Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Coming to Vaugarde had turned to be the best decision you had ever made.

Partially because it allowed you to see and get to know the culture that should have been yours by birthright, robbed from you by your dam who left your sire to raise you by himself without a thought to either of you.

You grew up with eyes watching you with either pity or with contempt, because you were a fledgling without a proper flock, your only flock bond being your sire. Pitiable because of your lack of social flock bonds. Disgraceful, because you were on some level other, your trills and whistles just a bit lower pitched, and because of your sire.
Your sire, who had to bear the dishonor of siring someone who had not been accepted by the whole flock, who had not wanted fledglings, and the resulting exile from most of his flocks, only left with the strained bonds of his work-flock.

Your sire, who chose to raise you properly as a sire should, rather than hiding your existence and abandoning you as your dam had.

As much as you have grown to resent your absent dam, so have you come to respect your sire for not taking the easy way out. For raising you properly and to the best of his ability, without a proper flock to lean on.

At least your designation had been a small stroke of luck, mirroring your sire’s Alpha nature.
You shudder to think what it would have been like, had you been a Beta, or worse, an Omega, and had to learn how to deal with your baser instincts all on your own, or just about. Instead, you had your sire to show you the ropes, teach you to control your squawks, trills and growls in polite company and to tussle with you when seasonals had you itching for a fight, and to scent you after you had burned the energy out. Whistling love long and low, more than he usually did.

You made yourself a space there still, regardless of the difficulty. Clawed it out with stubborn pride and raw determination alone, refused to let any of the other Alphas think they were better than you simply for the circumstances of your birth. Found allies and perhaps even a few friends in ventures that certainly weren’t exactly above the board in Ka Bue.

But never anything resembling an actual flock proper.

It had been a good life, living there, even though the seasonals had been miserable to deal with, especially after your sire’s passing.

But oh, the things you had gained since making that somewhat impulsive decision to travel to Vaugarde.

And by that really you mean the people, the small flock, you had found yourself surrounded with.

When you’d found out that the only ones really trying to do anything to save Vaugarde had been a petite little Omega who smelled like plums and fresh leaves, supposedly blessed by the Change God the Vaugardians so believed in, and the singular Beta Defender smelling of hard work and newly laundered clothes, an utterly contradictory mix of scents that somehow just worked for him, who had refused to leave her to face this burden alone, you had momentarily wanted to rip every single one of Vaugarde’s Alphas a new one, only barely holding in the outraged squawk. For all the boasting and the posturing that was just as prevalent here as it had been Ka Bue, simply a bit more open, and noisy, than the more subtle variant you were used to, when it came to a crisis such as this, not a single one of them had had the dignity and integrity to take a stand.

As an Alpha you were absolutely appalled.

And while the fact you might have not made it out of the country before the borders closed entirely might have been a small factor in the decision, ultimately you could not in good conscience leave them to face the task by themselves.

Gems alive, neither of them had even a decade of adulthood under their belts!

The thought of leaving them to it without offering your crafts and experience to help them would have given you at least one stress induced ulcer if you did nothing.

Thankfully, they were more than happy to accept the offer.

You were surprised by how easy it was to slide into traveling with them. Even if the fact they accepted the help wasn’t a surprise – they needed all the help they could get, clearly – you were surprised by the lack of wariness from them towards a vagrant Alpha such as yourself. You had expected there to be at least a little friction with your addition turning their group from a pair into a trio. Obviously, there wasn’t any kind of Alpha posturing to be had or a pecking order to be sorted out since neither of them were Alphas, but back in Ka Bue the idea of a vagrant Alpha suddenly joining a group comprised solely of Omegas and/or Betas without any sort of judging period for worthiness and lack of ill intentions would have been sheer insanity.

But perhaps, that was the difference in cultures.

Vaugardians were open, welcoming people. They shared their homes, their unique identities so openly and earnestly and accepted others in turn. They focused so much on who you were now, that they considered asking after who you had been an immense faux pass. They didn’t hesitate to express themselves with A- type growls, groans and howls, B- type barks, croons and rumbles or even with the higher pitched O- type hums, yips and soft pants the way Ka Bue taught its young to stifle most in polite company.

You don’t think you could ever consider yourself truly one of the Vaugardians because of it, you were far too skeptical and reserved to ever truly quite fit in with them in that regard.

And then after a couple of months of traveling with them, Siffrin joined your party in the dramatic flourish of defeating a particularly strong Sadness you three had been struggling with.

Siffrin who didn’t smell like anything at all. Siffrin who never used their secondary voice.

The only smells you could ever catch lingering on them were smells that stuck to him from maintaining his weapons and tools. If you closed your eyes, you couldn’t have detected their presence by your nose they way you could scent Mirabelle or Isabeau coming your way. And no matter how distressed or happy they were not a single noise that wasn’t a spoken word or a primary vocal cursory hum ever escaped them.

It unnerved you.

Scent blockers and suppressants certainly existed, the same way hormonal ones existed.

That is to say, they existed to alleviate excess, make seasonals more bearable, and help fledglings still learning to control their output so as not to upset or bother others. You weren’t supposed to be able to completely erase them with them.

How much beyond what was regulated did Siffrin have to take to manage that?

And why did they want to hide their designation so badly? Stifling their secondary voice worse than even the crotchiest of hardline traditionalist in Ka Bue.

You asked about their designation in the name of smoother integration to your group when it became clear he would join you on the quest to defeat the King.

Without missing a beat, they told you they were a Beta and said they did their best to block out the scent because the smell was a bit awkward around here, describing their natural scent as distinctly ‘crabby’. No mention of why they didn’t use their secondary voice.

You didn’t have any concrete evidence to prove it so you said nothing of it, but you didn’t believe them for a second.
The answer was too rehearsed. Their smile just a bit too contrite to be believable.

Despite your reservations you kept mostly to yourself, they slowly integrated into the group. Eager to please and the moment they learned Isabeau liked puns it’s like they turned it into half their personality.

Their memory was horrendous, which you suspected was from the obvious overuse of suppressants.

You hated that you couldn’t help but be a little endeared by how scatter brained they could be.

At some point after having seen them flinch from even a brief touch enough times you began to suspect they were running from someone. An abusive former flockmate or something to that degree.

But before you got even close to figuring out just what their deal was, Boniface dropped into the care of the slowly forming flock.

Seeing Siffrin suddenly bolt downwind from you had been startling, but the sheer panic in the first and only call for help you heard from them for Mirabelle had sent all of your running.

And that’s how you found your flocks little fledgling, Boniface.

They had stunk of fear, desperation and exhaustion, utterly burying their normal faint scent of sea salt with the hint of milk all fledglings have until they present.

Initially the plan had been to leave them with someone in the nearest village, but that proved impossible, because Boniface made it very vocally clear with the simple fledgling whines of ‘I’m scared, scared, please love, love and keep me’ that they had no intention of being left behind, having seemingly attached themselves to your pack at a speed that concerned you.
And because in your skepticism you couldn’t find anyone who seemed trustworthy enough to leave a terrified fledgling with in circumstances such as this.

And thus, your flock found itself with a fledgling to care for.

You’re not quite sure when exactly did you begin to think all of them as flock proper.

You think it might have been when Siffrin lost their eye to protect Boniface.

Flock built in a trial by fire.

You think you would have come to consider them flock eventually anyway, but having to work so closely together with them in the aftermath, taking turns looking after Siffrin, finding yourself relaxing your usual boundaries, finding yourself quietly singing ‘you’re safe, safe, we have you dear one, care for you, care for you all’, because they didn’t seem to matter quite as much at the time, certainly sped the process along.

You could never bring yourself to voice it in words though. But you did begin to occasionally briefly scent them after that, and even more rarely trill softly in response to their calls.

All except Siffrin who flinched from touch, who still would not call to any of you, even just to respond.

You regret it now, you regret not saying anything, not doing something, finding some way to scent them. You could have asked to scent the eyepatch Isabeau made for them in the aftermath, it would have been something at least, something to show them how much you had come to care for them.

The fact it took your flockmate getting stuck in a time loop because they were so afraid of losing you after your journey to defeat the King was over to voice it pains you. That it took so long for you to put it together, despite having had a strong clue in their natural scent never coming through even though you strictly monitored their suppressant consumption when they were recovering from losing their eye, that he wasn’t overusing suppressant at all. Despite having recognized something off in the single call of help when they found Boniface.

He had simply never presented and so his scent had been so faint, it got suppressed entirely. He had never truly understood any of your calls because the lack of presentation had never let the correct vocal and hearing organs be flooded with the right hormones to fully develop.

You won’t deny letting out one of the shrillest call-to-hiss combinations you’ve ever made when you found out. You had to immediately clarify that you weren’t mad at them but simply outraged on their behalf that they had grown up without feeling truly safe for so long they had been locked into a permanent state of such excess stress.

It took you everything in you to leave aggressively preening and scenting them until they had recovered from the craft exhaustion.

You had thought your childhood to have been unfortunate, and to realize they had had it even worse at as far as they remembered…

Even if you’re still not overly fond of touch, after that realization you wouldn’t have been able to leave it alone if you tried, when you could do something about it.

When after months of routinely scenting and preening them, either one on one or as a group, Siffrin finally presented as an Omega, smelling of confectionary, dandelions and ozone, you took pride keeping guard while Mirabelle and Isabeau took turns easing them through their first heat. And if you reached in their nest to run your fingers through their hair and to scent them and let them scent you while trilling endless love for them when Isabeau took over to let you take a break then that was no-one’s business but your own.

They may be halfway feral on the best of days still, but really it just means when people eye one of you for a bit too long, you don’t actually usually need to intervene, or if you do, it’s to keep Siffrin from striking to kill.

Not that they mean to, they’ve simply grown so strong they don’t know their own strength anymore.

The humiliated Betas and Alpha’s can try to ridicule you all they want; you’re far past the age of needing to posture to everyone to prove your status and strength as an Alpha.

Besides watching their egos taken down a notch or two by being overpowered by an Omega such as Siffrin, is both hilarious and endlessly satisfying.

That said, Expressions help them if they ever actually hurt any of your flock.

Because with them you have finally found a home and somewhere to belong.

They are yours, the same way you are theirs.

And you won’t let anyone take them from you.

Chapter Text

Coming to Vaugarde had turned to be the best decision you had ever made.

Partially because it allowed you to see and get to know the culture that should have been yours by birthright, robbed from you by your dam who left your sire to raise you by himself without a thought to either of you.

You grew up with eyes watching you with either pity or with contempt, because you were a fledgling without a proper flock, your only flock bond being your sire. Pitiable because of your lack of social flock bonds. Disgraceful, because you were on some level other, your trills and whistles just a bit lower pitched, and because of your sire.
Your sire, who had to bear the dishonor of siring someone who had not been accepted by the whole flock, who had not wanted fledglings, and the resulting exile from most of his flocks, only left with the strained bonds of his work-flock.

Your sire, who chose to raise you properly as a sire should, rather than hiding your existence and abandoning you as your dam had.

As much as you have grown to resent your absent dam, so have you come to respect your sire for not taking the easy way out. For raising you properly and to the best of his ability, without a proper flock to lean on.

You still remember him keeping guard, sitting just outside your nest when your seasonals began. Day in, day out, only leaving for a handful of minutes at time when he absolutely had to, until your presenting seasonal was over. Reaching in to run his fingers through your hair and scenting you to soothe you, giving you more affection than you ever had at any other time while in Ka Bue, your instincts crying out for non-existent flockmates, your stomach cramping and keeping you miserable. Remember him whistling love long and low, and a few possessive clicks because you were his, his to look after, his to raise.

You made yourself a space there still, regardless of the difficulty. Clawed it out with stubborn pride and raw determination alone, refused to let any of the other Omegas think they were better than you simply for the circumstances of your birth. Found allies and perhaps even a few friends in ventures that certainly weren’t exactly above the board in Ka Bue.

But never anything resembling an actual flock proper.

It had been a good life, living there, even though the seasonals had been miserable to deal with, especially after your sire’s passing.

But oh, the things you had gained since making that somewhat impulsive decision to travel to Vaugarde.

And by that really you mean the people, the small flock, you had found yourself surrounded with.

When you’d found out that the only ones really trying to do anything to save Vaugarde had been two Omegas, one petite smelling of plums and fresh leaves, supposedly blessed by the Change God the Vaugardians so believed in, and a singular Defender smelling of hard work and newly laundered clothes, an utterly contradictory mix of scents that somehow just worked for him, who had refused to leave her to face this burden alone, you had momentarily wanted to rip every single one of Vaugarde’s Alphas a new one, only barely holding in the outraged squawk. For all the boasting and the posturing that was just as prevalent here as it had been Ka Bue, simply a bit more open, and noisy, than the more subtle variant you were used to, when it came to a crisis such as this, not a single one of them had had the dignity and integrity to take a stand.

As an Omega you were disgusted.

And while the fact you might have not made it out of the country before the borders closed entirely might have been a small factor in the decision, ultimately you could not in good conscience leave them to face the task by themselves.

Gems alive, neither of them had even a decade of adulthood under their belts!

The thought of leaving them to it without offering your crafts and experience to help them would have given you at least one stress induced ulcer if you did nothing.

Thankfully, they were more than happy to accept the offer.

Going from traveling by yourself, migrating from city to city, town to town, to traveling with people was a bit of an adjustment. You didn’t mind traveling with them, but you certainly needed your own space. You had never felt truly comfortable having anyone in your nest even briefly, besides your sire when you were still a fledgling, and as a chick you had rested in his.

Isabeau and Mirabelle handled it with grace that surprised you, even if it perhaps it shouldn’t have.

In inn’s you arranged for a room of your own to nest in while your fellow Omegas shared a different one between themselves. When you had to camp out you had a tent to yourself and neither them ever so much as peeked inside without permission.

And if you accidentally snapped at either of them with a growl or squawk of ‘mine, go away’ for some perceived encroachment into your space it wasn’t anything a quick apology and clarification didn’t fix.

But perhaps, that was the difference in cultures.

Vaugardians were open, welcoming people. They shared their homes, their unique identities so openly and earnestly and accepted others in turn. They focused so much on who you were now, that they considered asking after who you had been an immense faux pass. They didn’t hesitate to express themselves with A- type growls, groans and howls, B- type barks, croons and rumbles or even with the higher pitched O- type hums, yips and soft pants the way Ka Bue taught its young to stifle most in polite company.

You don’t think you could ever consider yourself truly one of the Vaugardians because of it, you were far too skeptical and reserved to ever truly quite fit in with them in that regard.

And then after a couple of months of traveling with them, Siffrin joined your party in the dramatic flourish of defeating a particularly strong Sadness you three had been struggling with.

Siffrin who didn’t smell like anything at all. Siffrin who never used their secondary voice.

The only smells you could ever catch lingering on them were smells that stuck to him from maintaining his weapons and tools. If you closed your eyes, you couldn’t have detected their presence by your nose they way you could scent Mirabelle or Isabeau coming your way. And no matter how distressed or happy they were not a single noise that wasn’t a spoken word or a primary vocal cursory hum ever escaped them.

It unnerved you.

Scent blockers and suppressants certainly existed, the same way hormonal ones existed.

That is to say, they existed to alleviate excess, make seasonals more bearable, and help fledglings still learning to control their output so as not to upset or bother others. You weren’t supposed to be able to completely erase them with them.

How much beyond what was regulated did Siffrin have to take to manage that?

And why did they want to hide their designation so badly? Stifling their secondary voice worse than even the crotchiest of hardline traditionalist in Ka Bue.

You asked about their designation in the name of smoother integration to your group when it became clear he would join you on the quest to defeat the King.

Without missing a beat, they told you they were a Beta and said they did their best to block out the scent because the smell was a bit awkward around here, describing their natural scent as distinctly ‘crabby’. No mention of why they didn’t use their secondary voice.

You didn’t have any concrete evidence to prove it so you said nothing of it, but you didn’t believe them for a second.

The answer was too rehearsed. Their smile just a bit too contrite to be believable.

Despite your reservations you kept mostly to yourself, they slowly integrated into the group. Eager to please and the moment they learned Isabeau liked puns it’s like they turned it into half their personality.

Their memory was horrendous, which you suspected was from the obvious overuse of suppressants.

You hated that you couldn’t help but be a little endeared by how scatter brained they could be.

At some point after having seen them flinch from even a brief touch enough times you began to suspect they were running from someone. An abusive former flockmate or something to that degree.

But before you got even close to figuring out just what their deal was, Boniface dropped into the care of the slowly forming flock.

Seeing Siffrin suddenly bolt downwind from you had been startling, but the sheer panic in the first and only call for help you heard from them for Mirabelle had sent all of your running.

And that’s how you found your flocks little fledgling, Boniface.

They had stunk of fear, desperation and exhaustion, utterly burying their normal faint scent of sea salt with the hint of milk all fledglings have until they present.

Initially the plan had been to leave them with someone in the nearest village, but that proved impossible, because Boniface made it very vocally clear with the simple fledgling whines of ‘I’m scared, scared, please love, love and keep me’ that they had no intention of being left behind, having seemingly attached themselves to your pack at a speed that concerned you.

And because in your skepticism you couldn’t find anyone who seemed trustworthy enough to leave a terrified fledgling with in circumstances such as this.

And thus, your flock found itself with a fledgling to care for.

You’re not quite sure when exactly did you begin to think all of them as flock proper.

You think it might have been when Siffrin lost their eye to protect Boniface.

Flock built in a trial by fire.

You think you would have come to consider them flock eventually anyway, but having to work so closely together with them in the aftermath, taking turns looking after Siffrin, finding yourself relaxing your usual boundaries, finding yourself quietly singing ‘you’re safe, safe, we have you dear one, care for you, care for you all’, because they didn’t seem to matter quite as much at the time, certainly sped the process along.

You could never bring yourself to voice it in words though. But you did begin to occasionally briefly scent them after that, and even more rarely trill softly in response to their calls.

All except Siffrin who flinched from touch, who still would not call to any of you, even just to respond.

You regret it now, you regret not saying anything, not doing something, finding some way to scent them. You could have asked to scent the eyepatch Isabeau made for them in the aftermath, it would have been something at least, something to show them how much you had come to care for them.

The fact it took your flockmate getting stuck in a time loop because they were so afraid of losing you after your journey to defeat the King was over to voice it pains you. That it took so long for you to put it together, despite having had a strong clue in their natural scent never coming through even though you strictly monitored their suppressant consumption when they were recovering from losing their eye, that he wasn’t overusing suppressant at all. Despite having recognized something off in the single call of help when they found Boniface.

He had simply never presented and so his scent had been so faint, it got suppressed entirely. He had never truly understood any of your calls because the lack of presentation had never let the correct vocal and hearing organs be flooded with the right hormones to fully develop.

You won’t deny letting out one of the shrillest call-to-hiss combinations you’ve ever made when you found out. You had to immediately clarify that you weren’t mad at them but simply outraged on their behalf that they had grown up without feeling truly safe for so long they had been locked into a permanent state of such excess stress.

It took you everything in you to leave aggressively preening and scenting them until they had recovered from the craft exhaustion.

You had thought your childhood to have been unfortunate, and to realize they had had it even worse at as far as they remembered…

Even if you’re still not overly fond of touch, after that realization you wouldn’t have been able to leave it alone if you tried, when you could do something about it.

When after months of routinely scenting and preening them, either one on one or as a group, Siffrin finally presented as an Alpha, smelling of confectionary, dandelions and ozone, you couldn’t have been prouder. Crowded happily into a single large nest with everyone else you let yourself for once simply soak in the attention as they fussed after each of you, scenting you just as, if not more, aggressively as you had after they’d recovered from Craft exhaustion, until all of you practically reeked of them.

You haven’t ever been happy to have your scent so utterly buried under someone else’s before, softly singing love back to them.

It had certainly been a lot, even a bit more than you would usually tolerate or be comfortable with when it comes to physical affection, but you had found yourself far too happy to see them finally come into their designation to even think of complaining.

Besides, seeing them so fiercely protective of all of you towards anyone who looked at you funny or stared just a little too long was, in your humble opinion, hilarious.

The fact that didn’t stop being the case after their presentation seasonal had passed, was even funnier to you.

Mirabelle and Isebeau might protest it, but you’ve found yourself endeared by their halfway feral nature.

They’re a good Alpha, and one who doesn’t mind you reigning them in when it looks like they might actually be about to kill someone out offense to your flock.

This wonderful flock that has finally given you somewhere you belong after searching for so long.

That you would do anything for, to keep them safe and happy.

You are theirs, the same way they are yours.

And you will happily join in with Siffrin’s carnage if someone ever truly tries to take any of you away from them.