The Garniers were originally an upper-middle-class Jewish family from the suburbs of Paris. Sensing the growing political tensions following the war, the immediate family emigrated to the United States in the early 30s. Art dealers by trade, the family established themselves in New York City ascertaining themselves with the quickly growing art scene. The upcoming matriarch of the family, Claudette Garnier, was an unconventional female Alpha—opting to remain unmarried and cement herself within the modern art circles rather than marry a fellow Alpha. It came as a shock to both her family and friends when Claudette eloped with a gangly Omega boy ten years her junior in 1946. Claudette met Eric Blau, a tall gingery boy from Brooklyn Heights when he remodeled the Victorian-style water closet in her two-story brownstone in the Upper West Side.
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The odd couple instantly fell in love, and eloped but remained infertile. Like many Alpha female/Omega male couples, they had trouble conceiving, resulting in vicious familial pressure from the Garnier side of the family. No matter how hard they tried, Claudette could not carry past the first trimester. With her reaching her forties, the couple decided to change tactics and consider adoption. The Garnier family threatened to break up the couple, stating that their inability to conceive was a sign that this was a marriage destined to fail. However, one summer evening the couple announced that Eric was with child—an even rarer occurrence in this type of dynamic. Even though a grandchild was welcoming news, the Garniers held their breath not knowing whether either their son-in-law or future grandchild would make it. To much relief, Claude was born on a snowy December night in 1951.
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The peculiar dynamic influenced much of Claude’s life. While growing up in New York and later on when the family moved to Philadelphia, he was the only child with a stay-at-home Omega dad. Claude often heard snide remarks from students and teachers alike, ranging from misogyny to antisemitism. His mom, working as a professor and curator, faced equal amounts of backlash, especially as the older person in the couple. Despite these hurdles, Claudette and Eric always had support from their friends. Artists, architects, socialites, and other members of their intimate circle would often visit. The New York side would drive down for every gallery opening and random holidays. They showed equal amounts of love to Claude, often mercilessly spoiling the kid, despite Eric’s objections.
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Miss Sharon was amongst the visitors. Growing up, she was always quite stern with Claude often snipping at him for his rotted pranks. Concurrently, he detested her. He hated her nonchalant attitude towards him and the cloud of cigarette smoke often trailing behind her. During one visit, Claude yanked Miss Sharon’s hair and quickly tried to run away. She reflexively grabbed him by the arm and then quickly put out her cigarette. She dragged him to his parents, who were having drinks on the couch. “Claudette, you’ve gone and spoiled the damn kid!” she remarks, after smacking him in the head. Claudette laughed and said in her thick French accent “Oh, let him be! He’s just a little boy.” Eric would shake his head in response, “Claude, apologize to Miss Sharon,” he commanded sternly. Claude pouted and averted his gaze. In a whiny voice, he muttered under his breath, “Sorry Miss Sharon.” Miss Sharon's eyes were intently trying to catch his. “No point in apologizing if you don't mean it,” she replied coolly, pulling another cigarette from a metal case and lighting it. Claude pouted and turned back to her frustrated. He didn’t understand why she was being so mean to him, he did apologize. “Claude,” replied his father even more sternly, “apologize sincerely.” Before Claude could open his mouth with the wittiest retort a nine-year-old could come up with, Miss Sharon interrupted and simply stated, “Enough. No man is worth his salt as a liar.” The words stung Claude but he never pulled her hair again.
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As he grew older, Miss Sharon became a staple guest during the summer breaks. In his teen years, she became the designated babysitter during his parents' anniversary vacations. Despite Claudette having many siblings, they were all too busy taking care of their own families to help take care of Claude. He felt a twang of jealousy seeing his cousins run around New York but summers with Miss Sharon weren’t too bad. She taught him non-city activities like fishing and hunting. The two would camp out in the woods somewhere, dig for pottery clay during the day and look out into the starry sky at night. She became his escape from the yuppie circles of his parents and allowed him to run around covered in mud and dirt. The two continued the tradition in his late teens as his potential secondary gender intervened with his ability to enroll in programs like the Boy Scouts. With puberty striking, he also felt comfortable enough to share his sexual preferences. Through the nerves and tears, Miss Sharon held him tightly as if he were her child. Comforting him, Miss Sharon also wept knowing how difficult life was about to become for him henceforth.
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At the start of college, his parents decided to move back to New York with Claudette accepting a position at a prestigious school in Manhattan. Claude, on the other hand, decided to remain in Pennsylvania, relocating to attend a prestigious school as well. Free love and drugs were particularly common amongst the preppy youths in his dorm and Claude dove headfirst into the culture. The local hippies were open with their sexuality and Claude was swept in. The school was a place where he didn’t have to hide his homosexuality and being attractive didn’t hurt. He divided his time holed up in the library, dancing at the local clubs, smoking with the freaks in the park, and in the sheets of some stranger. He quickly curated a rotation of lovers, none of them serious. Claude didn’t mind—he was having fun. He’d somehow managed to graduate Cum Laude with an acceptance to a law school out West. To the dismay of his parents, Claude deferred for the following year. He was having far too much fun to truly begin his adult life.
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However, it all came to a halt when he received a call from his mom, at the time attending a conference in Ontario. “Claude, I need to ask you a favor,” she cried over the phone. “It’s Sharon. She’s in the hospital and we are stuck here. Please go see her.” Without much hesitation, he flew down. Claude was told she was now alright and to not be alarmed once he saw her.
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No amount of warning could have prepared him. His heart dropped down to his stomach as he let out an audible gasp. Claude could barely recognize the woman. Miss Sharon’s long brown hair was gone. In its place was a pale shaved scalp with faint greys peering through. Her once deeply tanned skin was almost translucent and tightly wrapped around her visible bones. Her cheekbones were unnaturally pronounced with her lips, pallid and dry pursed together. If not for the respirator allowing her to slowly breathe in and out, Claude would have thought he’d met with her corpse. He tried his best not to scream as tears cascaded down his eyes. He quickly left the room. In the hospital hallway, Claude dropped to his knees and cried harder than he’d ever done in his life.
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He collected himself the best he could to sign her visitor list. She only had a few visitors, mostly members of her church and a priest. The priest was the only one visiting her daily and had been the one who reached out to them. A nurse helped Claude stand up. gently patting his back as he continued to weep. He was led down to a private space where he could continue to process the situation. He passed by several wards of recovering women, their rooms decorated with get-well-soon messages and gifts. In contrast, Miss Sharon’s room was plain with only the standard bedding and stark white equipment. Claude felt his heart grow heavier with the sudden realization. She is all alone. He quickly went to the hospital shop on the ground floor and purchased whatever he could get his hands on and raced to her room. He wiped his face and began decorating as best he could. The last thing he wanted was for her to wake up because of his sniffling.
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It took about a week for Miss Sharon to be discharged from the hospital. Despite her constantly insisting Claude go back and let her resettle, she couldn’t help but to enjoy the company. It had been almost four or five years since they had last seen each other. Claude had never visited Miss Sharon during college years and was surprised that the town she called home was so small and desolate. The first couple of days were difficult as there was nothing to do and the adults were at least twice his age. Things in town closed as soon as the sun set with even the local bar closing up around ten at night. It was a slow, quiet life in the country and unfamiliar to a city boy like him. Sensing the growing frustration and his refusal to leave, Miss Sharon encouraged Claude to borrow her car and drive to Atlanta. She told him of a couple of areas Claude could meet some of his kin. Surprisingly, Claude adapted quite quickly to the town after that. He began making friends within the scene. The people he met were less of the starry-eyed, preppy frat boys he’d encountered in his undergrad and were of different racial, economic, and gender backgrounds. He began to drive his new crew to Miss Sharon’s for Sunday dinners. Claude had expected Miss Sharon, a woman now in her mid-70s, to feel odd about a crew of queers crowded around her kitchen table. To his delight, Miss Sharon appeared to enjoy it even more than himself.
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To his parents' delight and Miss Sharon’s concern, Claude permanently relocated to Atlanta and applied to law schools at universities within the city. He was accepted at his first choice and rented an apartment in downtown Atlanta. Things began to stabilize during his first year: Miss Sharon’s hair was growing back and her health slowly began to recover. Claude finally began to seriously date for the first time in his life, even introducing his new man over the phone to his parents. Things were going smoothly till the start of his second year. Claude had caught an illness that broke out into tremendous fever and pain. He fell delirious and hot to the touch. Claude began convulsing, scratching at his body feeling as if he was about to break out into hives. His boyfriend had rushed him to the hospital and sniffly called for Miss Sharon from the emergency room. At the hospital, staff tranquilized Claude with stabilizers and a mild sedative. At twenty-five years old, he manifested as an Omega.
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His manifestation quickly shattered the utopia he had created in Atlanta. He had been dumped shortly after his diagnosis. Claude’s now ex, a younger Beta, insisted it had nothing to do with his secondary gender and manifestation. He swore up and down that he’d never do that but Claude knew better. He was incapable of marking Claude, he had grown anxious. Claude sensed the shift in affection, the growing uncertainty in his eyes. He grew wary of the alphas in Claude’s life and grew increasingly cagey. Claude too had grown uncertain. A hunger grew inside him that his partner couldn't quench or understand. Senses Claude had grown without suddenly made their appearance and disrupted his everyday life. It was a relief to Claude when he ended things first but left him feeling lost. A world had opened up before him that he’d never known before. For the first time, he felt vulnerable. His body suddenly became foreign and reacted to sensations he’d never experienced. Claude was afraid of how certain scents aroused and debilitated him. But it also scared him how others reacted to him.
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While Miss Sharon and his group of friends knew his new status, Claude kept it from the rest of his family. It was not out of fear of unacceptance, his parents had already shown to be quite supportive but it was something else entirely. He would be the first Garnier in hundreds of years to manifest as an omega—a new set of pressure Claude was unsure of how to manage. What if they weren’t to accept him? Would they ostracize him? They already hate his father and they may begin to hate him as well. Would his mother also suffer the consequences of his manifestation and be cut off?
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Most of all, Claude was not ready to face critique again. Enrolling into a southern university as a gay, Jewish man was already difficult enough but now he needed to present himself as an omega. The slurs hurled and attacks on his person were horrible enough but now his adversaries could further their damage. Beyond the rest of his studies, Claude was afraid that he may lose out on opportunities. Omegas often faced difficulty getting hired and were more often than not the victims of gendered discrimination. He’d already faced it from his ex-boyfriend wouldn’t an employer do the same?
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For the rest of his second year, Claude was placed on medications to ease his transition. Miss Sharon and friends stopped by his apartment frequently to make sure he took his medication and remained emotionally balanced. As he had manifested this late in life, his heats were more severe and unstable. Rather than being enveloped with a desire for procreation, Claude's heats erupted into acute pain and suffering. It took months for his medication to react positively with Miss Sharon driving him to therapy to better process the transition and regain his old self.
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By the third year, Claude came clean to his parents. They were delighted and quickly had their sights on grandchildren—a future once thought to them impossible. Claude began to date again but went back to his undergrad ways. He was still learning to be comfortable amongst alphas and was working towards building up his tolerance to their pheromones. He wore his protective collar less frequently and began to work out for the first time. Claude interned in firms up in New York where his family had connections and faced a bit less prejudice. His life was finally back to how he’d originally planned.
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Now, in the summer of his last year of university something changed once more. Miss Sharon’s longtime friend, Father Michael had passed. Miss Sharon was mournful and saddened by the loss. She’d told him of a young man she knew who could step in for the father, at least for July. Claude paid no attention to the small-town affairs much less one with Catholicism. But he liked the way she seemed so excited for her friend to come by. “When he comes in, please introduce yourself,” Miss Sharon spoke eagerly. “He’s too young to be living here amongst us old folk.” On the day of his arrival, Miss Sharon quickly hurdled together dinner and urged him to take it to the new man who’d moved in. “Aren’t you coming Miss Sharon?” he asked as she pushed a basket of food into his hand. She turned her back to him and nosily began to wash dishes. “I have a lot of chores to take care of. Why don’t you just go on ahead?” Sensing this was more of a command rather than an option, Claude uncomfortably walked over. The heat felt disgustingly muggy and unpleasantly sticky that day but walking to a stranger’s home made it all the more miserable. Miss Sharon had purposefully sent him off alone as if she were setting up a playdate for toddlers. I’ll just drop this off and go home he thought to himself.
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When Claude knocked on the door, the last thing he expected was a handsome man to answer.
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