Warnings for this story: (because the prologues opening was way to long)

This story contains Yaoi. And will contain BoyxBoy smut. Eventually. You have been warned.

There will no doubt be copious amounts of swearing, mentions of past child abuse, and Ivan being Ivan.

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Dragonna ... You'll be surprised.

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"I suppose you've all heard about what happened to the Engineering Branch Director."

Francis could have rolled his eyes, as the head of the Board of Directors addressed the entire body of employees in the American branch of Ahren Tec. He doubted there was a single person in the room who hadn't heard what happened to Matthias. After all, an alpha and omega meeting on a not-so-secret-anymore nude beach and then eloping to Scandinavia was one of those stories that spread around like wildfire.

Needless to say that Mathias Kohler, the alpha who'd just had a shotgun wedding, no longer had a job.

"The scandal that he was involved in was downplayed as much a possible, but it still remains true that this is the third incident we've had within the last two years."

Again, Francis was forced to withhold the urge to laugh. Yeah, the incident was downplayed, if revealing several incriminating photos on the evening news counted as playing it down. And who was he kidding - with the previous Advertising Branch Director caught cheating on his fiancé with several hookers three months previously, and a former Board member found guilty of smuggling and embezzlement the year before, it was no wonder that the company had been gaining a bad reputation.

Fact of the matter was, someone needed to fill in the spot of Engineering Branch Director, and Francis had a bet going with several other co-workers that whoever the man was that was filling the position; he was going to be some old geezer from Russia, where the head offices were, who wasn't going to cause any more scandals to be not-so-downplayed. Or, as his good friend Gilbert would have said: A boring old fart.

"Due to these alarming number of incidents, the higher ups have chosen someone from out of country that they feel will best fit the position."

Francis could feel a small smile of triumph spread over his face. A week of free lattés for him.

"The man is Arthur Kirkland, a twenty six year old alpha, who is flying in from his previous residence in London tomorrow. He will take up his position in approximately four business days. Thank you for your time."

Well. That was new. The woman he was betting with, a lovely beta named Bella from the accounting branch, was assuming that they would be promoting someone from within the company. He wasn't sure where they stood on that now.

But more importantly they were calling in an alpha from England. Who was young. And probably hot. Francis could feel his heartbeat pick up just a bit at the though of having a sexy young alpha wandering the halls of his department, coming over to Francis to talk and maybe have drinks and—

Francis jerked himself from his thoughts and looked around to see if anyone had noticed his daydream, but all the men and women around him, dressed in sharp suits and pristine skirts, were focussed on filing out of the conference room and with the work ahead of them, not the man staring off into space.

Francis swallowed hard and then set off for his cubicle, where his plan was to play solitaire until Kiku could find him something useful to do.

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As it turns out, being the secretary for one of the engineers was… not actually a particularly difficult job. Some of the secretaries had to bend over backwards to avoid having bad press about the company, and had their work cut out maintaining complicated schedules for the alphas that simply couldn't be bothered to do work for themselves.

Kiku Honda was not such an individual. He was one of the few Beta engineers within the company, due mainly to the fact that the one of the previous branch directors had an extreme prejudice and assumed that only alphas could come up with creative ideas.

Which was stupid because Kiku was by far the most brilliant engineer on the task force, and it wasn't like the engineers were doing anything really important anyways. The only thing to discuss was how to slowly release micro updates to make the earlier technology seem totally worthless.

Kiku could manage his own affairs.

Three coffee cups, seventeen solitaire games, and eight victories later, Francis found the office closing up, and that it was time for him to head home.

The subway was silent as Francis made his way home. The rhythmic swinging of his bag and the clacking of the train over the tracks did little to distract him from the lack of conversation permeating through the subway.

He made it to his house, a small but nice building in an out of the way suburb, and unlocked the door, only to be greeted with more silence.

There was the letter he'd left on the kitchen table when he'd walked out that day. There was the empty milk carton by the sink, exactly where he'd put it. Everything was exactly the way he left it, but it felt empty.

Francis shook himself to keep from falling into his own thoughts and went to open the fridge to see what he could make for dinner.

He supposed it was natural that his house felt empty. After all, at his age pretty much all alphas and omegas were mated by now, and if the betas weren't they had someone in mind.

And here was Francis with no one in his life. It wasn't like he hadn't had girlfriends - he had been well known for it in high school - but none of them had stuck.

Sure he'd liked several of the girls he'd spent time with, but they weren't what he was looking for. None of it was what he was looking for.

Francis decided he wanted something simple for dinner, so he ended up on a short walk to the pantry where he kept all of his pasta, and the horrid rarely-used jars of tomato sauce before heading back to the kitchen and grabbing a pot to start the water boiling.

His mother had always found it weird that Francis wanted to cook at a young age, but hadn't stopped him when he wanted to get into the gourmet stuff. He supposed he had only got so into it because it took him forever to grasp that alphas, betas and omegas were actually different things. For the longest time, he thought they were only titles, like Mr. or Mrs. And if he hadn't spent a few years reading into his subconscious trying to find the reason for the mix up, he probably would be leading a happy life, mated and slowly but surely planning for a child with some sweet woman he'd met through his first job or possibly in college.

Instead well… it wasn't like he hated his life.

Francis supposed that his troubles started in sex-ed class. They'd separated the genders and the types, and were supposed to cycle through all six groups, where two would get class with the two teachers and the others would have time in the library and then switch out.

Only Francis' group never got a turn in the classroom. They were told that for their group there really wasn't much to tell, and would it be tackled in a few years. And Francis, who'd spent his whole life being told that passion was everything and sex was one of the most passionate acts known to man, decided that wasn't good enough.

After a short fight with his father that was ended when the alpha left for the bar, and several elaborate plans to steal the neighbour's wifi password - which he succeeded at, thank you very much - he was all set.

He started with the basics: guy on girl, read some of those educational websites, and when that didn't tell him much found a bit of porn. Which still wasn't exactly what he wanted to know, so he kept on poking around, until he discovered the alpha and omega mating rituals.

And about heats.

It was the most arousing thing he had ever come across.

It wasn't even the thought of an omega being trapped in an almost perpetual state of arousal for several days, or the knotting, where the alphas penis would swell inside of the omega because of the slick they produced, leaving the two unable to part. In fact, he didn't find anything remotely arousing until he imagined what it would be like for the omega.

And it wasn't the sex that got to him; it was all the other stuff that went with it. There would be an alpha who would be strong, dominating but not oppressive, who would look after all his needs, and he could just let go and ride out the waves of pleasure as the man bred him, and then maybe have a few small kids belonging to both of them running around in a yard with a white picket fence.

After that, he started finding the scents of the alphas in his class really attractive.

He was only twelve though, and getting a boyfriend didn't seem like the best thing to do right then, because most of the alphas were more interested in football, and he had math class and an English paper due, so he just filed this piece of information about his sexuality away, to be examined later.

Which is why it took him about two years to realise how entirely fucked he was.

Alphas mated omegas, and betas mated betas.

Francis hadn't been attracted to anyone who wasn't an alpha in over two years.

And he was beta.

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A/N: Why did this chapter take so long? Well... I live in Canada right? Well... Currently I'm in Venice. Nuf said. I'd love to say that the next chapter won't take so long, but I won't be back home for another four weeks so...

I'll do what I can, but if you don't hear from me that's why.

On a completely different note, I can confirm that there will be RoChu in this story, as well as brief mentions of GerIta. If anyone has someone they particularly want to see Kiku with, who isn't involved in any other various parings, I can do that.

Hope to be here again sooner rather than later:

~RosemaryBagels