Chapter Text
Packs are completely unnecessary in modern society. We aren't hunting food, we aren't defending territory, we aren't protecting pups or stealing Omegas from other packs.
Nowadays, people go to school, they get jobs, they live with their parents until they can afford independence and with some luck they find a life partner, have kids and the cycle repeats.
No one actually needs a pack. But those who have one can't believe how anyone could live without it.
No one needs it, and it has become taboo to have it, but we all still want it. Gentleman clubs, fraternities, community. We crave it still. People have been faking pack and calling it something else for generations. Because once you have it, you forget how to live without it.
Packs need an alpha, a born leader, but just one. Not the strongest member, not anymore, because we aren't fighting anyone, so why should we value strength? No, he's the most dominant, the smartest, the most successful. He can be younger than other members in his pack, shorter, thinner, but he is the alpha.
The alpha needs a beta, a right hand man, balance, neutrality, soft guidance, a replacement should the alpha ever be out of reach when the pack needs him.
A pack is made of mostly deltas, not quite a hive mind but close. They crave community the most, they need guidance the most. With no Delta, there is simply no pack, no one to follow the alpha's lead, no one to need the Beta's care. The sheer number of Deltas provides the pack with its communal energy—the more you can convince to join, the more satisfied and cohesive the unit becomes.
A pack doesn't actually need an Omega, not in modern times. Because the nurturing, motherly role Omegas are believed to have is filled by a good Beta. A queen to the Alpha's king, attentive and caring. Omegas are just Betas with the ability to conceive and a scent that disrupts all harmony, but a pack doesn't need to conceive, not now. Because they aren't confined to their clearing in the forest, they don't need to ensure survival by producing offspring.
Members date outside of the pack, they find love and they mate and they have babies of their own. The pack doesn't need a community Omega for them all to share, to use and abuse like the old times, before the ethics and the protection laws.
So most modern packs prefer not to have one, spare themselves the hassle of dealing with the heat of a member who isn't actively mating with the rest of them. Omegas aren't shunned or discriminated against in society: they can study, the can work, they can denounce any injustice against them.
But in a pack? Nothing but an inconvenience.
So when Lee Donghyuck presented as an Omega at age 15, the dream of joining his older sister’s pack evaporated.
He had known her friends his whole life, had been sure he'd be a Delta and become a part of them, he had chosen his pack name already!
But no. Because how awkward would it be? For the older brothers and sisters who practically raised him, to be subjected to the pheromones of his heat every two months, wanting, lusting, but respectfully suffering. He wouldn't do that to them, they wouldn't do that to him. So when Dongsoon packed her bags for college, Donghyuck didn't just lose his sister; he lost his future pack. The plan to move to the city with them evaporated, leaving him behind in the silence of a house that suddenly felt too big.
He stayed in his small town, finished school, got a job, and lived with his parents until he could afford independence. He still lives with his parents—present tense—because independence is expensive and low skill jobs don't pay much.
He works in one of the nice hotels in town—a port town, fairly touristic. He polishes the lobby windows, the scent of antiseptic cutting against his own muted pheromones, and watches the well-dressed travelers—betas and alphas with their matching packs—come and go. The smooth, easy way they speak to each other, the subtle, possessive touch of a packmate, is a fresh slice of envy every morning.
There's resentment at his parents for only sending their first child to college—but that's on the economy, he can't blame them. At his sister's friends for not taking him along. At his own biology for betraying him like this.
He watches, with envy and resentment and longing and a shred of hope that one day a pack will want him.
Because they aren't that common anymore and completely unnecessary… but we want them.