The ice cream parlor smelled like sugar and nostalgia, cool air drifting in lazy waves from the glass counter. The hum of freezers mixed with the chatter of children pressing their faces to the glass, debating flavors like their lives depended on it. Mia was one of them, braids swinging as she pointed, her black eyes sparkling with the kind of excitement only sugar could summon.
"Three scoops," she declared proudly, reminding him of his promise. "You said if I behaved, I'd get three."
Chris leaned on the counter, pale arms folded, his black eyes still shadowed from the sterile brightness of the clinic. "You call what you did in there behaving?"
"I didn't faint," Mia shot back, chin lifted.
"You almost asked the nurse if she could draw your blood instead of mine."
"That would've been fun!" she said, stomping her feet, scandalized that he'd think otherwise.
Chris shook his head, lips curving despite himself. "Three scoops, then. Don't come crying to me when you can't move afterward."
Mia beamed, tapping the glass as if the ice cream maker needed her approval. "Chocolate, strawberry, and mint. All together."
"Disgusting," Chris muttered, but he ordered it anyway, sliding bills across the counter. He got a smaller cup for himself, coffee flavored, his usual. Something bitter to cut the sweetness.
They sat at one of the outside tables, the summer air pressing down warm but not unbearable. Mia dug into her tower of scoops with the joy of a child who hadn't yet learned moderation. Chris stirred his ice cream slowly, thoughts turning back, unbidden, to the clinic.
Dominant omega.
Calibration error.
Beta.
The words stacked in his head like cards he didn't want to play. His wallet felt heavier with the new card tucked inside, neat black letters that told one story while his body whispered another.
A buzz broke through his thoughts. His phone lit up on the table. Andrew.
Andrew: Working late tonight. Don't wait. Grab something from a restaurant and bring dinner home for the three of us.
Chris stared at the message for a moment, jaw tightening. Andrew was only twenty-five. At his age, he should have been out with friends, thinking about a mate, about making a family of his own, not raising two siblings like a father who had never asked for the job. Chris didn't want to be another burden.
He sighed; if the machine wasn't broken and he was really a dominant omega, then things would get more than complicated.
Dominant omegas were rare, precious, and sold to the highest bidder. Usually to a dominant alpha, sometimes into royalty itself, their lives rewritten overnight. They weren't considered people anymore so much as inheritance, dynasty carriers.
They were a mystery, with little information available about them, as if someone wanted to keep them out of the public eye.
Royal omegas… his family had seen one.
Great-Aunt Elara Malek. Her name was always said in half-whispers after she was taken.
Chris could remember being small, barely ten, listening from the hallway as his uncles and aunts retold the story. Elara had been registered at eighteen, just like everyone else, and the moment the word 'dominant' appeared on the page, her life had been over. A car had come before the ink was dry. She was sold, married, and removed from the registry of the Maleks as though she'd never belonged to them in the first place.
The elders always dressed it up: our Elara, they said, living in a palace, jewels like water, clothes from fabrics they couldn't even name. She was lucky, they insisted, whisked into a life they could only dream of.
But Chris had noticed the pauses, the fact that their father never mentioned her, and how his mother's mouth pressed thin whenever someone mentioned fortune.
Silk and marble didn't erase the fact that she was sold.
He looked down at the neat little card in his wallet, the one that said 'beta,' and felt a wave of grim relief coil in his chest. Let the world think him unremarkable. He had no desire to be anyone's dynasty.
Across the table, Mia was already halfway through her monstrosity of three flavors, her smile sticky and wide. "You're staring at your ice cream like it owes you money," she said, voice muffled around a spoonful.
Chris blinked, pulled back to the present, and shook his head. "Just thinking."
"About what?"
"About how disgusting that combination looks," he said smoothly, flicking his spoon at her cup.
Mia gasped, protective, hunching over her melting tower. "You just don't understand art."
Chris smirked, letting her chatter wash over him as the summer sun leaned heavy on his shoulders. For now, he could pretend. He was a beta on paper, a brother keeping promises, and a young man with ordinary problems.
'I won't make Andrew's life even harder.'
"What do you want for dinner?" Chris asked, pulling a small packet of wet wipes from Mia's bag and catching her sticky fingers before she could smear chocolate across her yellow dress.
She blinked up at him, cheeks still round with sugar. "Can I choose?"
"Let's make something good for Andrew." He wiped her mouth carefully, ignoring her squirming protest. "Something that won't make him think we only survive on sweets."
Mia thought hard, her brows pinched together as if she were deciding matters of state. Finally, she lit up. "Noodles! From the place with the red lanterns. He likes those."
Chris tucked the wipe back into the packet and leaned against the table with a faint smile. "Then noodles it is."
He slid his phone out again, sending Andrew a quick reply: 'We'll bring food home. Don't worry.' No complaints, no reminders that Andrew was too young to carry so much. Chris would do anything to help him without feeling pressured that he wasn't enough.
Then he tucked the phone away, stood, and ruffled Mia's hair despite her indignant squawk. "Finish up, sticky fingers. Andrew's going to need dinner waiting when he drags himself through the door."
Mia grinned, clutching her cup with renewed purpose, as if noodles and ice cream together made the perfect feast.
And for Chris, watching her smile, it almost felt like it was.