Honey in Hiding

The fluorescent glare in the university lecture hall was unforgiving. It was meant to light textbooks and every face in the room, yet to Soren it felt more like an interrogation bulb - prying for the truth he frantically concealed beneath that hoodie and the suppressant pills. He was an S-Class Omega: the kind of genetic lottery victor whose mere presence invited the world's stare, hunger, and envy. Folded over his notes, his spine bent into an apologetic shape, he was only... Soren. Nobody special. A self-declared Beta with social anxiety. His current look was a disguise built with care. A oversized faded black hoodie, two sizes too big, engulfed his lean build, its hood forever casting shade over his nape-the most vulnerable place on any Omega. His trousers hung baggy and unironed, clinging oddly , every detail deliberate and at the same time lazily neglected. The sharpest pieces of his disguise were, ironically, the ones meant to fix defects. A pair of thick-rimmed, heavy black spectacles rested on his nose, warping his features slightly, and more importantly, hiding the true, mesmerizing eyes beneath them — warm cocoa-brown eyes naturally wide and fringed by thick, dark lashes. Beneath those, two cheap, black-colored contact lenses dulled their shine and stripped away their natural, captivating depth. Braces sat on his teeth, kept behind his lips, blunting the sharpness and arrangement of his small, incredibly cute teeth-the quiet perfection of which had already invited far too much notice. A faint, permanent peach flush over his cheeks and delicate, defined chin, was often masked by a slight grayness born from exhaustion and constant high-dose suppressants. His very essence-the heady, intoxicating scent of wild honey laced with white gardenia, the mark of an S-Class Omega-remained sealed away. He swallowed those harsh tablets four times daily, without fail, fighting his body's own nature and forcing an unnatural, odorless emptiness around himself. It drained him, that constant inward struggle stealing both color and confidence. Soren was rare and precious, a creature of devastating beauty, yet he moved like a wounded bird, his head forever lowered, his shoulders taut, as though bracing for an impact that never stopped feeling close. He hid because being noticed felt the same as being violated. The source of his self-erasure lay in deep, terrible trauma. His past was full of powerful, possessive Alphas who saw his beauty and S-Class status not as gifts, but as property meant to be claimed and controlled. Fear of their eyes, their touch, even their scent-the sheer, suffocating force of an Alpha-had driven him to abandon his privileged (and dangerous) home life and vanish to survive. Soren drifted from the lecture hall, his worn canvas shoes scraping a little. He kept to the margins of the packed hallway, his voice barely more than a low, hesitant murmur even when he spoke to his only constant: Noel. Noel, also an omega, was the lone person in the whole world who could see through the disguise into the tired soul inside Soren. He was short, a little chunky, permanently anxious, and dressed in clothes that were arguably even shabbier than Soren's. Noel carried the air of someone habitually overlooked, the kind of anonymity that gave Soren perfect camouflage People saw them as two unremarkable, unattractive college students-a matched pair of social outcasts. "Did you get the Bio-Ethics notes? I... I drifted off again," Soren mumbled, nudging his glasses. Noel tucked a thick binder beneath his arm, his dark hair dropping over worried eyes. "Yeah, I have them. Don't worry. You looked half-dead again, Soren. Are you still sleeping only four hours?"