Sakura knew from a very young age that she was an omega. She may have been a late bloomer in many things: her self-confidence, her purpose, even her ninja skills, but one thing that she had known since she was ten years old (ridiculously young by most standards) was that she was an omega.

She could remember the day before she displayed as readily as she could remember the first time she had successfully used a henge jutsu.

She had felt itchy and feverish since the moment she had crawled out of bed. Her breathing had been labored, as if she had just ran a significant distance, and she couldn't seem to catch her breath. She distinctly remembered wondering when she had gotten sick.

Her mother, the observant woman she was, had told her to stay home from class and to try to get comfortable. The first part had been easy but the second had been incredibly difficult. It had been impossible to get anywhere near comfortable when Sakura felt like she was going to crawl out of her own skin at any moment.

The day was spent in a daze, mindlessly wandering her home and feeling strangely undefined. Like a dream where a person knows where they are, or at least where they're supposed to be, but everything is hazy and indistinct. She had finally gotten to sleep sometime late that night, tangled in a mess of too many yet too few blankets, and when she had awoken, she felt… Different. As if she actually had shed her skin in her sleep and had woken that morning in a fresh body.

Sakura was also unbelievably exhausted and had soaked her blankets in sweat.

Her mother had taken one sniff of her daughter that morning and had proudly declared, "An omega. Just like your mom."

Which had been followed by a lesson on mate dynamics and what to expect when she met her alpha, which had Sakura turning seven shades of red.

The second thing that Sakura had known was that Sasuke was going to be her alpha. He hadn't displayed yet, but she knew the he was going to be her mate like she knew that the sky was blue and that water was wet. She could smell it like one can smell the lingering scent of perfume after someone had already left the room. It stuck to the back of her throat like the sweetness from a candy and left her feeling giddy in his presence.

Or at least she had thought he was going to be her mate.

She had waited on bated breath for Sasuke to finally display for years. She had been ecstatic when she was assigned to his team (much less excited when Naruto, who hadn't displayed yet either and assumed Sakura was going to be his mate, was assigned to her team as well). She could almost tell when the lone Uchiha was going to display, her sense of smell feeling as sharp as any Inuzuka's, and impatiently waited for the day.

Sasuke seemed to hate her guts, taking every opportunity he could to call her annoying or weak, but she knew that his tone would change soon.

They had been travelling back to Konoha from the Land of Waves after succeeding in their mission to protect the bridge builder Tazuna and the newly dubbed Great Naruto Bridge. Sasuke had fully recovered from his injuries at the hand of Zabuza's partner, Haku, but he still appeared to be struggling against some ailment.

The Uchiha had been far more agitated than usual, electing to snap at whoever he deemed was bothering him rather than his usual route of simply ignoring them. He scratched at his skin almost constantly and breathed heavily, as if winded, for the entire day. Kakashi had made them take frequent stops, under the guise of keeping their strength up, even though both him and Sakura knew the real reason behind it.

When Naruto had curiously, and a bit jadedly, asked why Kakashi had sarcastically congratulated the young Uchiha, Sasuke had told him to shut up and mind his own damn business.

The morning after they had reached Konoha, Sakura woke up at the brink of dawn to take a long, fragrant shower and to put on her best dress. She wanted both her and Sasuke to remember the moment they realized they were mates for the rest of their lives. Nevermind they were at the tender age of fourteen, not quite within the acceptable range for such activities, even being ninja.

Sakura had fawned over numerous (heavily censured, she would later learn) novels about alphas and omegas coming together for the first time and she could only hope that the beginning of their relationship would be just as romantic as her books. Either way, she had planned out this moment for the last three years, fantasizing over the topic constantly. It would be perfect.

An hour before the time team 7 would generally meet at their training field, Sakura had travelled to Sasuke's house with a skip in her step. She certainly couldn't have them having their first kiss in front of Naruto and Kakashi. Gross.

As always, she got an eerie feeling entering the constantly opened gates into the former Uchiha district. She rarely set foot in this place, perhaps only having entered the walled off, empty community twice in all her years. Each time she had, however, she could feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. The place was far too quiet in comparison to the rest of the village, the silence nearly deafening in its intensity. While Sasuke was certainly the richest member of the village in regards to real estate, him having inherited the dozens of abandoned homes after some tragic happening, he was also the most lonely.

Sakura ignored the prickling sensation of being watched as she approached the front door to the house she knew Sasuke lived in. She knocked on the chipping door politely, avoiding the peeling paint, and patiently waited for the object of her affection to open the door.

After a few dozen agonizingly long moments, the door creaked open to reveal a half-dressed, bleary eyed Sasuke who appeared to just have rolled out of bed. When she caught a whiff of his new, alpha scent, she blushed deeply. His scent was nearly overwhelming in it's intensity, leaving her feeling weak in the knees. She wanted to jump into his arms that very moment, but instead, she waited.

Sasuke just stared with an expression that teetered between frustration and exhaustion. He obviously looked worn out, not just from the journey back from the Land of Waves but from his transitioning into an alpha.

"Well, what do you want?" He hissed, rubbing his bloodshot eyes with one hand as he leaned heavily on his door frame.

Sakura's heart sank. All of her books said that once an alpha and omega who were compatible caught each other's scents that they would be inseparable. That the reaction was immediate and incredible. She felt as if she was going to drop to her knees in the wake of his scent, but he didn't seem to care at all about hers.

"W-what… I-I..." She stuttered, eyes wide.

He didn't feel it?

Sasuke continued to stare at her in exacerbation, waiting impatiently for her to speak. If anything, he seemed more aggravated by her mere presence than ever before.

"I… Uh… You don't…?" Sakura choked out, trying to collect her scattered thoughts enough to form a coherent sentence.

"Just tell Naruto and Kakashi-sensei that I'm not going to practice today. I'm staying here," he interrupted as he pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration.

She would have noticed how he hadn't used the word 'home' to describe where he lived if she hadn't been so confused.

"But, I-" Sakura started, earning another exhausted glare from the object of her affection.

"But what? What do you want?"

Her jumbled thoughts finally coming together to form the most important question she had: "You don't feel it?"

"Of course I feel it. I feel like trash. Thanks for reminding me," he grumbled wearily as he moved to close the door.

Sakura jolted forward to try to stop him from closing the door and when she did, Sasuke wrinkled his nose as if catching the scent of something putrid. She had wanted to clarify what she had meant by her question, but his grimace as he obviously smelled her made her words burn away in her throat.

He simply glared at her once again, obviously frustrated by her actions and lack of response.

"Gods, you're so annoying. Go away," he insulted before slamming the door in her face.

Sakura stood on his door step for the longest minute of her life, staring at the closed door before her with a bleak expression.

She was… Wrong?

There was no way she had been wrong! She had known Sasuke was going to be her alpha for years now! He had to have just smelled her wrong or something. Maybe the soaps she had cleaned herself with that morning had covered up her scent?

'You're so annoying.'

No matter what excuses Sakura made to herself, the bitter taste of rejection and something else on the back of her tongue didn't lie. She turned around and headed back home.

Neither her nor Sasuke showed up for practice that day.


Sakura had been crushed for months. She had been positive that Sasuke was going to be her alpha. She could feel it in her bones. Even now with him finally presenting, he was just as cruel (if not more) than usual. Nothing had changed for him even though she was now hyper aware of his every move.

She was so painfully aware of everything he did. His scent nearly overwhelmed her every time she caught it. When she happened to be in one of her heats in his presence, she felt shaky and near euphoric every time she smelled him. Even with her obvious physical reactions to him, he felt nothing. Even worse, every time he smelled her, he would scowl as if her scent disgusted him.

Sakura took nearly every opportunity she could to jump start their 'moment'. As if there had been a mistake and he just hadn't noticed her yet. As if there was a certain number of steps that needed to be achieved first.

She completely ignored the books on mates that her well-meaning mother had given her when Sakura had presented. All of the romantic novels she had read in private, pilfered from the other girls (namely Ino, who still insisted that she was going to present as an omega any day now) in the academy who had been just as obsessed with mates as her. They all had to be wrong.

She furiously researched instances in which an omega or an alpha were affected by another's scent but the other didn't reciprocate. The only thing she had turned up was some nonsense on alphas and omegas sometimes getting a false-positive on a non-mate because the non-mate was in close blood relation to their true mate. Obviously this didn't apply to her.

Even if it did, fat chance of her ever meeting her mate, considering Sasuke was the only Uchiha left. She couldn't accept that Sasuke wasn't her mate, let alone that she would be alone for the rest of her life.

No matter what she did or what Sakura tried, however, Sasuke always had the same response: you're annoying.

When the kunoichi took care of Sasuke and Naruto in the forest of death after Orochimaru had attacked them, Sasuke hadn't cared. When she had hugged him and pleaded with him to not kill Zaku (even though he had given her the worst beating of her life up until that point), he hadn't noticed. When she had woken up after being knocked unconscious by Ino in the preliminary matches of their first chuunin exams, it was Kakashi who checked to see if she was okay.

Even when she had caught Sasuke defecting from the village and had poured her heart out to him, he had been unphased. She had professed her love for him, begged him to see reason. She even offered to come with him on his journey when that failed because she didn't just know he was her mate but that she loved him.

Sasuke had just uttered the same phrase that broke her heart every time: You're annoying. This time, he paired it with a merciless blow to the back of her head that knocked her unconscious.

When Sakura woke up on that bench hours later, the sun already perched high in the sky, she finally realized what a fool she had been. How wrong she had been for so long and how badly she had tried to trick herself. Her mate would never attack her, it was just something they didn't do. True mates couldn't hurt each other even if they wanted to. It was impossible.

She sobbed on the bench for what felt like hours, overcome by shame and despair.


For the next few months, Sakura drifted without purpose. Sasuke had not only been the boy she thought would be her mate but he was her teammate. She hadn't realized how important he had been for keeping her team together, for keeping her life stable, until he was already gone.

When Naruto left the village with that perverted, cheapskate sannin, she had been without an anchor. No one would hire a painfully inexperienced genin for solo missions and the missions in which she was included as an add on to another team were few and far between.

She was severely lacking in all aspects of being a ninja except for her quick thinking and intelligence. When Shikamaru was available though, a freshly made chunin, a brilliant strategist, and a ninja skilled in both taijutsu and ninjutsu, she was never asked for specifically and rarely chosen for missions at all.

Not only that, but Kakashi had been reassigned to numerous missions requiring a skilled jonin (he was a legend after all). She was without teammates, she was without a sensei, and not only that, but Kakashi hadn't even bothered to make accommodations for her. He just stopped coming to their training sessions.

Sakura had sat alone at the training field for six hours once, waiting for Kakashi to show up for their old team's usual training sessions. It had been Team Asuma who had arrived to tell her they had rented out the field for the afternoon and that Kakashi wasn't coming. At least Ino had kept her fat mouth shut in the face of Sakura's humiliation.

She had been officially left in the lurch by every person who she had held close. Even her parents had been of little help, considering they were both sought after jonin and were frequently away on missions of their own.

After a few months of no missions, no one to train with, and sitting with the feeling of what little muscle her body had built wasting away, she decided to make potentially the most humiliating or life-changing decision of her life.

Sakura was going to ask Tsunade, the Fifth Hokage, one of the legendary sannin, and the most skilled medical ninja in the world, to be her mentor.

When she had finally gathered up the courage to stand before the alpha woman's desk and ask her to be her mentor, Sakura felt like her heart was going to stop beating in her chest from racing so fast. She could feel her hands shaking but desperately tried to hide it, lest the intimidating sannin see her weakness and reject her on the spot.

The legendary woman had never said yes outright. Even years later, Sakura had never gotten a definite answer. Instead, the blonde had given Sakura a staggering list of poisons, descriptions on how they affected an afflicted individual, and a corresponding list of antidotes (some of which could work on multiple poisons) and told her she had a week to memorize it all.

Sakura's jaw nearly dropped but she had agreed immediately. If this is what it took to find her purpose then so be it.

She had memorized the list flawlessly and even impressed Tsunade by telling her the main ingredients used to make every poison on the list.

Sometimes Sakura regretting her decision to try to impress her would-be sensei because right after the woman had nodded approvingly, she had fished a thick scroll on the circulatory system out of one of the numerous shelves in her office and told her she had a week to memorize it.

Apparently Sakura hadn't learned her lesson the first time because the next time she strolled into Tsunade's office, she not only answered every one of the sannin's questions on the circulatory system perfectly but answered every trick question about the lymphatic system that Tsunade had included as well.

From that point on, Sakura dedicated her life to becoming not only a medical ninja, but the kind of ninja who could not only heal but could protect. She wanted to be a kunoichi like her mentor. A ninja who was as at home on the battlefield as they were in the hospital. She refused to be left in the dust by those around her ever again.

She would not only stand on her own two feet but she would help others do so as well.

Sakura shoved any thoughts and fantasies about her possible future mate to the back of her mind, making way for medical ninjutsu and endless training.

After all, if Sasuke wasn't her mate, then no one was.