Chapter 1: Yoonwoo’s Perspective I

It felt as though he were awaiting a death sentence.

Yoonwoo closed his eyes tightly, his hands clasped together, and finished his prayer. Then, with a cautious squint, he glanced at the small stick lying before him.

“…”

However, his fervent prayers had, predictably, been in vain. It was hardly a surprise, given he had already checked multiple times with different sticks. Still, hoping against hope, he had tried one more time, only to be met with the same result as all the previous tests.

“What am I going to do…?”

A groan escaped him, a lament for which he knew no clear recipient.

Yoonwoo collapsed onto the floor, squatting. He buried his face in his hands, barely suppressing a scream that threatened to tear from his lips. Even after receiving what felt like a death sentence from the pregnancy test, he couldn’t afford to cry out. This was the communal restroom outside the department lounge. If he made a sound, and anyone he knew came rushing in, the situation would spiral irrevocably out of control.

“Ah, am I truly insane? What am I going to do now?!”

He groaned, tearing at his short hair. He longed to blame someone else, yet there was no one to fault. Ultimately, the accusations Yoonwoo hurled returned to himself. On that fateful day, it was Yoonwoo who had eagerly accepted and downed the bomb shots his seniors mixed for him. It was Yoonwoo who, swaying drunkenly as he tried to stand, leaned heavily against the tall junior who offered support. And what’s more…

“Why did you follow him? Why did you follow him, I ask?!”

Even when that tall, broad-shouldered junior asked, ‘Senior, where do you live?’ Yoonwoo had mumbled incoherently, unable to give a proper answer. Then, when the junior suggested, ‘Then let’s just go to my place for now,’ it was Yoonwoo who had readily followed him. This meant that the situation reaching this point was entirely Yoonwoo’s fault.

“This is truly absurd. No, it’s impossible.”

However, Yoonwoo also had his excuses.

Firstly, on that day, Yoonwoo, exasperated by a graduating senior who insisted he set an example at the freshman welcoming party and kept plying him with drinks, had defiantly poured alcohol into his mouth, determined to see who would win. In the end, he had indeed won that meaningless battle.

Secondly, unable to overcome the effects of the alcohol, his tongue had become completely twisted, preventing him from answering when the tall, broad-shouldered, and handsome junior supported him and asked for his address.

Thirdly, upon arriving at the junior’s single-occupancy officetel, the junior, whose cheeks were flushed even more than Yoonwoo’s alcohol-soaked brain, suddenly began gasping for breath and collapsed. It seemed it had been a rut…

And fourthly, and this was his most crucial excuse, Yoonwoo was…

“How could *I* get pregnant? It was just one time, one night! What kind of Beta gets pregnant from a one-night stand?!”

A Beta, and a male Beta at that.

The world was comprised of Alphas, Omegas, and Betas. Alphas paired with Omegas, and male Betas with female Betas. Omegas and female Betas were capable of pregnancy, but Alphas and male Betas were not.

Or so Yoonwoo had always understood. Until just a few days ago, that is.

Some time had passed since that unwitting one-night encounter with the tall, broad-shouldered, handsome junior. Yoonwoo had barely managed to purge the shocking incident from his mind. Now, he could even face the junior’s attractive features without needlessly blushing and fleeing.

But just as his mind found calm, his body began to rebel.

He had attributed his persistent nausea and retching to a recurrence of gastritis, but then he began to detect Alpha pheromones – a sensation he hadn’t even known existed. It wasn’t just that he felt them; they were utterly repulsive. His entire body fiercely rejected the Alpha pheromones, causing such severe side effects that for a time, he couldn’t even approach anyone he suspected of being an Alpha.

“Hyung. Can a Beta actually sense Alpha pheromones?”

Yoonwoo, thoroughly alarmed, cautiously asked his older brother, Seowoo. As an Omega married to an Alpha with a child, his brother would undoubtedly possess more knowledge about secondary genders than Yoonwoo.

However, Seowoo, who was cradling his one-year-old nephew and planting kisses on his chubby cheeks, replied indifferently without even looking at Yoonwoo.

“Didn’t you have s*x education? How could a Beta sense pheromones?”

His voice held no trace of interest.

‘Of course, that’s right,’ Yoonwoo tried to reassure himself, ‘It must not have been pheromones, but rather a strong perfume or shampoo scent.’

“Oh, but I heard that if a Beta gets pregnant with an Alpha’s child, they can start sensing pheromones.”

“What? Pregnant?”

Seowoo had uttered something completely unexpected. Yoonwoo had never heard such a thing before. Dumbfounded, he whipped his head around to face Seowoo.

“I’ve never heard that before. So, all pregnant female Betas can sense pheromones?”

“No, not in that case. I mean, between an Alpha and a Beta. When… a male Beta gets pregnant.”

“Huh?”

It was an unexpected answer. Yoonwoo simply blinked, staring intently at Seowoo, who raised an eyebrow.

“You didn’t know? Sometimes, cases of male Betas getting pregnant appear on TV. If a male Beta encounters a strong, dominant Alpha, they can sometimes become pregnant. In such instances, their hormones temporarily shift, similar to an Omega’s, allowing them to sense pheromones.”

“…Huh??”

“What’s with that expression? Why do you look like you’ve never heard this before? Did you fall asleep during s*x ed?”

“I never learned anything like that?! Wh-What do you mean, a male Beta can get pregnant? Don’t lie!”

“Who said *you* were pregnant? Why are you having a fit?”

Seowoo clicked his tongue, an incredulous look on his face. Yoonwoo’s face went utterly pale. A male Beta could get pregnant? He might have dozed off during s*x education, but he never imagined such a crucial explanation would pass him by in that brief moment. Even less did he imagine that he might become the very subject of that significant, overlooked phenomenon.

The chiseled features of the handsome junior he had spent that night with flashed before his eyes. He recalled the persistent nausea, and the repulsive scent of Alpha pheromones he had sporadically detected everywhere. So, to summarize the situation…

“So, a male Beta *can* get pregnant?”

“Well, theoretically, yes, but it’s such a rare occurrence that it only appears on TV as a major event, so in reality, it’s almost unheard of. More often than not, it turns out they weren’t Betas at all, but rather latent recessive Omegas who manifested late. Recessive Omegas are almost indistinguishable from Betas, after all. There are quite a few cases where people live their lives as Betas, unaware of their manifestation, and only find out later.”

“Oh… really? What? Why are you talking about something so seriously when there’s no possibility of it happening?”

“Hey, you asked me!”

Seowoo grumbled, complaining that Yoonwoo was spouting nonsense after asking the question himself.

Only then did a small sense of relief wash over him. Yoonwoo didn’t believe he would be that rare case of a male Beta who, against such improbable odds, became pregnant. Indeed, the repulsive scents of Alphas he had sporadically detected everywhere must have simply been body odors.

Just as Yoonwoo exhaled a long sigh, releasing his tension, Seowoo, as if remembering something, tilted his head and added.

“Actually, no, now that I think about it, those cases are more common than people realize, but they don’t show up well in statistics, which is why people don’t know about them.”

“Huh? Why don’t they show up in statistics?”

Yoonwoo asked, his face etched with bewilderment. Seowoo stretched out his arm and lifted his nephew high. The baby, dangling in the air, gurgled, kicking his plump legs.

“It’s incredibly dangerous. Most of them end in miscarriage, you know? And even if they sometimes make it to full term, the birth is often so strenuous that the birthing parent dies.”

“What?! Why are you telling me this only now?!”

Yoonwoo’s face turned utterly ashen. As he leaped to his feet and cried out, Seowoo fixed him with a stern gaze.

“Hey! Did you leave something in my care? Why are you shouting?”

Seowoo’s reprimand didn’t even register in his ears. Yoonwoo’s vision spun.