Chapter Text
The promise had been made when they were eight years old, in Jean's backyard with dirt under their fingernails and grass on their knees.
"When we graduate," Jean had said, puffing out his chest with all the machismo an eight-year-old could muster, "we're gonna join our own squad. Just you and me, Eren."
Eren had nodded seriously, his green eyes glinting with the kind of blind trust children alone could muster. "Promise?"
"Promise."
A decade and a half later, Eren wished he could travel back in time and shake his kid self for believing in such naive certainty.
When Jean presented as an alpha their sophomore year, Eren felt like an entire new world had finally clicked into place. They'd been waiting for years, talking about when they'd finally be ready to start building the pack they'd dreamed of as kids. The waiting was killing him, made all the worse by the fact that he still hadn't presented himself, but knowing Jean's alpha status was official was like the first real step toward their future.
"See? I told you it would happen," Eren had said, practically bouncing up and down with excitement as they walked home from school the day that Jean's presentation was confirmed. "Now we just have to wait for mine, and then we can start to make real plans."
Jean had smiled, his new alpha confidence making him stand a little taller. "It's going to be perfect, Eren. Just like we always planned."
Then Marco Bodt transferred to their school in the middle of the semester, all friendly smiles and laid-back alpha energy that eased Jean's shoulders in a manner Eren never could. The kind of individual who attracted people without difficulty, Marco pulled others towards him with his affability and that calming presence.
"Marco's joining our pack," Jean said during lunch one afternoon, though it came out more like he was trying to convince Eren it was a good idea rather than something he'd already decided.
Eren's face lit up immediately. "Really? That's awesome!" And he wasn't being insincere. Marco wasn't only nice, but hot as hell, too. And Eren had noticed the way Jean's whole posture eased around Marco, how he got less guarded, more receptive. "The more the merrier, right?"
"See? I told you Eren would be fine with it," Jean said to Marco, who had been appearing uncertain about inserting himself into their long-standing dynamic.
"Are you certain?" Marco inquired, his inherent thoughtfulness present in each line of his body. "I mean, I know you two have had this planned since you were kids. I don't wish to spoil something that's been in the works for so long."
"Don't be stupid," Eren said, but his tone was warm, almost gentle. "Jean needs someone to keep his ego in check anyway. And honestly? I think you'd be just the person to do it."
"My ego is perfectly sized, thank you very much," Jean said, falling easily into their familiar banter.
"If by 'perfectly sized' you mean 'big enough to have its own gravitational pull,' then sure," Eren said, smiling.
Marco just laughed, that fabulous, genuine sound that improved everything slightly. "You two are like an old married couple."
"Shut up," Eren and Jean said in tandem, then glared at each other for the synchronization, which sent Marco into laughter all over again.
And honestly, Eren loved having Marco around. The quiet alpha had this gift for playing peacemaker when he and Jean inevitably butted heads—which they did, constantly, over everything from the best way to study for their history exam to whether or not pineapple had any place on a pizza. Marco would just smile that gentle smile and somehow find some kind of compromise that left everyone happy, or at least willing to agree to disagree.
"You know," Marco remarked one day when they were sprawled out on Jean's bedroom floor, supposedly studying but really devoting most of their time to arguing about whether their chemistry teacher was actively evil or just really, really bad at his job, "watching you two is like watching a tennis match. Back and forth, back and forth, but somehow you always end up on the same side."
"Since Eren's always incorrect initially, but I'm patient enough to guide him to the right answer," Jean said with feigned seriousness.
"I'm sorry, who got a better grade on the recent chemistry test?" Eren shot back.
"That was a fluke."
"A fluke that's happened six times this semester?"
Marco watched them with obvious amusement. "See? Tennis match."
When Eren finally shifted as an omega that junior spring, everything was perfect. The whole process had been terrible: three days of fever, confusion, and overwhelming new instincts that he couldn't sort out. But when it was finished, when his body had finally settled into its new normal, he felt like their pack was complete.
Jean was bossy and overprotective but fiercely loyal and surprisingly intuitive about what Eren needed, too. Marco as the steady second alpha who kept them all grounded and helped smooth out the rougher edges of pack life. And Eren as their omega, the heart of their little family, adding passion and emotional openness to balance out their more logical natures.
"This is it," Jean had said the night of Eren's presentation, his usual bravado overshadowed by something softer, more earnest. They were in Jean's backyard again, in almost the same spot where they'd made their promise for the first time, but now everything was changed. More real. "Our pack. Just like we always dreamed about."
Eren had never been happier. For a few wonderful months, everything was exactly as he'd always hoped it would be. They fell into their routines, their jokes, their comfortable rhythms. Jean would become possessive and protective in that way that made Eren's omega instincts vibrate with happiness. Marco would mediate their arguments with gentle humor and endless patience. Eren felt desired, necessary, at the focal point of their dynamic in a manner that justified all those years of waiting.
Yet even in those halcyon days, there were shadows creeping in at the edges.
Levi Ackerman had transferred to their school at the beginning of junior year—a dark-haired alpha who seemed to take immediate and extreme dislike to Eren specifically. He was a year older than most of their classmates, having clearly been held back a year or transferred from some private school, and he moved with the kind of cool confidence that made other students get out of his way.
It started subtly, the kind of thing Eren tried to brush off. Shoulder bumps in the hallway that were a little too rough to be an accident. "Accidentally" knocking Eren's books off his desk when passing by. Snide remarks about "loud omegas who don't know their place" spoken just quietly enough that they didn't carry to the teachers' ears but loudly enough that everyone around them heard.
First, Eren tried to ignore it. He was too happy, too caught up in the bliss of having his pack together finally, to let some random jerk ruin his mood. Jean and Marco were with him, weren't they? That was all that mattered.
"Just stay away from him," Jean advised, his alpha tendencies bubbling near the surface in the presence of Levi. "Guy's got some serious issues. Probably has a messed-up family life or something."
"Maybe we should try talking to him?" Marco suggested, always the diplomat. "He might just be having a bit of trouble adjusting to a new school."
But Levi seemed to have made Eren his personal project, and his attention was not scattered or casual. In the cafeteria, he'd walk past their table and loudly comment on "desperate omegas clinging to their childhood alphas" or "pathetic pack bonds that will never make it past graduation." In class, he'd attempt to invalidate Eren's answers or make him look stupid in front of instructors and classmates.
The worst was in AP Literature, when they had a group presentation. They'd been assigned to present on the representation of secondary genders in the classics, and Eren had spent hours working on his part on omega characters and their place in the story. He was enthusiastic about it, had actually found some really interesting trends in the ways omega characters were used to further plot points or represent themes of loyalty and sacrifice.
He was halfway through his presentation, interested and confident, when Levi raised his hand with that particular smile that Eren had learned to recognize as a warning sign.
"Aren't you projecting a bit?" Levi said, his voice assuming that tone of polite nastiness he'd perfected. "I mean, maybe some omegas are just naturally clingy and dependent, regardless of the literary context. Maybe the authors weren't attempting to pass some deep commentary on society—maybe they were just writing what they observed."
The room went silent. Eren's face blazed with humiliation, his omega instincts screaming in indignation at being so publicly admonished by an alpha, and in front of his own packmates, at that. He could smell Jean's anger spiked, Marco's face tightening in disapproval, but the damage was already done. The rest of the class was staring, some in pity, others in the uncomfortable fascination of having witnessed someone else's humiliation.
"That's enough," barked their professor, but it was too late. Eren stumbled through the rest of his presentation, his confidence shredded, painfully aware of every word and how it might be twisted to further Levi's casual cruelty.
Jean was furious afterward. "I'm going to kick his ass," he snarled as they walked to lunch, his alpha presence crackling in the air around them. "Nobody talks to you like that. Nobody."
"Don't," Eren pleaded, even though a part of him wished his alpha would stand up for him, would demonstrate that he was worth fighting for. "It'll just make it worse. And what if he was right? What if I was projecting?"
"He wasn't right," Marco said, his usual gentle voice hard with outrage. "Your analysis was genius, and he was just being a jerk because he could be."
But the seed of doubt had been planted. Was he clingy? Desperate? Was his faith in Jean and their future pack just pathetic omega delusion? The doubts followed him through the rest of junior year and on into senior year, growing stronger every time Levi found a new way of cutting him down.
"Still playing house with your little alpha?" Levi would taunt, trapping Eren against his locker between classes. "What do you do when he gets bored babysitting you? When he decides he could do so much better?"
"Jean's not babysitting me," Eren would snap back, but Levi's words had a tendency to stick, burrowing into the quiet corners of his mind where they could feed and breed.
"Sure he's not. That's why he's hanging out with Marco more than you these days. Face it, omega, you're already being replaced, and you're too pathetic to notice."
The issue was, Levi wasn't totally wrong about Jean and Marco hanging out more. They'd started studying independently for their shared AP courses—courses Eren wasn't taking because he'd signed up for a more science-heavy track to pre-med. They'd developed in-jokes from their alpha-only lessons, things which Eren had not been a part of. During lunch, they'd sit slightly closer to each other, their discussions moving in a way that sometimes made Eren feel more like an observer than a participant.
"You had to be there," was Marco's gentle retort when Eren looked puzzled at their laughter, and each time he said that, Eren couldn't help but feel more and more like an outsider in his own pack.
But Jean still went to him when he was losing it over college apps, still sought out his comfort when family drama got to be too much. Marco still invited Eren along on their weekend outings, still sought out his input on pack business. Their relationship was solid, even if it was evolving in ways Eren didn't entirely understand.
The day of graduation, Levi cornered Eren one last time by the lockers.
"Enjoy college," he scorned, his voice containing the same sadistic tone. "See how long your precious pack lasts when there are finally some decent options available. When Jean realizes he doesn't have to settle for the first omega who batted eyelashes at him."
Eren would have preferred to shoot back with something biting, something that would wipe that smug expression off Levi's face, but Jean appeared before he had a chance to come up with anything.
"Problem here?" Jean barked, his alpha energy crackling in the air like thunder on the horizon.
Levi's eyes flicked back and forth between them, something indecipherable crossing his face. For a brief moment, his mask slipped, and Eren saw something in his eyes that looked almost like. pain? Longing? But it was there and gone so quickly that Eren told himself he'd imagined it.
"No problem," Levi responded, his voice carefully neutral. "Farewell to an old acquaintance."
He departed without a word more, leaving Eren with an uneasy feeling he could not quite pinpoint.
Freshman year of college wasn't without its challenges, but also its renewed hope. They'd all chosen the same college expressly so that their pack might stay together, and despite the housing problem—Jean and Marco were placed in alpha dorms while Eren was stuck in omega housing—they coped.
"It's just temporary," Jean consoled him when Eren felt a pang of loneliness in his single dormitory room that first night. "We'll have an off-campus apartment next year. This is just the school's way of getting us acclimatized to college life in the proper way."
And for a while, it did actually seem like everything was going well. They had their routines like breakfast together in the dining hall most mornings, library study sessions a few times a week, movie nights in Jean and Marco's dorm room every Friday. Naturally, Jean and Marco had friends in their alpha housing and classes and would come back with stories and references that sometimes went over Eren's head, but that was to be expected, right? They were all growing, experimenting, becoming more complex people.
Eren dove into his pre-med coursework with a vengeance, both because he honestly adored the sciences and because he was determined to show—himself as much as anyone else—that he was not the needy, clinging omega Levi had accused him of being. He made friends in his classes, joined study groups, even started volunteering at the campus medical center. When Jean was burned out from work, it was still Eren he went to for comfort and relief. When Marco was homesick, Eren was the one who stayed up late talking him through it, making him sort through his feelings and work out how to cope.
Their bond as a pack had felt solid, unshakeable. Different from high school, maybe, but that was to be expected. They were adults now, after all, with adult issues and adult relationships. Just because they were all growing and evolving didn't mean they were growing apart.
The first real rift appeared in spring semester when sophomore year housing assignments went up. Jean and Marco had both been tapped into some elite alpha leadership program that came with separate housing and special coursework designed to create future pack leaders.
"It's a huge opportunity," Jean explained, his eyes bright with excitement as he showed Eren the acceptance letter. "This could set us up for amazing careers after graduation. The networking alone would be incredible, and the leadership training they offer is supposed to be world-class."
"That's incredible!" Eren had shouted, perfectly serious. His chest swelled with pride for his packmates, for their victory and the accolades they were receiving. "You guys have to do it."
"The thing is." Marco looked uncomfortable, fiddling with his own acceptance letter. "It's alpha-only housing. Like, seriously alpha-only. They don't even allow omega visitors after ten PM. But we'll still see just as much of each other! Maybe even more, since we'll be learning actual leadership skills that could help our pack in the long run."
Eren nodded enthusiastically, pushing down the small prick of disappointment and the memory of Levi's voice in the back of his head. This was a positive for the future of their pack, wasn't it? Jean and Marco getting advanced leadership training would benefit all of them in the long run. It was forward thinking, the kind of strategic planning that would set them up for success.
"You'll be happier in regular housing anyway," Jean said. "No offense, but some of the alpha leadership potential is a bit out there. A lot of competition and posturing. You'd hate it."
Eren agreed readily, reminding himself that Jean was onto something. He preferred collaborative environments to competitive ones, preferred to work together towards common goals rather than competing for individual honors.
So why was he feeling like something essential was slipping out of him?
Their second year began with new faces and new problems but none more significant than Armin Arlert. Eren met him in their biochemistry class on the second day of term. He was a small, blond beta with the kind of understated intelligence that drew people in once they got past his shy demeanor at first.
"Is this seat taken?" Armin had asked, inclining his head toward the empty chair next to Eren in the lecture hall.
"It's all yours," Eren had replied, and somehow that simple interaction had blossomed into a friendship that became a cornerstone of Eren's collegiate experience.
Armin was smart in a way that differed from Jean's slashing ambition or Marco's compassionate intellect. He thought in layers, considering questions from all angles before he spoke, and when he spoke, what he had to say was so insightful that professors would halt lectures to argue with them. He was kind, too, in a genuine, unassuming way that reminded her of Marco, but with steel beneath the kindness that suggested depths Eren was still discovering.
"This is my biochemistry buddy," Eren had said, grinning from ear to ear about three weeks into the semester, when he introduced Armin to Jean and Marco at their favorite table in the library. "Armin, my packmates: Jean and Marco."
Friendly introductions were what Eren was expecting, maybe some small talk about classes and campus life. What he was not expecting was the immediate and total engagement of Jean's interest in Armin's mind.
"You should've heard Armin's analysis of the Napoleonic Wars in our history elective," Eren said proudly after their first group study session. "Professor Pixis said it was graduate-level thinking. Something about how Napoleon's real mistake wasn't Russian winter, but failing to anticipate the psychological impact of long supply lines on troop morale."
"Oh?" Jean sat up in the kind of intellectual interest that Eren rarely made him feel lately. "What was your breakdown of the campaign logistics, Armin? I've always thought the primary issue was strategic overextension, but the psychological aspect is interesting."
What followed was a forty-five-minute discussion between Armin and Jean about military strategy, political maneuvering, and historical precedent that left Eren and Marco to watch. Eren didn't mind. He was happy to see his alpha and his best friend getting along so well over shared interests.
"Armin should totally hang out more with us," Eren said after Armin went off to his evening labs. "Don't you agree? He just fits into our vibe so well."
"Definitly," Jean agreed, but something in his fervor put Eren's omega senses on alert. "He's got this way of thinking about things that's just. different. Tactical. Like he can identify patterns the rest of us can't."
At first, everything was perfect. Their trio became four, and Eren loved having his college best friend integrated into his pack family. Armin brought new perspectives to the conversations, helped them all with subjects they were having trouble with, and had this way of making everyone feel smarter just by being around him.
But then, slowly, so slowly Eren barely registered it, things began to shift.
It started with Jean asking Armin's opinion on things that had precisely nothing to do with school: where to eat dinner, what movie to watch, even pack decisions that should have involved all of them on an equal footing. "What do you think, Armin?" was Jean's reflexive query, even if Eren or Marco had already made completely reasonable suggestions.
Marco, the peacemaker, tried to keep things balanced. "Why don't we take a vote?" he'd say when Jean naturally yielded to Armin's demands. "Or take turns deciding?"
But Jean had that look in his eyes... the very same burning passion he got when he was really passionate about something, like when he'd first fallen in love with military history or first started to take leadership roles seriously. Only now that passion was directed at Armin instead of scholarly endeavors or their future together.
"Armin just has this capacity to see the big picture," Jean explained when Eren mentioned it one evening. "Like he's thinking five steps ahead, you know? Consider all the variables and potential outcomes before doing something."
The comparison stung more than Eren was willing to admit. He'd never been the type to mull things over, to tackle issues with a cool head and a cautious strategy. It had never been an issue with Jean before. If anything, Jean had appeared to relish Eren's impulsiveness, his willingness to act while others were still weighing options. But now, with Armin's considerate mulling as contrast, Eren's lack of method seemed crude and insensitive.
The seating arrangements shifted as well, gradually and naturally. Where Eren used to sit between Jean and Marco—the traditional omega spot in their pack dynamics, the one that marked him as the emotional center of their group—he was pushed to the perimeter of their circle. Jean would take a seat next to Armin to "talk strategy" about some project, Marco would show up on Armin's other side to get in on the conversation, and Eren would sit across from them, watching more than participating.
"Don't you think, Eren?" Armin would occasionally ask, clearly trying to include him, but by then the conversation had usually moved beyond Eren's ability to contribute meaningfully. They'd be discussing political theory or economic models or historical analyses that required the kind of broad knowledge base that Eren had never prioritized building.
Eren told himself it was just growing pains. They were all developing into more sophisticated people, finding new interests and intellectual pursuits. It was only natural that things would shift as they grew and evolved.
By their third year, the patterns were getting harder to ignore, though Eren still made excuses for each incident.
"We're going to study at Armin's tonight," Jean would say during lunch. "You should work on your organic chemistry anyway. I know that professor's been riding you pretty hard lately."
Eren would nod and smile, thinking that they were being considerate of his heavy pre-med course load. The science track was demanding, and especially organic chemistry, which was tantamount to learning an entire new language that was comprised of molecular compounds and reaction mechanisms. He actually did require the extra study time, and it was understandable that Jean and Marco would not wish to be doing their respective projects while feeling as though they were leaving him in the dust.
He did not realize he was being systematically excluded until the pattern had already established itself.
Pack bonding events that had previously centered on Eren were now organized around his absence. "Oh, we would have invited you," Marco would apologize when Eren asked about their weekend trip to the state park, "but we knew you had that big exam on Monday, and we didn't want you to feel conflicted between relaxation and studying."
Their film nights evolved from scheduled events to "spontaneous" hangouts that just happened to fall on Eren's lab or work-study sessions at the campus medical center. "It was totally last-minute," Jean would explain when Eren mentioned feeling left out. "Armin had this gap between his research meeting and his evening seminar, and we just thought we'd throw something together. You would have been bored anyway, we ended up watching this really dry documentary about urban planning."
Yet when Eren later looked at Armin's social media, he noticed photos from their "dry documentary" night that suspiciously looked like they were having the time of their lives, smiling and relaxed in a way that made Eren's chest hurt with longing.
The group chat that used to buzz with nonstop discussion was sporadic for Eren. He'd check his phone after a full day of classes and clinicals to find dozens of messages that had nothing to do with him: inside jokes, links being tossed back and forth, discussion about topics he wasn't privy to. If he tried to join in, his messages would be met with brief, polite responses that felt like conversation-enders rather than invitations to say more.
Meanwhile, it became increasingly obvious that Jean, Marco, and Armin had their own little dialogue ongoing. He'd catch snippets of their discussions, like conversations about study groups he hadn't been invited to, weekend trips that hadn't included him, future plans that seemed to assume his absence.
The worst of it was how natural it all was. Jean wasn't waking up each morning thinking up ways to shut Eren out. It was just happening naturally, as he was drawn more and more to discussing philosophy and politics with Armin and talking about making plans for the future that Eren simply couldn't keep up with. Armin's mind worked in ways that complemented Jean's ambition and Marco's introspection, creating an intellectual synergy that left Eren feeling like a child trying to sit at the adults' table.
Marco, bless his heart, tried to make things equal. He'd go out of his way to ask Eren about his day, would offer him a seat to eat even if Jean and Armin were in the middle of some debate that went soaring right over Eren's head. But even Marco's invitations began to feel strained, more like acts of pity than genuine desire for Eren's company.
"How's the pre-med track?" Marco would ask in that gentle smile that made Eren feel heard and understood.
"It's okay," Eren would say, because what else could he say? That he was struggling with the isolation? That he felt like he was losing his place in the pack he'd struggled to build? That every day he felt more and more like an outsider looking in on the life he'd taken for granted would always have room for him?
"That's great," Marco would say, and mean it, but then Armin would make some comment about the political science seminar they were both enrolled in, and Marco's attention would shift in a way that seemed effortless and inevitable but left Eren feeling ignored.
Eren assured himself that it was temporary. They were all growing and changing, becoming more complicated human beings. His pack was not moving on without him, they were just expanding their horizons. Once they were done with college and settled into their adult lives, things would calm down. They'd remember what they were to each other, would find ways to bridge the gaps that had grown between them.
When Jean brought up post-grad plans in the spring of junior year, Eren was washed over with a wave of relief. Finally, they'd discuss their future as a pack, their shared dreams, the life they'd build together.
"Armin and I've been studying graduate school," Jean said at lunch one day, his voice carrying the same degree of enthusiasm that was once only heard when he and his pack would discuss their future. "There are some incredible possibilities for interdisciplinary studies, especially programs that combine political science with business administration. Marco's also considering similar directions."
"What about our pack plans?" Eren asked, trying to be light and casual. "I thought we were going to locate our territory after graduation, maybe check out that intentional community we heard about in Oregon?"
There was one of those silent exchanges between Jean and Marco that had been occurring more and more frequently and with increasingly more exclusion of Eren. It lasted maybe two seconds, but in those two seconds, Eren saw something that made his stomach drop. A kind of nervous acknowledgment, as if they'd been hoping this conversation wouldn't come up.
"Uh," Jean said slowly, his voice carefully guarded, "those were more along the lines of. early ideas, you know? We've been thinking it would be better to focus on our careers first, really establish ourselves professionally before making any life-changing decisions."
"Armin's been helping us learn about the most perfect locations for our fields," Marco went on, his voice gentle but firm. "He has this kind of long-term planning strategic thinker mind that's just amazing. He's been showing us how to examine career trajectories and professional networks in ways we never considered."
Eren's stomach was filled with a cold feeling, but he smiled. "That's great. I'm sure whatever you all do will be fine."
The conversation went on, but Eren barely heard the rest of it. He simply sat, nodding and making appropriate replies while his mind reeled. When had their plans turned into Jean and Armin's plans? When did Marco start taking direction from Armin's tactical brain instead of the pack decisions they'd always made together as a unit? When had Eren's voice stopped having a say in the decisions of their shared future?
He convinced himself the uneasy feeling in his chest was nothing more than anxiety about post-grad uncertainty and not the slowly breaking realization that his future might not include the people he'd planned his entire life with.
Their last year of college brought everything into stark, painful focus. Jean, Marco, and Armin became an impenetrable clique, their lives so entangled in their planning that Eren was excluded from every major decision by what seemed like natural default.
The apartment hunting had been the first real blow. Eren had been looking forward to finally living with his packmates, to creating the kind of shared home space they'd dreamed about as teenagers. He'd been saving up from his work-study job, had reconnoitered neighborhoods and amenities, had even started a Pinterest board of decorating ideas that included all of their personalities.
"We found the perfect place," Jean said one day in October, practically glowing with excitement. "Three bedrooms, good location, great natural light. The landlord loved our applications."
"Our applications?" Eren echoed, as something icy slid up his spine.
"Oh, you know how it is when the rental market is so competitive," Marco said, using that apologetic voice that was growing more familiar. "We had to move fast, and you were in lab when the showing opened up. We figured we could attempt to get you added to the lease later if there was space."
But as they continued to detail the apartment it became clear there had never been any intention of including Eren in any of it. Like how the third bedroom would be perfect for Armin's research work, how the kitchen was exactly suited for the kinds of dinner parties they'd been hoping to host, how the living room would be perfect for the study groups they'd been organizing.
"It sounds perfect for you guys," Eren managed to gag out, his omega senses shrieking in protest at being so utterly excluded from his pack's major life decisions.
They invited him over to see the apartment after they'd rented it, showing him around like he was a friend who'd dropped by to see their new place rather than a person who was meant to be there with them all along. Eren smiled and oohed over the hardwood floors and new appliances, all the while dying a little bit inside at how right they looked together in this home that didn't have any room for him.
Their conversations increasingly focused on shared experiences and future plans that didn't include him. They talked about the research project Jean and Armin were undertaking for their senior thesis, investigating the intersection of political theory and applied governance with particular focus on pack dynamics in corporate management. They discussed the internship Marco and Armin had both landed at a leading consulting firm in the city, how they'd be able to commute together and provide moral support for one another during the long workday. They made plans for academic conferences they'd visit together over spring break, scholarly conferences where they'd present their joint research and network with potential graduate advisors.
Every conversation was a reminder that their lives were intertwining in ways that naturally excluded Eren. Not out of malice—he could see they still genuinely cared for him—but inevitably, as if his absence was just a natural result of them growing and changing.
Eren found himself becoming a spectator to his own pack's life. They'd invite him to group dinners, but the conversation flowed around him like water around a stone. They'd ask him to study with them, but his contributions felt token, obligatory rather than valued. He was included in the way you might include a pet: with affection and care, but without any real expectation that he'd contribute meaningfully to the important discussions.
"How are MCAT prep?" Armin would genuinely ask, and Eren would fill them in on his progress, grateful for the interest.
"That's wonderful," Jean would say, and mean it, but the subject would shift to something more exciting and Eren would find himself relegated to the role of supportive audience member rather than engaged participant.
The worst part was how nicely they did it. There was no argument, no anger or bitter words or deliberate cruelty. Just a constant, subtle pushing to the periphery that was somehow more devastating than outright rejection would have been. They still cared about him. He could see it in the concerned glances Marco sent his way when Eren was sad, in Jean's automatic possessiveness when other alphas showed interest in Eren, in Armin's efforts to include him in their conversations even when it was clearly derailing their train of thought.
But caring about someone and wanting them as a part of your life were clearly two completely different things.
"You seem stressed lately," Marco observed one evening in early spring, when they'd all met for what had become their increasingly infrequent group dinner. "Is everything okay?"
How could Eren explain that watching your pack slowly, lovingly outgrow you was death by a thousand paper cuts? How could he express his fears without sounding paranoid, possessive, or pathetic? How could he admit that he was feeling written out of their lives without making them feel guilty for the sin of growing up and away from him?
"Just worrying about school," Eren lied, pushing food around his plate to avoid Marco's concerned gaze. "You know, not knowing what's going to happen next and all that."
"You'll cope," Jean said with the reckless confidence of a person who'd already figured out his own future and found it wasn't with the woman he'd once promised to spend his life with. "You always do. And anyway, med school will keep you so busy you probably won't have time to think about pack things for a while anyway."
The dismissive nature regarding "pack stuff” hit harder than an intended insult would have, as though the bonds that had constituted Eren's entire sense of self were a minor inconvenience that would naturally fade with distance and time.
Eren nodded and smiled and talked about something else, but something inside him snapped that night. He went back to his dorm and sat in his one-man room surrounded by the photos and mementos of fifteen years of friendship and tried to identify the exact moment he'd become expendable to the humans he cared about most.
The signs had always been there, he realized. Levi's sadistic forecasts during high school had ended up being truer than Eren was willing to admit. The subtle exclusion, the shifting dynamics, the way his voice had slowly stopped being important in pack decisions… it had all been leading up to this point of realization that he was no longer essential to their joy or their future.
Spring semester crawled by with Eren in the strange in-between zone. He was still officially a part of their group, still invited to some things, still consulted on minor decisions, but increasingly aware that he was being managed rather than included.
The final straw was the period before finals, when Eren overheard a conversation he wasn't meant to hear.
He'd been in the campus library, tucked away in one of the private study rooms with his MCAT prep books, when Jean, Marco, and Armin sat down in the room next door. The walls were thin, and their voices carried easily through the divider.
"I just keep feeling guilty about Eren," Marco was saying, his voice heavy with the kind of concern that would have been comforting if it hadn't been so obviously directed at him rather than toward him. "He seems so isolated lately. So miserable."
"He'll be all right," Jean said, his voice strained. "He's stronger than he looks. And honestly? This is probably for the best. He needs to learn to stand on his own instead of defining himself by pack bonds that were always more about childhood comfort than real compatibility."
"But you promised him," Marco argued. "When you were kids, you vowed you’d always be here for each other. Don't you think we owe it to him to try harder to make this work?"
There was a long silence, and when Jean did speak, his voice was measured, guarded in that way that showed he'd given this a lot of consideration.
"Marco, we were eight years old. Eight. We made a whole bunch of promises when we were kids that don't count anymore. We promised we'd live in a treehouse and eat ice cream for every meal and never go to school. Should we be holding up those promises, too?"
"That's different, and you know it."
"Is it?" Jean's voice was rising, his tone more confident in his argument. "I loved Eren as a child. I love him now. But love is not enough to build an adult pack around. We need compatibility, shared ambitions, mental stimulation. We need to challenge each other to be better, not hold each other back out of misplaced devotion to childhood dreams."
"Jean's right," Armin said quietly, and somehow his quiet agreement hurt more than Jean's angry tirade. "Eren deserves a pack that knows his strengths and appreciates who he is. We're not that squad anymore. We've grown in ways that don't include him, and trying to make it work is only going to hurt everyone in the end."
"What do we do, then?" Marco asked, and Eren could hear the resignation in his tone.
"We have a discussion," Jean said resolutely. "We're honest about where we all are, and we give him the chance to go and find his perfect match. People that actually fit who he's becoming instead of who we wished him to be when we were kids."
Eren sat in his study room, surrounded by practice tests and highlighters, and felt the last vestiges of his childhood illusions crumble. He collected his belongings and left the library through the back door, avoiding the room where his former packmates were debating his firing. He wandered around campus for the rest of the night, trying to process what he'd heard, trying to prepare himself for the conversation to come.
The rejection occurred on a rainy Thursday in March, during the last week of their senior year.
Eren had been preparing himself for three days for this conversation. He'd rehearsed what he was going to say dozens of times, trying to find some manner of expressing what was happening without sounding desperate or accusatory. Maybe if he approached it the right way, if he was calm and adult about it, they could get beyond this rough patch and remember what they had been to each other.
"Jean, can I speak with you," he'd said, locating his old friend in the common room of Jean and Marco's dormitory, where Armin was also set up with his laptop and a pile of books.
Jean looked up from his screen, and Eren noted that all-too-familiar spark of annoyance before courteous attention replaced it. "Can it wait? We're trying to finish this research proposal for Professor Smith. It's due tomorrow, and we're still working out some of the theoretical framework."
"It's about our pack," Eren persisted, seeing how Armin's typing slowed incrementally, how Marco emerged from the kitchenette with renewed awareness. There was an uncomfortable, strained silence in the room, as though all of them were holding their breath in anticipation. "About what we discussed when we were kids. About our future. I just... I need to know where I stand."
The silence went on too long. Jean and Marco exchanged one of those loaded looks.
"Eren," Jean said warily, closing his laptop with deliberate slowness. "Maybe we'd better talk in private."
"No. Maybe it’s better that we all talk about it.."
Marco and Jean exchanged another glance, and this time Armin shifted uncomfortably in his seat, as if he'd rather be anywhere else. But he didn't rise to leave, and Eren knew with a nauseating certainty that this conversation had already occurred without him. They'd already discussed his future, had already made their decisions, had already determined how to handle the untidy affair of cutting him loose.
"The thing is, Eren," Jean began, his voice taking on that careful, diplomatic tone he had when he was about to deliver some bad news. "I don't think this is working anymore. You and our pack dynamic, I mean."
The words were a gut punch, but on some level, Eren had been expecting them. What he had not been expecting was the detached way that Jean said them, as if he'd been rehearsing this speech and carefully preparing his justification beforehand.
"What do you mean?" Eren asked, though he knew already.
"You're not adapted to where we're going," Jean continued, and Marco was nodding now, his face apologetic and sympathetic. "It's not your fault," he inserted quickly, though his tone suggested he very much felt it was Eren's fault. "We've just. evolved differently. You do everything emotionally, reactively. You make decisions with your heart instead of your head."
His voice gentled somewhat, as if he were trying to make the blow less brutal. "Those aren't bad qualities, they're just not suited to where our lives are headed. We need to be able to talk about long-term objectives without having to constantly explain ourselves or contend with emotional reactions."
"And I'm not able to do it?" Eren asked, though he already knew the answer.
Jean's hesitation was brief but telling. "You're passionate, loyal, caring. You bring passion and emotional honesty to everything you do. But you approach life with your heart, and that was okay when we were kids, but now." He waved vaguely at their textbooks, their research materials, their carefully charted futures. "we need something else."
"But we promised—"
"We were eight years old, Eren!" Jean's patience finally snapped, and his alpha dominance crept into his voice in a way that had Eren's omega nature cringe in automatic submission. "Eight-year-olds make promises they can't keep all the time. Did you really think we were going to structure our entire adult lives around something we said in my backyard when we still believed in Santa Claus?"
The dismissal in his tone was devastating, but Jean wasn't finished. He'd definitely been stewing about this a long time, and now that the subject was opened, all his carefully thought-out arguments spilled out.
"I've found my real pack now," he continued, and Eren noticed how he looked directly at Armin when saying this, while Marco cringed in the background. "Armin's strategic thinking, Marco's emotional intelligence, my leadership skills. We complement each other in ways that create actual synergy. It's what an adult pack has to be."
The words cut like a slap. As if fifteen years of friendship had been some kind of adolescent phase that Jean had now grown out of, like some kid's toy he'd discovered at the back of his closet and decided he no longer wanted.
"And what do you think of this, Armin?" Eren asked, his voice less harsh now, without the anger and desperation he'd started with. "Do you agree?"
"Eren." Armin's voice was soft, apologetic, full of the kind of silent pity that was somehow worse than outright rejection.
"Do you?"
Armin met his gaze finally, and Eren saw pity, genuine concern for his feelings, but also a kind of resigned certainty about what was best for all of them. "I think you deserve a pack that values who you are. That recognizes your loyalty and passion and emotional intelligence as strengths rather than things to find ways around. That doesn't make you feel like you have to change essential aspects of yourself in order to belong."
It was a kind way of saying he agreed with what Jean had said, spoken with sufficient sympathy to make sure Armin actually did have Eren's best interests at heart. Which hurt more somehow than if he'd been nasty about it.
"So that's it?" Eren's voice cracked despite attempting to keep it steady. "Fifteen years of friendship, and you're just replacing me?"
"I'm not replacing you," Jean told him, though his eyes flicked to Armin as he said so, and the truth was written clearly on his face. "We can still be friends. We'll always have the past in common, all those memories and experiences. But the pack bond, that's done, Eren. It has been for some time now."
The finishing blow was delivered with such subtle finality that Eren almost admired the finesse of it. Almost.
"I think," Marco went on gently, his voice filled with a thoughtful sensitivity that made it clear this had been discussed many times before this talk, "it would be easier on all of us if we had some space to figure out our new relationship. As friends, I mean. Give everyone time to adjust to the changes without the pressure of trying to hang onto something that isn't working anymore."
Eren's eyes scoured the room. He knew with perfect clarity that this wasn't a discussion or an argument. This was a notification. The choice had been made already, weeks or months ago, discussed and analyzed and decided in conversations that hadn't included him.
They were telling him, not asking for his opinion.
"Right," Eren said, rising on trembling legs. "Space. That makes sense."
He moved off without another word, his eyes burning with tears he refused to spill until he reached his dormitory room, where he flung himself onto his narrow single bed and finally allowed himself to grieve the pack he'd trusted his entire life.