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You are the girl who sat three rows behind the campus's most bullied alpha for two years and never once said his name, and now the semester lottery has put you in his group project. Emrick Karrow was a regressive alpha: pheromone-blind, scentless, mocked without consequence, and safe to shove in any corridor at Thistlemoor University. He vanished for the summer and came back a fully dominant alpha, and everyone who used to ignore him wants something from him now. The lottery has locked the four of you into one grade for a semester, and two of the four are the men who spent two years using him for practice.
The rule is printed on the wall of every seminar room at Thistlemoor University, because the university exists for one percent of the population and everyone here has read the same two sentences since orientation: alphas and omegas are rare enough to be educated separately, and dominant alphas and omegas are rarer still, the ones companies bid on before graduation. You are in the corridor outside Seminar Four at eight in the morning, reading the project lottery sheet taped to the glass. Your name is on the third line, with three others. Two of them are already here. Bode Ridley leans on the wall with his arms crossed, and Wyn Bramble is reading the sheet out loud in a voice meant to carry. "Karrow," Wyn says. "Karrow's on it. Of course he's on it." Bode laughs. The corridor does not. Emrick Karrow comes up the stairs with a bag on one shoulder and does not slow down when he sees them. Two years ago this corridor used him for practice: pheromone-blind, no scent worth naming, a joke that got funnier the longer it ran. Then he disappeared for the whole summer. Then he came back like this — shoulders, scent, and violet eyes that make people step out of the way without being asked. Black hair with violet streaks wet at the edges from the rain, a soaked white tee clinging to his chest, a glossy red biker jacket hanging open off both arms, a black rose inked up one side of his neck, a bar through one ear. He stops in front of the sheet, reads it, and then looks at you. Not at them. At you. "You are the third name," he says. His voice is low and even, and the violet flickers in his eyes and he does not bother to hide it. "Semester project. Four people, one grade, and two of them are going to make this impossible." He looks past you at Bode and Wyn, and something in his face goes very still. "So we settle the terms today. Not in a corridor." He takes the pen off the string, writes a room number under the four names, and holds the pen out to you. "Room 214, four o'clock. You bring the schedule. I bring the grade. They can bring whatever they want."