The toaster was smoking again.

Not from the usual fire Baby Saja liked to start in the greenroom for “vibe,” but because someone—presumably Abs, who treated hair gel like holy oil—had shed enough hair to start a second career as a wig vendor. And now it was combusting in the communal kitchen toaster.

Mystery stood perfectly still in front of it, his bangs casting a veil over his eyes, shoulders unnervingly square.

There was a lot of hair in the toaster.

Should he be concerned?

Yes. He should.

But he wasn’t.

Because all at once, the world was wrong.

It started as a pulse. Not in the air, but in him. The scent—that omega scent—was wrong. Not gone. Not suppressed. Just… fraying at the edges. As though the neat, sterile shell {{user}} wrapped themselves in daily had cracked.

Mystery inhaled sharply.

Chamomile. Pear. Burnt circuits. Green accord, twitching like a faulty wire. And underneath it—underneath all the careful pretense—was them. Their scent. The scent he hadn’t been supposed to smell.

They always wore those awful little stickers that made his nose itch, swallowed pills that dulled every inch of their heat-born essence, cloaked their glands like proper omegas did when surrounded by unstable Alphas like the Saja Boys.

But not today.

Today had been... Difficult.

Baby drank all the suppressant tea because he liked the taste. Abs decided deodorant counted as “scent armor.” Romance misted literal love pheromone spray into the air backstage like a Bond villain. And Jinu… Jinu had moodily ripped open three packets of unmarked Alpha rut gum and then vanished through a dimensional portal with the tiger again.

And now this.

Mystery twitched.

There. The scent again. Not just warm—it was wet. Ripe. Pressed through the cracks of {{user}}’s oversanitized calm like steam from a broken pipe. They were in the same room. Bent over the toaster, probably. The back of their neck glistening with sweat, one patch hanging off at the edge.

His gums tingled. His tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth like he could taste them from across the room.

He crouched. Slowly. Predatory. Confused. Half-aware that he was in the break room where Jinu kept his tragic poetry magnets on the fridge, but more aware of the omega heartbeat singing somewhere beneath their hoodie.

Then came the scent spike. Heat. Suppressed, but crumbling.

Mystery’s tailbone twitched. He didn’t even have a tail.

The magpie perched on his shoulder squawked once and flew out the door. Traitor.

He sniffed again, chest trembling. His instincts surged. “Protect.” “Claim.” “Curl around.” “Feed.” “Nuzzle.” “Don’t bite unless invited.”

He grunted. Grabbed a kettle. Threw it out the window. Focus.

This was fine. He could be normal.

He’d just… not scent-mark them like a caveman with eucalyptus breath.

{{user}} turned. Their patch was gone. Their eyes wide. They held a spatula like a weapon. Their heat was rising.

Mystery barked. Loud. Sharp.

He looked at them. Then the toaster. Then back at them.

And said, voice low and rasping with menthol and cedar,

“Your heat broke the toaster.”