Author's Note: Firstly, many thanks to debjunk for her wonderful beta work! Secondly, I admit the whole alpha-omega thing is kinkyboots and I like it. And thanks to a thread on one of the SSHG facebook groups, herroyalgoddess managed to plunny me and plunny me HARD. (Oh yeah, baby.) So, here ya go, herroyalgoddess! Love ya.


Chapter One

Hermione had never been a believer in the whole alpha-omega-beta nonsense. She'd been gone on the first Hogsmeade trip of the year to meet with Ron and Harry instead of studying for her NEWTs, but it had all gone south when she'd gone to kiss Ron. Sweet, charming Ron. Her boyfriend. He had recoiled from her, hand over his nose. The same nose that had had dirt smudged on it the first time they'd met.

"You smell wrong," he'd said. When Hermione had protested that she'd taken a bath, he'd shook his head. All he'd expounded on was that she smelled wrong, and when she'd offered to try a new perfume or something he'd given her another little shake of his head and a sad smile with no further explanation.

So much for a lovely birthday celebration. Getting dumped and told you smell.

Of course, things had continued to go south. The few times Hermione had approached coworkers post-Graduation, they'd declined. She was starting to think she'd gone mad, and apparently suffering from some sort of odor problem. No one else had a scent to her beyond the usual—bath products, perfume, cologne, and the like.

In the end, she was twenty-six by time Ginny gently explained it to her. Filled in the gaps that someone—Molly, perhaps, or Madame Pomfrey, or one of the numerous mediwitches she'd seen—really should have filled in ages ago.

Alpha. Beta. Omega. Things that made absolutely no sense. Mated pairs? Scent? Hermione was shocked and offended. It was absolute nonsense. Sure, pheromones were a thing, but scenting a mate between 16 and 18 and that being that?

So, like Divination, she had simply refused to believe it. After all, she didn't have the bump on her shoulder like a proper Omega or Beta, the bump that all her girlfriends had developed after their eighteenth birthday. She'd never scented someone on the air and gone after them or gone into heat or made nests out of blankets. She got restless and horny, certainly, but so did Muggles.

Believing it was tripe was, she could admit to herself, a lot easier than believing that she was somehow broken.

Hermione gave up on trying to date wizards. She settled for bars when she was in the mood for a shag, picking up Muggles for unfulfilling one-night stands or even a few clumsy attempts at making it work. It didn't work.

It never worked.

She couldn't connect with them. She was lonely. Bone-achingly lonely.

That didn't stop her from hitting the bars. She didn't drink much, finding the music a soothing pulse to the empty hollow in her chest.

On nights like tonight, her thoughts wandered to the whole hidden dynamic of the wizarding world that had been hidden from her. It may have been tripe, but she'd never find her mate. Her fingers drifted over her smooth bare shoulder under the pretense of smoothing her curls.

Even if she did, she was no mate worth having.


Severus accepted the clap on his shoulder with barely-contained annoyance and a grimace as he gathered his briefcase. Being alive was a nuisance to this day, and worse was that he wasn't able to keep up with the demand on his brewing business on his own.

Which was why he had a team of passable witches and wizards who had somehow gotten it into their heads that although he was their employer that he would welcome some camaraderie.

They were young, immune to his venom, and tenacious enough that he was going with them to a bar for the usual Friday post-work pint. It was easier than sitting in his empty house feeling lonely.

Tonight they had chosen a Muggle bar—he couldn't call it a pub, not with the throb and pound of music threatening the integrity of his ear drums. Charlene and Travis nearly dragged him inside. They were an Australian mated pair, well-suited to each other, and completely enamored with the idea of dragging him out and about.

Severus often thought that they were trying to help him find his mate, and didn't have the heart to tell them it was worthless. He had never scented a mate: for that matter, he'd faced every heat purely alone. It wasn't worth the shame of someone finding out his secret.

Severus wasn't an alpha. He wasn't even a beta.

So he sat in the dark corner of the pub, looking out of place in his usual frock coat, nursing a pint he didn't even want, when his head snapped up, nostrils flaring.

Over the smell of body spray and perfume and alcohol and sweat came a tantalizing smell that made him break into sweat.

His mate.


Hermione was half-heartedly flirting with—Dan? David? Whatever—when she smelled it. Something new and different over everything else. Something that made her thighs clench reflexively and her cheeks heat.

She blinked, trying to dismiss the feeling and listen to whoever he was talk about whatever it was he saying. But her attention was divided. Part of her was suddenly on full alert, the fine hairs on her arm standing on end. That part of her wanted to search and find whoever held that scent, bury her nose in them.

And the rest of her was properly appalled that she had been wrong and there was such a thing as mates.

The pulse of the music hadn't changed but she was more aware of the bass. The thick, heavy notes crawling into her sternum to mess with her heartbeat.

She gave up paying attention to the Muggle, pointing him in the direction of a girl who had been looking over often. That made her feel a bit better over throwing him aside for her mate.

Hermione looked around the bar, trying to find the source of the smell, to find the wizard it came from. It was getting stronger.

Her surprise must have shown on her face when she turned on her stool to find Severus Snape standing next to her, his eyes impossibly black.

"Mate," he simply said in a voice thick as treacle. "Where have you been?"