Okay got one, do alpha/beta/omega have strong sense of smell? Like can they find someone in the same room by their scent. Second: Can an alpha get aggressive when he's in a rut? Let's say someone stops/holds the alpha back when in that stage do they hurt them? Sorry, I'm writing a story then I just went to your blog and you're answering this type of stuff! Lucky day and what a coincidence.
Both of those are good questions!
Scents and Omegaverse
For the first one, the answer is yes for the most part. Each individual exudes their own scent that is uniquely theirs. However, only alphas and omegas have an enhanced sense of smell. Scents in omegaverse will also carry other things beyond just someone’s base smell – they very often contain elements of the person’s emotions. For instance, if an alpha were to get very angry, others might back away because they can smell the anger rolling off of them (like a pungent smell). Or if an omega were to be scared, the fear would literally permeate the air, and very often you’ll see others rushing to the rescue of a scared omega. Of course, these can be reversed – an alpha can exude fear (say, they thought their mate was going to die) or an omega can be very angry. And other emotions can be detected as well. Additionally, the scents are what carry the pheromones that attract alphas to omegas and omegas to alphas during heat. It’s described by alphas as like a pure distillation of the omega’s natural scent – if they smelled earthy before, during heat they’ll smell like forests after a rainshower, like rocks when they get wet. Scents are also an evolutionary defense mechanism; most authors will establish in their universe that a mated omega’s heat smells good only to their mate, and other alphas find their scent to be repugnant. Perhaps while not bad enough to literally force them from the room, it’s something that they might have to grit their teeth or turn their nose up at – like us and strong body odor, or us and farts or wet dog smell or the like. It’s a strong smell of unpleasant that will be a first line of defense for a mated omega.
It’s traditional that only alphas and omegas have this enhanced sense of smell, like I said. Betas – who for an intents and purposes are just regular humans like you or I – don’t have the ability to smell these things can often be oblivious to certain things: They don’t know their omega friend is going into heat and they aren’t really aware something is wrong when that first alpha advances on them before whoa they should not be that close that’s wrong. So it would be back to us, trying to pick up on these things through social cues; beta friends might keep track of their omega friends’ heats so they can know in advance, or they could be good at reading faces, etc.
A final thing to note about scents is that it plays a huge role in omegaverse for the purpose that this is how one will find their true mate. This is someone’s soulmate – the person who “smells better than anybody they’ve ever met” is how it’s almost always written, but we see a number of things in advance to indicate soulmates usually: their personalities fit in complementary fashion, they support each other, they’re listed as the OTP in the fic’s header, etc etc. But in-world, the realisation almost always comes because they can smell something incredibly special on their mate. Again, betas are limited to the normal range of smells so they won’t be able to detect this, but an alpha or an omega whose true mate is a beta could detect them.
This also (god I can’t stop talking about scents) is why scenting is a thing, going both ways. It’s seen as something intimate to rub your nose into someone’s neck (which is generally where the person’s scent is strongest, and in omegaverse is commonly where the “scent gland” is located) and inhale their scent deeply. Think of that as something akin to feeling up your partner (or a complete stranger). You don’t do it in public or in front of your family without at least blushing a lot or a number of people kinda recoiling a little (because it’s such a personal/private thing), and if the advance is unwanted, it’s when things really start going downhill because that’s usually always what precedes an assault. Don’t want to end that half of scenting on a bad note though, and I want to remind that this is almost always something exuberant; the alpha and omega pair in the story will just inhale deeply their mate’s scent and feel at peace or feel relieved at their safety or them being back or whatnot. It’s an intimate and loving gesture.
The other half of scenting is that your scent is really strong and leaves behind traces of it. You’ve probably experienced something like this before – if you spend all night surrounded by smokers, you’ll wake up in the morning smelling like cigarette smoke. Same thing here, but on a much stronger and more primal level. People – including betas, though they can’t smell it themselves – will leave behind traces of their scent on an individual. Other people can smell it and can arrive at their own conclusions by it. A common one is being mated; if you smell like someone completely inside and out, that usually comes with mating because of your high proximity to your mate. People can misunderstand this which is fun – your OTP has been spending so much time together and they’re pining but they don’t know the other person’s feelings and so they have to tell their best friend with a broken heart that no, they just smell like him/her because they’ve been spending so much time at their office/babysitting their kids/doing this or that, and the reader gets to scream for like five different reasons. It’s also a way to add drama, because someone can forcibly scent somebody (the same verb for “to smell” is also used for “to place one’s own scent on another person’s body,” and you just have to use context clues to figure out which definition is the author’s intent) and leave scent traces behind on another person’s body. This can be for a number of reasons, but it’s usually either possessiveness (positive emotion scenting) or dominance (negative emotion scenting). An alpha might be incredibly proud that they are able to scent their omega and let everybody smell them on their mate, and it’s a show of “they are mine, stay away from them” or “look at who the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen mated – it was me! :D.” On the negative emotion spectrum, scenting someone else is usually against their will and with ultimately bad intention. It’s either an act of aggression/assault, or they’re manipulating over time and slowly scenting a person with a long stroke of the arm (scenting is mostly done through physical contact, though secondary scenting via proximity is still a thing), or they do it to “wipe away” an alpha’s claim on the omega. Not permanently, but it’s enough to rattle both the alpha and the omega (I’ve got a number of fics I could have used as examples in this post but I wanted to keep this strictly informative and fandom/pairing agnostic and stick purely to established facts).
Anyways, so that’s scenting. tl;dr it’s hella important in omegaverse, and everyone has strong scents but only alphas and omegas can detect them. betas can only smell things we normal humans can smell.
Aggression and Rut
I’m glad that this is going to be a short and succinct section because otherwise I’ll wind up making myself late for work haha.
When an alpha goes into rut, there’s a lot of aggression. Rut brings out an alpha’s primal side, and for a number of evolutionary reasons, aggression would be one of them. I made a post a little over a week ago about alphas going into rut, and if you subscribe to the idea that alphas only go into rut because of an omega’s heat, aggression would be a great evolutionary defense mechanism to ensure protection of a pregnant mate/their pups/etc. If you don’t subscribe to that idea, or you just want another reason altogether, alphas as a sex have an incredibly strong amount of power. Often times it’s just called “alpha strength,” but it’s stuff where they can lift whole people without difficulty (or multiple peoples) or they can hold doors closed against three people beating on them, etc. Going into rut, like heats for omegas, is greatly about losing control of themselves. It’s a natural conclusion then that, even the most mild-tempered alpha who never uses or abuses their strength could suddenly go wild without even knowing it, or get aggressive, because they’re not fully aware of their own strength anymore, or when or when not to use it (all of mum’s strong words about using it only for good don’t really spring to their minds). I think most displays of aggression are limited to possessiveness – someone is threatening their mate, either actually or just through misunderstanding on the alpha’s part. But it’s an aggression usually with purpose – protect their mate.
That said, alphas in rut will just naturally be more prickly in their temper and their admonitions and might not be able to control their strength as well leading up to rut or especially during it. I’d imagine that alpha/alpha pairings during either one of their ruts (if your version of omegaverse allows alphas to go into rut without the trigger of an omega’s heat, see aforementioned referenced post) would probably leave a lot of collateral damage, and if both of them were to go into rut at the same time they’d definitely not be getting back their rent deposit.
To your question: if someone tries to hold back an alpha in rut, don’t. I mean, unless they’re about to do something incredibly wrong like force themselves on an unwilling partner or severely hurt somebody, you don’t want to get in that warpath. And if you’re in some way perceived as holding back the alpha from their mate or in some way you’re aiding in their mate being further hurt (say the alpha misunderstands the doctor standing over their wounded mate and thinks the doctor is trying to finish the job), well, it was nice fuckin knowin ya.
