apathy, but then Nick is still very young.

Cynicism is for the old.

You wake up exhausted. You fumble with your alarm, hitting the snooze button instead of the off switch, and have to lunge across your bed five minutes later to silence it again. You can hear your parents in the kitchen, the coffee pot percolating, and you want to sink through your bed, through every floor in the building, and bed down in the rock foundation somewhere below the city sewers.

You are not granted this peace.

“Up, up! I heard your alarm. Don’t miss your bus again.”

Your mother holds nothing sacred, and certainly not closed doors. She opens your blinds, and the sun is a physical thing stabbing your swollen, tired eyes. You sneeze.

“I’m sick,” you croak.

“Senioritis isn’t a real illness,” she says, and then she’s gone.

Despite your mom's prodding, you are late for the bus again. It’s such a shame. You’re very torn up about it.

“I can’t believe I stayed with your slow ass.”

Your... friend... Riley, misses it, too.

“You’re paying for the fucking taxi,” she says.

“I’m skipping.” You’re already moving with the foot traffic.

“Oh, for fucks sake—“ Riley is a bit of a grouch, with the worst case of resting bitch face you’ve ever seen, but she’s not altogether a bad person. She follows you—not silently, exactly, but her cursing is basically white noise—as you retrace last night’s footsteps.

“I have a quiz in calculus today, you know. This is my fucking future on the line. I have, like, three absences in Mrs. Crow’s class already, and she’s a fucking nightmare.”

“Mmm,” you say noncommittally.

“Not that I’m upset about missing Livingston’s class, mind you. What a raging bitch. And anyway, we’re only reviewing—HOLD UP, CRAZY.”

You’re yanked back suddenly, and you blink to discover traffic whizzing a foot from your nose.

“There are pedestrian signs there for a reason, dumbass.”

“Oh.”

“”Oh,” she says after nearly becoming a greasy smear. You’re welcome, by the way. You probably owe me a life debt, or something.” She keeps one hand on your elbow, her bony fingers nearly bruising. “I’ll exact it in chicken nuggets.”

You wait for the sign to change back to the walking symbol. You can see Central Park now.

“What’s your deal, anyway? You’re acting like a fucking space cadet.”

You can’t say for certain, but you think Riley’s first word was “fuck.” You’re sure her parents were very proud.

“I... took a walk last night. There was just something really weird, and it’s been bugging me.”

“Okay, first of all, you took a walk last night? Alone? Here? You have hidden depths. Hidden dumbass depths, because wow, that was really stupid, but still. Kudos for breaking the mould.”

You can’t say you’re flattered.

“Secondly, have you seen the news this morning?”

You shake your head.

“Uh, okay, was your weird thing seeing Neanderthals in Central Park? Because that’s... a thing that happened.”

Well, that’s not your “weird thing” at all, but you’re intrigued.

“What.”

“Yeah, no. Apparently the museum—the AMNH—was doing a publicity stunt, and there was this, like, parade of weirdness. They rigged up an animatronic T-rex fossil, which is pretty legit.”

You recall the dude in the park mentioning freaks, and you think you’ve found the root of it.

“So what’s your thing, then? Tell me your thing.”

Riley is not your number one choice for unburdening your mind. You wish your friend Liz was here. Telling Liz that you nearly had a breakdown at the scent of an alpha would not be nearly as daunting as telling Riley. Riley is generally well-meaning, you think, but kind of an asshole. She’s the alpha-iest beta that you’ve ever met. (Which is not to say all alphas are assholes, but they do tend to be... domineering.)

You shake off her claw-like hand.

“Aw, c’mon. I followed you all the way out here. I saved your ass. I’m missing calculus for this.”

Somehow, you doubt she’s too torn up about that.

“There was this... smell.”

“This is New York. If I don’t encounter five weird smells by breakfast, I probably have a sinus infection.”

“No,” You don’t know why you’re telling her this. “It was a people-smell. A person.”

She stops midstride.

“Woah, woah, hold up. Is this some weird presentation shit?”

And now you just feel dirty. It’s not your fault.

“Not that I’m judging, but that ain’t my scene.”

“Whatever.” You walk faster.

“Hey—wait up.” She easily outstrips you, turning to jog backwards. “So was this like... your soulmate, or something? Is that how this works?”

“No,” you snap. “It’s just someone... I’d like to meet.”

Meet, she mouths, making a lewd gesture with her tongue and cheek.

“Go. Away,” you grit out.

“Nah, I’m invested now. Let’s find your good-smelling soulmate.”

“They aren’t my fucking soulmate!”

“Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt,” Riley sing-songs back.

You should’ve just gone to school.

Somehow—likely due to Riley’s relentless prodding—the two of you wind up at the museum. Your search of the park proved fruitless, and you are exhausted, legs still aching from last night’s mad-dash, and now from two hours of aimless wandering. You don’t want to climb the museum steps.

“I know I look like I have crazy upper body strength—“ She really doesn’t. “—but I’m not gonna carry you up these things.”

“Do you even have the money for admission?”

“You mean this isn’t free?”

You give her a Look.

“No.”

“Knowledge should be free.” She pouts dramatically, shaking a fist at the clouds. “Damn you, capitalism!”

You start to climb the steps, if only to get away from the crazy girl cursing at the sky.

“I don’t know her,” you tell a passerby.

You both manage to scrounge up seventeen dollars. You break a twenty; she counts out the last three dollars in change.

“Lookit richy-rich over here,” she says as you’re handed your tickets.

“I had a summer job.”

“I had a summer job,” she mimics, shaking her hands.

You bite your tongue, knowing anything you say will be parroted back in falsetto.

are you here? Liz texts, probably from second period.

no

sick? :(

in hell, plz send help

??

can’t talk, busy (-_-)

<3 stay strong

You expected the museum to be a chore, but it’s surprisingly... interesting. It’s also a bit of a mess. You can see debris swept into the corners, and you wonder if it’s a result of the publicity stunt. There are a couple custodians hard at work, and it looks like they have their job cut out for them.

“Hey, hey, is that the animatronic one?” Riley has a disgruntled museum worker by the sleeve, pointing to the giant dinosaur on display.

You make the executive decision to leave her.

There’s something... off. You can’t quite put your finger on it until you near the sweeping stairwell.

That smell.

It’s there, faintly, the alpha from before. You have the benefit of thinking clearly this time, but you still can’t seem to pinpoint the trail. It’s just... everywhere.

A worker? You think about the night before, the people in costumes. An actor?

There are too many people around, too many scents layering the one that you seek. Last night’s spectacle drew in a crowd at the worst possible time.

“Hey, wait up—“ Riley is behind a tour group, hopping in place.

You don’t wait up.

Ducking into a side hall, you pass an Easter Island head—a replica?—and hang a left at the end. You’re following your nose at this point, as there are pockets of fresher scent—maybe spots that your alpha touched?

And then you have to sternly tell yourself that this... this person... is not your alpha. Just an alpha with an agreeable smell. What would you even say if you were to find them?

Hello, yes, I stalked you through Central Park—twice, actually—and I’d just like to say that you smell better than Christmas morning and chicken nuggets combined.

Classy. Also, liable to get you a restraining order.

And then it hits you.

The scent’s not quite full-force, not like it was last night, but you see spots for a moment, and your head buzzes like a bad caffeine rush. When your vision clears, you see the Egyptian exhibit, because of course it’s the Egyptian exhibit. You feel like you’re thirteen again. It’s like you’ve come full circle and some bizarre ritual has been completed.

Nothing has changed. The room has the same stone Anubis guards, the same walls of hieroglyphics. You run damp fingers over a case of preserved weapons, ignoring the “Please don’t touch the glass” sign. The closer you get to the sarcophagus, the fainter you feel. Maybe you’re attracted to dead things.

Mom, Dad, good news! I’m not an omega, just a necrophiliac.

You sneeze at the dust.

You step up to the coffin. There’s a tablet above it, and it’s about as gaudy as anything else in the room. You’re more interested in what's below it. The plaque next to it reads “Ahkmenrah, Fourth King of the Fourth King.” It has a brief paragraph about his life, or what conclusions researchers have been able to reach from artifacts and writings. He ruled over two thousand years ago, after the death of his parents. He died young.

“Oh my god, you ho.”

Riley has found you.

“Welcome back.”

“You totally left me! After I followed you and made sure you didn’t die!”

And you'd do it again.

“This your dude?” She nods behind you, at the tomb. “Cause I hate to break it to you, but he’s dead. D-e-d, dead.”

“Dead’s spelled with an—“

“Although I guess he’d be particularly good at boning.”

“Oh my god.”

“Some people have a Daddy, you could have a Mummy.”

“Please stop.”

“Course, it could be one of these bad boys.” She motions to the Anubises. “They look rock hard.”

“I’m leaving.”

“C’mon, just give ‘em a chance! You’ll be asking for morgue!”

You flee back through the entrance of the Egyptian wing, leaving a cackling Riley behind you. You are loathe to waste seventeen dollars, but if you stay here any longer you’ll have to find another coffin to stash the body; this one’s already taken.

There are plenty of fish in the sea, and you hope the next fish that smells like Nirvana on a stick doesn’t come with the possibility of necrophilia puns.

...Or maybe you’ll take another walk tonight. Just in case.

It’s true that Larry doesn’t have much experience in the way of alphas, but he can’t help but feel like the pacing and the... sniffing... is a bit out of the ordinary. As far as he’s concerned, alphas and omegas are normal members of society, albeit with superior senses. He knows the stigmas that surround their so-called “sexual natures,” but honestly, he’s never seen any sign of “depraved sexual conduct” from... anyone, really. Alpha, beta, omega. Maybe he doesn’t run in the right circles.

All that aside, Ahkmenrah’s behavior is a bit unsettling, and Larry knows that he isn’t the only one who’s noticed. The entire museum is a little on edge tonight, and he doesn’t think it’s due to last night’s close call.

“He’s imprinting.”

Larry jerks, startled.

“Come again?”

Teddy has been watching too, apparently. He leans in, voice low.

“It appears our pharaoh has caught a scent. Alphas imprint on others through smell. It helps us—them—track.”

They watch Ahkmenrah pace the top of the stairwell, his posture fraught with tension. Larry and Ahkmenrah exchanged curt words when Larry checked on his exhibit earlier, making sure the pharaoh was free from his tomb. At the time, Ahkmenrah was studying a display case, fingers splayed over the glass, expression stormy.

“Do you want something out of there?” Larry isn’t sure what the protocol is for getting relics out of their cases for their original owners, but he’s a little cowed by the pharaoh, and he isn’t ready to be on the receiving end of the alpha’s fury again.

Ahkmenrah doesn’t even shift to acknowledge Larry’s presence.

“No.” The word is bitten off, angry.

Needless to say, Larry doesn’t linger.

“Do you think he’s going to go after Cecil again?” The old night guard is in police custody now. Larry doesn’t exactly have warm feelings for the guy, but he probably doesn’t deserve to be ripped apart by a pissed off alpha.

“Who can say?” Teddy says in a tone that implies that he can probably say.

Larry squints at him.

“You’re like a sphinx, you know that?” Always with the riddles and the cryptic advice.

Teddy claps him on the back. “There are more pressing matters, I believe. Have you seen the prehistorics recently?”

Those words are like a cattle prod, and Larry is already running. Alphas aside, he has no shortage of (literal) fires to put out. Ahkmenrah can wait.

There is never any transition between death and not-death. There is no sweet slide to consciousness, no blurry-eyed blinking, no moment of confusion when the tablet bursts to life. Ahkmenrah is one foot out of the sarcophagus before he even registers the lid sliding across the floor.

He is... free. For a certain value of “free.” He is tied irrevocably to the tablet, after all, and to the rise and fall of the sun. He feels hunted by it, a blazing chariot chasing him across the sky, each dawn a defeat, a battle lost in a war without end. There is so much to do, so much to learn about this new age and the technological advancements at his disposal. Could he beat the sun, now? Outrun it forever in a chariot of his own? Could his tablet be altered, could it keep his heart beating through the dawn? Ahkmenrah has a mouth full of questions and no time to search for answers, no place to start, no—

He breathes in. He’d assumed, when his thoughts were still snarling around each other, that the omega’s scent was just a fragment, a breath caught in his clothes—he hadn’t the time to change into his burial wraps this morning—or on his skin. But the warm scent of omega permeates his exhibit, caught in the stagnant air. There are other scents too, of course, from patrons of all walks of life—even other omegas—but his omega lies at the forefront.

Ahkmenrah knows the proprietary nature of that thought is likely uncouth now—possessive alphas had already been rapidly going out of style when he was locked away—but surely she felt it, too? The woman—and it is a woman, he can smell her now, clearer than before—found him here. But she was too late. Too early.

There’s never enough time.

He is quickly losing track, thoughts shifting like desert sands—omega, sun, tablet, omega, Larry—

What.

“—want something out of there?”

The beta is behind him, standing in the entrance of the room. Ahkmenrah can smell the man’s sweat. It smells of exertion overlaid with a growing sense of anxiety. The guardian’s words don’t register initially; Ahkmenrah is preoccupied with the smudges of fingerprints on the glass case in front of him, and with the smell clinging to them. He stretches his own hand beside it.

She searched for him.

She found him.

Ahkmenrah knows this to be no mean feat, just from the short time he’s spent in the open air of the city. There are scent obstructions everywhere, how on earth—?

Behind him, Larry shifts his weight uncomfortably. Had he asked something? Did he require an answer?

“No,” Ahkmenrah grits out. It seems a safe response regardless.

The air stirs in the beta’s hasty retreat, and Ahkmenrah closes his eyes, parsing out the individual scents. There’s the clean smell of young children, untouched by hormones, and the duller scent of betas overlaid with sharp, pungent odors. He frowns. At Cambridge, Ahkmenrah made the unwelcome discovery that people in this age have seemingly forgotten how to make perfume. He was appalled to note that betas layered false scents over their bodies injudiciously, dragging a veritable cloud of headache-inducing odors with them. Distressingly, it seems to be a continuing trend.

Not to be deterred (or outdone) by his—the—omega, Ahkmenrah plucks her scent from the fray and trails it out of the tomb, down the hall, and onto the second floor landing.

He is not, contrary to the others’ belief, unaware of the stares. Or the whispers.

The others don’t understand—and how could they? They are either betas (Larry) or imitations of living things. He’s seen recognition in the wax man’s eyes, but whoever he was before, and whatever the tablet fools him into thinking he is now, Teddy is merely an idea brought to false life. It makes Ahkmenrah uncomfortable in ways that his guard statues do not. They are not under the impression that they—either of them—are the true Anubis.

He wonders, not for the first time, what the original intentions of the tablet’s creators were, and whether the magic did not turn out... as intended. Certainly his parents do not think so; it’s a dialogue he’s heard at length for several lifetimes. But everyone has their own agenda—kings, servants, priests—and magic most of all. If these years have taught him anything at all, it’s that magic is very much an entity unto itself.

It’s a subject he doesn’t have time for tonight. That it always comes back to time—and a lack thereof—is not lost on Ahkmenrah. As an effective immortal, he has a finely honed sense of irony.

He steps out of the museum and inhales deeply. He will solve the mysteries of the magics that surround him another night.

Tonight he hunts.

You’ve nearly talked yourself out of another nighttime hunt by the time ten o’clock rolls around. You can’t believe you’re even entertaining the thought, really—you missed class today, you’re still exhausted from the last twenty-four hours’ extracurriculars, and normal people don’t use their noses to hunt down strangers.

You feel a little lightheaded at the thought, though. Just the daydream of tracking the alpha, of pinning down their scent—and their person—for good, makes your abdomen clench in anticipation. You’ve been clammy and overheated all day, unable to stay still, unable to keep from rocking a little in your chair at dinner, much to your horror and embarrassment. Your parents hadn’t noticed, thank every deity that may be listening (and probably aren’t), but you know, and you feel dirty. Wild. Unstable.

You don’t recognize the person in the bathroom mirror, the sweating stranger with the too-bright eyes. You look fevered. You feel fevered. This shouldn’t be happening, not with your suppressants. You slide out your packet of pills, count them, check the calendar, count them again.

All accounted for. You never miss a day. The pink pills are already gone, flushed and forgotten.

There’s a knock at your bedroom door. You stuff the pills back into their container, trying to box your panic up with them. Your mother enters as the last foiled row disappears behind the cardboard. You swallow and drop it into a drawer, but the damage is done. You look up, facing her in the mirror, and see a flash of discomfort in the tightness of her eyes, the press of her lips.

“Everything okay?” she asks. “You’ve been quiet all evening.”

“Mm,” you say, noncommittal. You can feel irrational tears pricking at the corner of your eyes.

It’s not her fault. It’s not my fault, either. We’re just built differently.

You can’t say for sure which of you is more displeased by your differences.

“Are you coming down sick? You look fevered.” She hesitates. “Is it... something else?”

“No. No, I’m fine. I told you this morning; I just don’t feel well.”

Your eyes meet in the mirror. You know what she sees on your face, having just been examining it yourself. She looks like she doesn’t know whether to believe your face or your words.

She goes for the easier lie.

“Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t listen. I was in a rush.” She puts a hand on your head, kisses your temple. “You’re really warm. Go to bed.”

You nod, mute. She smells strongly of her favorite body wash and it’s making your head spin.

“And if you still feel bad in the morning, I’ll call the school.”

You listen for the click of a closed door as she leaves, but it never comes. Your jaw aches from the force of your clenched teeth. You flick off the bathroom light, opting to just leave your bedroom door ajar. You’ll wait for your parents to settle in before sneaking out—if you decide to sneak out, that is. You won’t let your hormones make this decision for you. You are in control.

You press your face into your pillow and beat down the needy little voice that asks if you wouldn’t like to lend someone else the reigns for once.

This city is rotting. It is the only explanation for the pervasive smell of filth and decay overlaid with rubber-steel-poison-fumes-too-many-bodies that nearly sends Ahkmenrah back into the museum. He refuses to be deterred, though, having faced too many trials in both life and death to back down at a little challenge. And he is under no illusions; this will be a challenge. He has no prior knowledge of the city’s layout (other than foggy recollections of maps half a century out of date), and no fresh trail to follow. The omega’s scent carries him to the door of the museum and no further. Outside is a maelstrom.

Ahkmenrah sinks into the tide of sight-sound-smell and tries not to lose himself in the push-pull of it. It’s been an age since he’s tracked anyone, and this city is the worst possible training ground for dusting off such a delicate skillset. Was it only last night that he was freed from sensory deprivation? It’s no wonder, then, that he’s overstimulated.

He closes his eyes, narrows his focus to the city’s smells, and then even further to the organic smells. There’s a man—alpha, though faintly so—walking a dog. Betas even pour artificial scents into animal shampoos, Ahkmenrah notes. Poor beast. A couple walks past, and then a few stragglers, all of them blandly beta.

He takes no set course—with no destination in mind, there’s hardly a point—but he finds himself in Central Park, winding aimlessly across the only span of green in this city of metal. He doesn’t remember feeling so vehemently against industrialization when he lived in Cambridge, but then, much has changed in fifty years. He has changed. Ahkmenrah can feel his sharp edges as if they are physical things, as if the ragged corners of his mind are loose teeth to be prodded with his tongue. It helps to move, to feel the bite of the winter air against his exposed skin. The drive of the hunt centers him, too. Tonight feels like a stretch after a long sleep, muscles warming, senses waking up, but his mind is still half a dream.

A man on a bike—beta, middle-aged—passes too close on the path, nearly clipping him. Startled, Ahkmenrah gives a sharp growl. The cyclist is already gone, though, and Ahkmenrah’s warning is lost to the sounds of the city. The encounter jolts him from his haze, eyes refocusing and ears popping as if reaching a great altitude very quickly. He realizes now the dangers of allowing himself to remain so singularly focused, with allowing one sense to eclipse all others (and his higher thought.) His guard is much too low. This is a harsh new landscape, and he is... out of practice. He steadies himself, pulling back from the brink.

Ahkmenrah has never been afforded the luxury of letting his instincts take precedence. A ruler must first be in control of himself if he is to rule a nation, and as a young pharaoh, he had no room for weakness. It turned out to be a useless endeavor in the wake of his brother’s jealousy, but Ahkmenrah was—is—well-trained in the art of self-restraint.

Though, should he find her, this omega may make a liar of him yet.

The memory of her smell, warm and wanting, blooms in his memory, but there is no thread of it to follow here. The alpha in him will canvas the city to find her, will stalk the lamp-lit streets and dark corners like the night bound creature he is. And when he finds her, when his inner beast has chased and pinned and claimed—

Ahkmnerah shakes his head, rueful.

Control is an illusion, anyway.

Liz doesn’t believe you when you say you’re fine.

To be fair, you wouldn’t believe you, either. You look like you have the flu.

(You look like an omega in heat.)

“Honestly, just go to the nurse. The worst they can do is send you back to class.” Liz is crowding your locker. It’s not even third period and you feel like you’re going to puddle into the floor. Your head pounds, and your breasts ache, and your underwear feel slick, and—

“The worst they can do is send me home.” You can’t face your parents if the school calls them.

“Oh, c’mon. Your parents are chill,” Liz says. “I know you’re embarrassed, but—”

“You don’t understand.” Your voice ends on a whine. You see heads turns in your direction through the pre-class bustle, and you’re suddenly aware of how very omega you’re acting. You straighten from your slump, thighs pressed together. If your cheeks weren’t already flushed, you’d blush.

“Hey, hey,” a voice says behind you. “How’s my favorite necrophiliac?”

You don’t even try to stifle the growl that rises in your throat.

“Riley, now is really not the time,” Liz says.

You realize you’re putting on a little drama for the entire hallway, and that your presentation is front and center for everyone to see, but you are just. So. Frustrated.

It’s been four days since your ill-fated museum trip, and far from getting easier, your nights are getting unbearable. Last night you dreamt of running—not toward someone, but away. You remember the excitement of it, the desire to escape warring with your desire to be caught. But when warm hands finally grabbed you and pulled you in, and the weight of another body pressed into you—you woke up. The phantom hot breath on your throat did nothing to assuage the empty clench between your legs or the slick sticking to your thighs.

“Shit, man.” Riley is peering at you. She’s close—much too close.

You bare your teeth.

“Dial it back, friend-o. You’re lookin’ a little... wild.”

“I swear to God, you are not helping.” Liz bows back a little, posturing despite her beta status. You can hear the click of her teeth as they clench. You can also hear the less than covert sniffs of some of your non-beta classmates. The hallways are clearing out, now, and those that linger are dark-eyed and curious.

Riley glances around, her amused look dropping.

“Okay, I’m out. If you start sniffing each others’ asses, I will never recover.”

“I don’t know how you can stand her,” Liz says, toward Riley’s retreating back.

She links an arm through yours, bent on escorting you to your class. A particularly nosey alpha lowerclassman leans in, and she shoulder checks him out of your orbit. You flip him off behind her back, because while you appreciate her willingness to posture for you, you’re not that kind of omega.

(Your hindbrain tells a different story.)

“She’s the most crass, insensitive—ugh.” She makes a little tossing gesture with her free hand.

“She just rides my bus,” you mutter.

“She’s a menace.” Liz stops at the door to your lit class. “Sure you don’t want to go to the nurse?”

“I’ll manage.”

Liz presses her lips together, dissatisfied, but lets you go.

This is your second week on Wuthering Heights, and on any ordinary day you could give two shits about the Lintons and the Earnshaws. Today you are in the negative give-a-shits. In your notebook, you write:

Nature vs. culture Thrushcross Grange as a metal band – discuss Honestly, Cathy and Heathcliff should probably just fuck You think that could solve their differences.

You cross your legs. Something has to give.

(And you don’t mean on the moors of 18th century England.)

“I’m going to Liz’s.”

Your parents look up from the television. There’s nothing on their faces that suggests they suspect anything about your... condition. Your mother looked concerned earlier, when you stumbled in the door after school, fevered and jittery. You begged off taking medicine, and upon touching your mattress, were out until dinner.

You feel less achy now, after a nap and food, though your nerves feel like a piano wire wound too tight.

“Do you need cab money?” your dad asks.

“I’m good.”

“Text us when you get there.”

You give your mom a vague wave of acknowledgement, already halfway out the door.

Dusk is approaching, and you can feel the imminent drop in temperature when a gust of wind cuts right through your sweater. You hadn’t bothered with a jacket, being too keyed up, and having been too overwarm all goddamn week.

You cut the difference between the museum and the park, taking the western path. You honestly don’t know what you’re hoping to find tonight. That is, you know who you’re hoping to find, but it’s been nearly a full week, and lord knows what you’re going to say if you do find your—the—fuck it, your alpha.

Hi, I’m in a really bad place right now. Coffee?

Too needy.

I think I’m in a partially suppressed heat and it’s all your fault. Coffee?

Too blunt.

I’ve been riding three fingers for the past four nights because I can’t get your smell out of my head. Cof—

There’s a sound like rushing water, one you feel more than see, and it's like the shadow of a wave cresting over you. As in your dream, you are caught—quick as a rabbit in a snare—a body pressed to your back, solid and unyielding, and radiating heat as surely as you. You freeze, lungs stuttering. A hand presses low on one hip, and the other rests just over your clavicle, fingers grazing your pulse. But it’s the scent that turns your knees to water, that nearly cramps your abdomen as you clench at the thought of—

Alpha.

“I apologize for my forwardness, but I have read poetry in languages both dead and new, heard songs meant to grace the ears of gods, and still no artist's verse could supply me with words for the way your scent has haunted me."

If you were having trouble breathing before, your lungs have all but collapsed from the weight of his words.

“I will not pretend that I do not desire you—” Here he presses forward just so, and oh, you can’t restrain yourself from rocking back a little, where he is hot and hard against you; and now he is faltering, his breathing warm and uneven in your ear. "--But there is so much more I could offer."

“The hunt is mine, but the choice is yours.” There’s the tiniest flash of teeth on the curve of your ear, and the sound you make is—inhuman. “I suggest, though, that you choose... quickly.”

You don’t know whether he means to imply that his own restraint is waning, or only that you’re likely to draw a crowd. Both seem equally likely.

“What—” You shiver into him, the falling temperature and your own arousal making you waver like a leaf held to a flame. “What’s your name?” You can’t even see his face, held as you are to his front. But his voice—gods, if the very smell of him sent you into heat, his voice could probably fuck you against a wall by itself.

A laugh, low and promising. You feel it all the way down your spine.

“Forgive me,” he says. “I am Ahkmenrah. My titles are—unnecessary.” His voice is clipped on the last as you rock back on your heels against him. He presses his nose to your temple and inhales.

“If I say yes—” And you can laugh later at the “if.” Your prized control is gone, likely sweat out like a poison from the inferno at your core. “—what happens?”

“Then I suggest you run, because when I catch you again, neither man nor god could coerce me into releasing you.”

Oh.

Oh, well then.

“Please.” It’s less a word than a keen.

His fingers curl briefly into the soft flesh at the junction of your hips, and you twitch, oversensitive. But then his hands are gone, and the heat at your back disappears. You don’t have time to voice your dismay because his voice is still at your ear, accent dipping into a growl.

“Run.”