Chapter Text
He had bought every brand he could find.
Twelve tests. Different companies, different packaging, some imported, one he didn't even recognise the language on. He had laid them out across the bathroom floor like evidence. Like if he collected enough data points the answer might change.
It hadn't changed.
Eleven tests were scattered across the tiles around him, all of them saying the same thing. He was sitting with his back against the wall, legs crossed, the last one was still in his hand. He had been holding it for twenty minutes without turning it over.
These were pregnancy tests. He had stood in the pharmacy at 2am and bought Omega tests because there was no such thing as an Alpha pregnancy test. There had never needed to be. He had stood in that aisle for a long time before he could make himself reach for them.
He turned it over. Positive.
He stared at it. His mind did what it always did under pressure —looked for the error, found the flaw in the logic. There was no flaw. There was no error. The test was not designed for his biology and it had returned a positive result anyway because his biology had apparently stopped being what it was supposed to be, had apparently decided sometime in the last seven weeks to do something that was not possible, that had never been documented, that every piece of medical literature he had ever encountered would have called impossible.
He was Alpha. He had presented Alpha at sixteen. He had lived Alpha for thirty two years. His body had never done this before what it had done now.
He set the test down carefully on the tile beside the others. The fluorescent light hummed. Outside the window Seoul was moving like any other day. The city was breathing, buzzing indifferent to the fact that Kwon Taekjoo was sitting on a cold bathroom floor surrounded by twelve pregnancy tests that had all, without exception, told him something impossible.
His stomach lurched with the chemical smell of cleaner his mom had always used— lemon and bleach. It was nostalgic but now it was making his insides twist.
He was a man who had operated in active war zones. He had been shot twice, stabbed once. Cover blown in four different countries and walked out of all of them. He had sat across tables from men who wanted him dead. He had smiled, eaten their food, gathered their secrets and left. It had never once happened that he didn't know what to do next until now.
He picked up his phone. Searched ‘Alpha pregnancy’ on Naver**. He immediately wished he hadn't. There were no results or any precedent of it. He threw it across the bathroom, listened to it clatter against the tile and fall.
Alphas don't do this. The thought surfaced automatically.This isn't—this can't be.
Twelve tests. Twelve identical mocking answers.
His jaw tightened.. Something shifted inside his chest. It was a sensation so weird he had no word for it. Something between disgust, nausea and rage. For one second, he pressed his palm against his abdomen, feeling the terrifying reality Zhenya had left behind. Then, he yanked his hand away, fisting it at his side as if the contact had physically burned his skin.
He closed his eyes and sighed. There was a knock on the door. It was his mother. Then there was silence. She waited patiently but no response came.
“Taekjoo. Is everything ok in there?” His mother's careful but worried voice came from the other side of the door.Taekjoo knew that voice very well.It was the voice she only used when she already knew something was wrong but was giving him the dignity of not saying so.
“Uhh.” He was caught off guard, lost in thoughts.”yes, mom”
"I made tea. It helps with nausea. You want some?"
"Yes," he forced his voice back into the rhythm of normalcy. "I'll be out in a minute,mom."
Another wave of nausea rose inside him.
He heard her footsteps retreat down the hall. The same slow, unhurried footsteps that he could recognize anywhere.
He gathered all the tests from the floor, dumped them along with their packaging in the shopping bag before throwing them in the dustbin.
He took a deep exhausted breath. His shoulders were slumped with the weight of new discovery. He checked his reflection in the mirror, schooled his expression back to normal.
Then he opened the door and went to have tea with his mother like nothing was wrong.