Chapter 69: Missing Function

Chapter 69: Chapter 69: Missing Function

A month later.

"So you are telling me that my closeness to Nero could be my body sabotaging me while changing secondary gender?" Sebastian asked, arms crossed over his chest as he leaned against the open doorway of the diagnostic room.

Roberta did not look up immediately.

She stood beneath the largest wall display with a tablet in one hand, comparing three overlapping receptor maps that Sebastian understood just well enough to recognize as his own and not nearly well enough to know why the newest one had developed several violet branches along his thoracic glands.

"Why are you here?" she asked eventually. "Claude already explained receptor dependence to you."

"He explained that Nero’s pheromones are currently the strongest stabilizing stimulus my body recognizes."

"Yes."

"And that physical proximity can produce a measurable calming response."

"Yes."

"And apparently that means my body has decided Nero is medicinal."

Roberta finally looked at him.

Sebastian waited.

Her expression slowly became suspicious.

"What are you actually asking me?"

He disliked how quickly everyone on this medical team had learned that question.

Sebastian pushed away from the doorway and entered, the monitoring band around his wrist catching beneath the white diagnostic lights as he crossed toward the counter.

"Could the transition be making me emotionally attached to him?"

"No."

The answer came so quickly that Sebastian frowned.

"You did not even consider it."

"I considered it the first time you asked Claude approximately the same question using different vocabulary."

Sebastian stared.

Claude was a traitor.

Roberta returned her attention to the tablet.

"Nero’s pheromones can make his presence physically comforting. Your nervous system currently associates him with stabilization, pain reduction, and safety because, biologically, that is what he has been providing for weeks. His absence may therefore make discomfort more noticeable, and being near him may feel disproportionately pleasant until your receptors finish establishing their own baseline."

Sebastian folded his arms tighter.

"That sounds suspiciously close to emotional influence."

"It is physiological reinforcement, not manufactured affection. Your endocrine system cannot retroactively create years of attachment because you are becoming an omega."

Sebastian said nothing.

Roberta glanced sideways at him.

"You were hoping I would tell you that?"

"No."

"You look disappointed."

"I look tired."

"You always say that when you dislike an answer."

Sebastian decided not to dignify that with a response.

He should have left.

Instead, he remained beside the counter, watching numbers shift across the wall display while Roberta annotated something in his latest scan.

There was another question.

One he had deliberately refused to ask whenever Nero was within hearing range.

Which, until recently, had been almost constantly.

Sebastian cleared his throat.

Roberta’s stylus stopped.

That was irritating.

"What?"

"You are hovering."

"I am standing."

"You have been standing there for three minutes after receiving your answer."

Sebastian looked toward the open door and then decided to ask.

"When does libido come back?"

Roberta slowly turned her head.

Sebastian maintained his expression.

She stared at him.

"What?"

"You heard me."

"I did. I am enjoying the fact that you waited until His Highness was not in the building to ask."

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed.

"There is a reason for that."

"I can imagine several."

"No, you cannot."

"I absolutely can."

Sebastian sighed and dragged one of the stools away from the counter before sitting, long legs stretching awkwardly beneath equipment clearly designed for people of more reasonable height.

"As much as I would like to claim the whole sex after marriage thing was purely a joke, at the moment it is also medically irrelevant."

Roberta’s mouth twitched.

Sebastian glared.

"I am serious."

"So am I."

"I have nothing."

That finally wiped the amusement from her expression.

Sebastian gestured vaguely toward himself.

"No sexual thoughts. No spontaneous response. No interest beyond the theoretical understanding that Nero is offensively attractive."

"That sounds like your usual assessment of him."

"It is factual."

"Of course."

Sebastian ignored her.

"And nothing in the morning."

Roberta’s eyebrows rose slightly.

Sebastian looked irritated by the necessity of specifying.

"No erections. None. For weeks."

She placed the tablet down.

"And you only decided to ask now?"

Sebastian gave her a flat look.

"I was approaching berserk, coughing blood, and discovering that my secondary gender had become a construction site. Libido was not particularly high on the list."

"Fair."

Roberta set the tablet on the counter and turned the nearest display toward him. Several hormonal markers sat well outside their former ranges, surrounded by notes from the medical team.

"At the moment, the absence is not concerning. Your dominant-alpha reproductive cycle has shut down, while the dominant-omega system replacing it has not established a functioning cycle yet."

Sebastian looked at the screen.

"So I am between systems."

"In very simplified terms."

"That sounds reassuring."

"It is not supposed to sound reassuring. It is supposed to be accurate."

Sebastian dragged one of the stools closer and sat, long legs extending into the narrow space beneath the counter.

"When does it come back?"

"Most likely around your first heat."

His eyes moved immediately to her face.

"Most likely?"

Roberta folded her arms.

"There is no comparison data, Sebastian."

That stopped him.

"Nero is the first enigma born in the modern era. His great-grandfather was one as well, but the surviving records concern him changing a beta woman. They are medically interesting and almost useless for your situation."

Sebastian frowned.

"What about Sylvia Lancaster?"

"Different mechanism."

Roberta tapped the edge of the tablet.

"Nero did not build her dominant-omega secondary gender from himself. He transferred an existing dominant-omega pattern into a beta body. She gave us valuable information about what an enigma can alter, but not about what happens when one converts an unstable dominant alpha into a dominant omega while simultaneously preventing him from going berserk."

Put that way, Sebastian supposed expecting a timetable had been optimistic.

"So the heat could happen when?"

"Weeks."

He waited.

Roberta did not continue.

"Or?"

"Months."

Sebastian leaned back slowly.

"Months."

"Your body has already performed an enormous amount of restructuring. It may establish the reproductive cycle soon, or it may prioritize finishing everything else first."

"And until then?"

"You may continue exactly as you are."

No sexual thoughts. No spontaneous response. Not even the deeply inconvenient physiological confirmation every morning that the equipment still worked.

Sebastian rubbed a hand over his jaw.

"And once the heat breaks through?"

"That is when I expect your libido to return properly. It may begin beforehand as the cycle activates, but the first complete heat will probably be the clearest indication that the new system is functional."

Sebastian glanced toward the doorway.

Nero was safely in Altera.

Good.

Roberta noticed.

"You really waited until he left to ask this."

"I have some survival instinct remaining."

"Considering the man has spent a month trying to accelerate your wedding, probably wise."

Sebastian’s mouth flattened.

"The last thing Nero needs to hear is that sex may become biologically interesting again after an unpredictable future event."

Roberta retrieved her tablet.

"That sounds less like a medical concern and more like a Nero concern."

"They are increasingly difficult to separate."