Does a Disabled Omega Have to Be Forcibly Loved Too? (NPH) - Chapter 10: Omega
Chapter 10: Omega
Research on the side effects of Omega mark erasure and its trauma recovery didn’t rank high among the dozens of projects Eden Pharmaceuticals was currently conducting.
Joshua’s lunch slot that day was auctioned off to a collector. The man’s taste was mediocre, his reputation built entirely on marketing, and bidding for Joshua’s lunch was just another part of that strategy.
But Joshua didn’t mind. He was only using the lunch auction to market himself anyway.
He learned after the lunch ended, as he shook hands with the half-baked collector and said goodbye, that his subordinates had hung his poster in the hotel lobby without permission. They also claimed a mystery guest would attend the lecture downstairs.
Joshua rarely attended such low-value business lectures. His assistant hadn’t scheduled it for him either; it was just another wordplay marketing tactic.
But Joshua thought they did a lousy job.
He had to inspect a general hospital under Eden Pharmaceuticals that afternoon. He didn’t have time to clean up his subordinates’ mess, and of course, he wouldn’t pay for someone else’s mistake.
Joshua had his poster taken down, offered a few simple suggestions for damage control, and finally told them in the elevator that after the lecture ended, they should head straight to HR to process their resignations.
No one dared speak in the elevator. Joshua was quite used to this atmosphere until the doors opened, and he sensed an Omega’s presence.
Joshua’s mental strength was rated S, his physical stamina A. If he had chosen a military path, he would have been at least a major by now.
In fact, Joshua had graduated from the Imperial Military Academy.
The Imperial Military Academy was the best military academy in the empire, bar none. Graduates entered the military with the rank of second lieutenant right away.
At the academy, lineage mattered least. Whether from a family or royalty, preferential treatment was severely limited within its walls.
Joshua had graduated top of his class that year.
He had, of course, undergone rigorous Omega pheromone interference training at the academy and achieved the second-best score in the school’s history for that course.
The top spot belonged to Arnold August, two years his senior.
But years later, after Joshua earned eligibility for the Omega matching list, he realized his stellar performance in the pheromone interference training probably owed much to his natural talent.
Like August, he hadn’t found a single Omega with a pheromone compatibility above sixty percent in all those years.
One condition the Omega Association required for issuing an AO marriage certificate was a pheromone compatibility of sixty percent or higher.
Below this minimum, the lifelong bond between an Omega and an Alpha wouldn’t be strong enough to counteract the influence of other Omegas’ and Alphas’ pheromones on them.
Likewise, below this threshold, the pheromones of an Omega and an Alpha wouldn’t hold much attraction for each other.
A few Omegas in heat had once offered themselves to him, but he simply called his private doctor and the Omega Association, then gave up his room to the Omega.
To Joshua, the average AO marriage was essentially a union of pheromones.
Families and royalty might factor in political considerations, but top conglomerate positions weren’t inherited like that. Wealth could be passed down, but marriage alliances became largely unnecessary.
He just wanted to find an Omega who could let him experience the rumored ecstatic pleasure of an AO bond.
Joshua considered himself a common man. He wasn’t keen on asceticism to temper his character, but he also wasn’t willing to settle for an Omega or Beta he found unattractive.
Years of waiting had nearly worn out his expectations until the elevator doors opened, and he saw an Omega.
Normally, he rarely noticed Omegas in a crowd. Without pheromone attraction, they were about the same as Betas to him.
But he noticed her instantly.
She looked like a fairly standard female Omega—petite, gentle in appearance, with wrists so thin they seemed they might snap.
But he didn’t smell her pheromones, perhaps because of the suppressor patch on her nape.
When he saw the patch, his briefly wandering reason returned. Joshua recalled the Omega Association’s rule: an unmarked Omega couldn’t go out alone.
This was a claimed Omega.
As Joshua passed by this Omega, he felt a faint, almost imperceptible trace of an Alpha’s pheromones.
She must have been claimed by an Alpha higher on the matching list than him.
A bit of a shame. But he was used to it by now.
When Joshua got into his car and left the hotel, Dinah also entered the banquet hall where the lecture was held.
The lecture was predictably dull. The speaker was an Alpha professor. Though his research focused on Omega-related topics, his words dripped with an Alpha’s arrogance.
Only a handful of Omegas sat in the audience. No one objected to this arrogance, and Dinah wouldn’t be the one to speak up either.