The Mating Game

Tess

"Well, the good news is…you're not dying."

I stared at the ER physician—Dr. Carter, she'd said her name was. She offered me a polite smile, looking up from the clipboard in her hands. I assumed it held the results from the blood draw earlier.

"Do you know what's wrong with me?" I wrung my hands together. "Is it some sort of weird twenty-four-hour bug?"

It seemed unlikely given the severity of the symptoms I'd endured over the last few hours, but I supposed it was still possible.

Dr. Carter glanced down at her clipboard again, flipping a page. "I wanted to ask a few follow-up questions, if that's okay?"

"Sure," I answered tightly. I wished she would just give me a clue as to what was happening. "That's fine."

"Your parents… You listed them both as betas?"

I nodded. "That's right."

"And your siblings?"

"Also betas. We all are."

She pressed her lips together briefly. "Do you have any family history of crossbreeding with shifters?"

"Excuse me?"

"Sorry." She gave me another polite smile. "It's relevant."

I thought hard, mentally ticking through my family tree as far back as I could recall. "I think…" I frowned, trying to remember. "I think my great-grandmother was a shifter, actually. I never met her, though. She died before I was born."

"Hmm."

I watched as she scanned her notes again, every passing second making my anxiety climb higher.

Twenty-four hours ago, I had been perfectly healthy and packing for my trip to Denver, excited about a new job.

Travel was nothing new to me. My contracting business, Rustic Renovations, took me all over the country, but this was the first time I'd had to get off a plane and take an Uber straight to the nearest emergency room.

It had started with cramps—terrible, terrible cramps—followed by a fever, cold sweats, and lots of nausea. By the time the plane landed, it was clear the other passengers were worried I was carrying some sort of plague, given my awful appearance.

Even now, I could feel my chestnut bangs clinging to my forehead with sweat. It was only the IV in my arm, feeding me occasional doses of high-powered nausea meds, that kept me from hurling all over the speckled white tile of the little room.

"Well," Dr. Carter started carefully. "Your blood tests yielded an abnormal spike in your hormone levels. Your progesterone, estrogen, and cortisol levels are all three times what they should be. Your endocrine system is having a hard time processing the influx. That's what's causing all the unfortunate symptoms you're experiencing."

"I don't understand. Why would my hormones be out of whack all of a sudden? Is it like menopause? I'm only twenty-eight!"

"Nothing like that. It's… Well." She sighed, pulling the clipboard to her stomach and holding it against her white coat as she offered me a sympathetic look. "This might come as a shock, Ms. Covington, but…"

I leaned in, shifting to the edge of the hospital bed. I instinctively reached behind to make sure my panties weren't flashing anyone through the gap in the back of my paper gown. "What? What is it?"

"What you're experiencing isn't entirely out of the ordinary. In fact, it's something most shifters experience at the end of puberty."

I blinked. "But… I'm a beta. Betas can't shift."

"Yes, well. It's not entirely unheard-of for a recessive gene to present itself later in life."

"That's…" I ran my fingers through my hair, no doubt making my bangs stick straight up, but I couldn't focus on that right now. "That's impossible."

"Not impossible, I'm afraid," Dr. Carter said gently. "Just unlikely."

I tried to process what she was saying, but it sounded faraway, like she was speaking to someone else. There was no way I could suddenly be—

I forced a swallow. "So, what? Am I going to suddenly sprout ears and a tail?"

"No, no." Dr. Carter assured me with a laugh as she reached to tuck a strand of honey-blonde hair behind her ear. "Nothing so sudden as that. You will, however, feel the urge to shift in the near future. I have all sorts of pamphlets I can give you that are chock-full of information about what your body is going through. Although, I've never seen a case with such a late presentation as yours… so I can't guarantee your experiences will be exactly the same."

"I just… don't see how this could happen."

"It's basically a little hiccup in your genes," she said with a shrug. "It will be an adjustment, but I can promise you your life won't be turned upside down entirely."

Easy for her to say.

"Any other surprises I have to look forward to?" I knew I sounded petulant, but I thought it was allowed after the day I'd had. "Am I going to start craving more red meat and sniffing strangers?"

Her smile tightened slightly, and I realized I was being slightly offensive.

"Sorry," I amended quietly. "This is just a lot."

"I get it," she said. "It's funny, my mate eats his steaks practically rare. I'm always teasing him about it. I can tell you I've never had any special feelings about red meat, and as for sniffing strangers… you will start to experience a sharpened sense of smell. Every shifter has a particular scent, and unless they elect to use suppressants—which is usually only the case in certain professions or environments—you are going to pick up on those. It might cause headaches at first, but with time you will become more acclimated to the sensation."

"Great," I mumbled dejectedly. "Just great."

"If I'm being candid," Dr. Carter went on, "I have other suspicions about your lab results."

I stifled a groan. What else could possibly be going on with my body? "What?"

"It's only…" She held out her chart, indicating a sloping graph that made no sense to me. "Your particular levels of these hormones are indicative of a secondary designation."

"A secondary designation?"

"It's rare—incredibly rare, even—but then again, so is your situation as a whole. So it wouldn't be all that surprising at this point."

"I'm not following."

"I think you might be an omega, Ms. Covington."

I blinked dumbly again. "What?"

"Like I said, it's very rare, and in this day and age… it really isn't all that different from being a shifter."

"I know what an omega is," I said absently. "I have a friend who—" I swallowed thickly. "How can you be so sure?"

"Well," she laughed. "I am one, for starters."

Fuck. Foot in mouth. Again. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I am not usually this much of an asshole."

"It's fine. Really. I can't imagine what it must be like to face this so suddenly."

"If you're an omega as well, can you tell me what I can expect? If that's the case?"

I could always ask my friend Ada, but I hadn't even figured out how I was going to tell her, or anyone else for that matter.

"Like I said, it really isn't all that different in most cases. If you start googling, you're likely to go down some undesirable Reddit rabbit holes that are mostly nonsense, but you can just ignore those. All it means is that your heats might be a little more frequent. Possibly more intense as well."

"My heats?"

Oh God. That absolutely hadn't crossed my mind yet.

"Yes," Dr. Carter explained calmly. "Usually, a shifter going through puberty will experience less intense heats—we call them 'juvenile heats,' to be exact—meaning they won't last the full ovulation cycle and won't have the same level of, ah, need."

"Need?"

"Need to, um… copulate."

"Oh fuck," I groaned.

Dr. Carter gave me a small smile. "Precisely."

I might have laughed if my entire world weren't tilting on its axis.

"So… what do I do in the meantime?"

She considered this for a moment. "I'm going to prescribe you some hormone regulators, but the dose will be very mild. Just enough to alleviate some of your symptoms. We don't want to interrupt your body's cycle of change, after all. I can also get you something for the nausea and cramps. Other than that… I would strongly suggest that you spend the next few weeks or so at home if at all possible. I can't predict exactly what other symptoms you might experience while your body adjusts to the new hormone levels, and being around other shifters might make things more uncomfortable. Shifting isn't permitted inside city limits, but I can get you a doctor's note explaining your condition in case there are any unplanned incidents. Otherwise, there are several nice heat clinics on the edge of the city, where you would be able to shift comfortably. Normally, you would need to schedule weeks in advance, but again, I can get you a doctor's note explaining your special circumstances."

My mind whirled. Unplanned shifting? Heat clinics?

"I can't hole up for weeks," I argued. "I'm here for a job."

"Any chance you could work remotely?"

"I'm a contractor. I do renovation for cabins and lodges and such."

"Ah. That's a pickle."

"It is," I remarked dryly.

"Well, I obviously can't force you either way," Dr. Carter said. "I can only suggest. But I would keep a close eye on your body. You don't want to overexert yourself."

"But the meds should help, right?"

"A little," she said. "As I said, we don't want to medicate you so much that your body can't process the change it's going through. This is a natural thing. For the most part, we just have to let it run its course."

Perfect, I thought. Just perfect.

"Okay," I said with a nod. "Okay. This is fine. I guess… if you could get me those prescriptions you mentioned, I can deal with the rest."

"If you have any more trouble, don't hesitate to come back in, okay?"

"Sure," I answered, knowing that was unlikely. The jobsite was almost two hours away. I wouldn't have time to pack up and head out every time I got a cramp. "Of course."