My A/B/O Lore
Thank you so much for the questions @rowdyheaux 🥰
A small disclaimer before we dive in: I'm not an expert on typical Omegaverse tropes. But I did craft my own worldbuilding far too extensively (just ask @audisodd — you might find that useful, by the way!). I tried to take a very serious approach to a universe that shouldn't be that complicated. But I'm an overthinker, so… prepare yourself. I went on a tangent. Here we go!
A/B/O dynamics (aka Omegaverse elements ahead. Don’t like it, don’t read. Same with Dusteve undertones).
1) What is Alpha voice? Who does it affect?
Alpha voice is a biological override layered into speech — not magic, not mind control, but a pheromone-backed command impulse carried through tone, cadence, and intent. It works because second-gender brains are wired to recognize hierarchy cues, especially under stress.
Who it affects, and how
- Omegas feel it hardest, especially during heat, pre-heat, or emotional distress. It can short-circuit resistance and make their body respond before their mind catches up.
- Betas feel it more like pressure or suggestion. They can ignore it, unless they're already overwhelmed physically or emotionally.
- Alphas are not immune. They don't submit the same way, but they do react:
- Another Alpha's voice can trigger instinctive pushback, aggression, or territorial tension. You either outrun or you yield.
- In rare cases (bonded pairs, strong trust, or pack and blood ties), it can land as grounding rather than control.
So no, it's not "only works on non-Alphas." It's more like: it forces everyone to acknowledge the hierarchy being asserted.
What they do with it depends on who they are.
2) Why are the adults so tense about Steve and Dustin being alone?
It's not just "teenagers might hook up." That's almost the least of it. What they're really afraid of is accidental or instinct-driven mate bonding between Alpha & Omega.
In my setup:
- Dustin is a newly presenting Omega: late, unstable, untrained, and very much in denial. And yes, he's a teenager.
- Steve is a young Alpha under pressure with control issues he masks well… until he doesn't. More importantly, Steve is recovering from a biological crash-down he literally should not have survived. He's also a recovering addict.
That combination is very volatile.
The risks the adults are actually reacting to:
- Unintentional biological bonding. A claim isn't the same thing as mating. Mating doesn't have to be fully conscious. High stress, injury, fear, or heat/rut proximity can trigger it.
- Scent escalation. Being alone means no external regulation. If Dustin spikes into pre-heat or Steve into early rut, it can snowball fast. That's why the nest room was monitored, and why Owens insisted on decompression afterwards.
- Social consequences. A claim is not binding; it's socially important, but that's all. A mating bite and bond, however, would lock them together in biology in a life-altering way, beyond society's judgment.
- Power imbalance. Dustin is brilliant, but underage, physically vulnerable and newly Omega. Adults see that, even if Dustin refuses to.
- Instinct override. Steve can literally force him—he would never want to, he actually resisted— but it’s just… lizard brain behavior (or rather, wolf-like instincts). I can happen and Doctor Owens did warn Dustin about that.
So yeah — it's not just moral panic because Dustin is a teenager. It's "this could permanently alter both their lives in one bad moment."
External look at the scene in chapter 16 from adult Omegas
Susan Mayfield's POV
Susan had already made one impossible choice for her own sixteen-year-old pup. She had let sixteen-year-old Lucas Sinclair bite his Beta girlfriend because Max had been dying in ways doctors and Eleven couldn't stop.
And even then — even with trust, consent, preparation, and understanding on Lucas and the Sinclairs' part — a bite is not a tattoo you can eventually remove, or a scar that can fade.
The resulting mating bond is not a promise ring or a marriage commitment. It is biology taking a pen to the soul. You can feel your mate's brain and body and emotions responding. It can be broken, yes—technically, clinically, brutally—by injury or distance, death or trauma. But nobody came back from that unchanged. A broken bond is just… unlinked. It's still there, and the former mates are altered forever. Susan, an Omega with her own broken bond (I suspect from Max's dad, because I don't wish her ever linked to Hargrove Sr.), knows that in her marrow.
So when Susan saw Steve, as her ward, wrapped around pup Omega Dustin on that bed—coaxing an intimate gland, mouth pressed to his forehead, Dustin purring himself boneless against him like his body had already decided Steve was his anchor—Susan reacted strongly.
This was not pack behavior. This was not a puppy pile, not boys being boys. Wrist glands were one thing (still personal, still meaningful, but often half-hidden under watches and bracelets, brushed in public between packmates). Throat glands behind the ears were something else. The only more intimate spot is at the base of the spine, what is sometimes named the mating gland: private, covered by underwear, sacred.
Gland rubbing that deliberate is not casual comfort. It is courtship language, mate-language, even. And Steve—sweet, earnest Steve—had also let vows fall out of his mouth at the same time his body covered Dustin's: “I'm staying. I choose you. Always.”
Susan trusted him. She trusted him with Max. She trusted him enough to know he would rather chew off his own arm than hurt anyone on purpose. But trust did not erase reality. It did not make an underage, barely presented Omega suddenly safe from biology just because the recovering Alpha she'd just seen panic earlier had good intentions.
That was why she snapped so hard. Not because she thought Steve was a predator, but because she knew he wasn't—and that made it more dangerous, in a way.
The couch thing and boundary setting wasn't just social propriety. It was a mother Omega standing guard at the edge of something binding and life-altering, saying:
You boys will not stumble into forever under my roof, not when you don’t understand the cliff under your feet.
Joyce Byers' POV
Joyce knew these boys far better than Susan. She also shared most of their secrets so far, in a way no other adult does. She has borne two male Omegas, one even gay.
When she came through that doorway, she had expected trauma. She had expected Steve Harrington and Dustin Henderson to be clinging to each other, as usual. Best friends and trauma survivors — she was part of the Upside Down mess, she'd seen the apartment, she'd seen the nap time, and she'd talked to Robin.
What she saw instead awoke every maternal instinct.
Steve was in the bed, wrapped around Dustin like a shield, more intimate than a pack mate. Dustin was purring. Not a reflex sound, but deep and trusting — his scent sweetened, his body folded into Steve's. Steve's mouth had been on his forehead, too tender. His hand kept rubbing behind Dustin's ear — not his shoulder, not some harmless patch of sleeve-covered skin, but an intimate gland. A place you did not touch by accident, and did not keep touching unless some part of you knew exactly what you were soothing.
Joyce could forgive panic. She could understand panic. She had crawled into hospital beds and held her boys and El too tightly after nightmares and monsters and government men with soft voices.
But this had not looked or sounded like pack comfort at all. Too mating like to be only claiming. Touch me, I’ve got you, you’ve got me. I’m not leaving, stay with me. Would a friend ever talk like that? Do that in a stranger’s house? And Dustin, the most independent of the Party pups, had answered immediately—with scent and purr and surrender, which was sometimes more honest than speech.
That was what frightened her most. Not simply the possibility of a bite, like Susan feared. It was the discovery that this had already moved into pre-mating before either of them seemed to realize it. Claiming, bed sharing, gland contact, purring, that locked-in hush between them: those were not harmless details. They were signs.
Joyce did not think Steve meant harm. She knew he carried loneliness and literally a bleeding heart. So Joyce's reaction was not prudishness. It was recognition. She was watching two traumatized boys behave less like best friends and more like mates.
Even if it wasn't what Claudia explained to the other pack parents.
3) How often do ruts and heats happen? What triggers them?
Betas excepted, a presentation lasts four to six months: the time supposedly needed for a typical designation to settle, as bodies need to reach anatomical maturity before their first rut/heat.
My fic is a special case: unstable cycle due to early imprinting and trauma. Steve has been suppressing artificially and drop left him altered and starting from scratch. Dustin is both a very late bloomer and suffering from an accelerated presentation.
Frequency
- Heats (Omegas): every 4 months usually. For females at their peak, it might be only 3 months. For males, up to 6 months. It's more regular in female Omegas because they're more "reproductive-friendly" than males.
- Ruts (Alphas): every 4 months usually. More suppressible, but more reactive to environment. Female Alphas generally rut less often — every 5 to 6 months (because they have progesterone in higher concentration).
- Duration: Both heats and ruts can last from 2 to 5 days. But the longer they go unattended, the more dangerous they get.
- Management: The easiest ways to get through them are mating, partnered care (professional or pack), chemical regulation in very specific circumstances, or solitary confinement with appropriate dedicated tools.
Triggers
They're mostly "biological calendar events." But they're also biologically reactive states that can be exceptionally triggered by:
- Proximity to a compatible designated person (especially one they're mated to).
- Stress (body seeking safety through bonding).
- Scent exposure (pheromones, fluids, adrenaline).
- Suppression rebound (if they try to ignore or fight it too hard).
- Jealousy or perceived threat (another Alpha or Omega near "their" potential mate, or a reclaim of a formalized mate).
Bonus Side Note: Pup-Bearing Compatibility
Fertile pairings:
- Female Omega + any male designation → Most fertile pairing overall.
- Male Omega + Female Alpha → Fertile, (he carries) but male Omegas are less fertile overall.
- Male Omega + Male Alpha→ Possible, but rare. Less fertile due to Mpreg.In the 80s (and even now), likely stigmatized by bigots and homophobic mindsets.
- Male Omega + Female Beta → He can sire pups (she carries), but only if mated and synced to her.
- Male Alpha + Female Beta → Standard Beta fertility (she carries), but easier if mated and synced to her.
- Male Alpha + Omega (any gender) → variable good fertility (the Omega carries)
- Female Alpha + Male Beta → She can carry his offspring, but only if mated and synced enough to him.
❌ Sterile pairings:
- Same-designation pairings (as well as same gender beta) → Sterile.
Faces the most stigma in a society that prizes "instinctive" pairings.