Page 34 of Hired for Research
What had she expected? She saw the little boy knocked the girl down, and saw those big alphas moving in, and her heart at lurched into her throat, pulse hammering with an irrational fear that some thing was about to happen. Something bad, and she needed to get those children away. If Jett hadn’t been there, she would’ve done something incredibly stupid, and probably dangerous.
Shaking her head, she open the door to her room, shrugging out of her coat and tossing it and her laptop bag onto the extra bed. Honestly, what she had seen on that playground was probably one of the best examples of parenting she’d seen in her life, yet her first reaction had been to assume the worst, simply because the fathers were alphas.
Had society really conditioned people to that point? That despite there being children involved, their own children, alphas were dangerous?
Her stomach churn as she let her head hang, guilt flooding through her at the obvious answer. She wouldn’t have reacted the same to betas. Hell, she wouldn’t have even slowed her walk to see what happened.
Eyes turning to where the laptop case rested, her jaw clenched and a growl filled the room. She’d been put off typing up her observations at Twinkle because she was so torn, but she was tired of arguing with herself. It was obvious that the mandates were completely unnecessary and that people had been misled.
Yes, the few days she had spent in Eden showed her that alpha did respond to their instincts more than betas.
Yes, they were prone to growling and intimidation and posturing with each other, but it rarely went beyond that.
Yes, they were big, and sometimes scary, and her instincts pushed her to do things around them that she wouldn’t with a beta, but none of that was their fault.
Her project was going to be shut down. She refused to lie and give the Federal Bureau of Population and Labor what they wanted just to keep the project funded.
Rushing to her bag, she pulled the laptop out and sat down on the bed. Opening the file where she was supposed to be leaving her observations, she started typing with a fury. She wasn’t going to leave anything out, she was going to document it all, but she was going to make sure that there was nothing that could be used against Eden, or alphas in general.
It was possibly career suicide. It had been made clear what was expected, yet she was doing the exact opposite. The Bureau had connections to not only blackball her from any future research projects, she was possibly risking the director’s career as well.
She shrugged off that concern. He would get to read it all before it was submitted to the FBPL, and if he chose to let it pass, he knew the consequences. She had a feeling he wasn’t going to pretend like she hadn’t done her part.
She made detailed observations of the past two days since her last entry about Community. Each one turned out to be pages long, and she worried over the wording for longer than she probably needed to. By the time she finished and looked at the clock it was the past midnight, she only had a few left before she’d have to get up and shower to meet Jett downstairs to walk back to the hospital.
Closing the laptop with a yawn, she didn’t even make it to the other bed, simply curling up where she was and falling asleep. Her alarm went off what felt like minutes later, jolting her awake with a rush of adrenaline that had her blinking blurry eyes and scrambling to dig her phone from her coat pocket.
It took her longer to shower and get ready than usual, but it gave her time to think about what she was going to do. The guilt she felt wasn’t just tangled up with what the Bureau expected her to say about alpha behavior. She’d come to realize that the research into finding a medication to change the way an alpha behaved was unethical.
Yes, she was still curious to know if there was an undiscovered hormone or something that would explain the differences between them and a beta, but as far as using that knowledge to alter them, she refused.
She stepped out of the lift with a new purpose, her brisk strides taking her to Jett’s side. He was already waiting for her, and she couldn’t help but smile at the man that had helped push her in the right direction, even if he didn’t know it.
“You’re in a good mood.”
She flashed a grin that he returned, his dimples making her core throb. She couldn’t explain it, they had no sexual connotation, but there was something about them that made her want to jump him, and damn the consequences, every time she saw them.
“I made good progress on the project last night. I still have to run the blood and pheromone tests and compare brain scans and all that, but I’m happy with where I’m at.”
It was the simplest answer she could give without explaining all the details she had been hiding. Even though she made the decision not to go through with what they were asking of her, she still wasn’t sure she should tell him exactly what they had been attempting.
The day passed much like the first, with only a few alphas showing up in the morning before a larger group came in the afternoon. She should have expected as much since many of the alphas had jobs to report to, and she found herself bored despite Jett’s company.
When Tuesday seemed like it was going to be the same, she decided to head to the lab to begin running what tests she could with what was available in Eden. A couple of the tests she wanted were specialized and she had no choice but to send the blood to one of the few labs that could perform them, but she could handle a lot of the basics herself.
Jett remained in the exam room to let her know if anyone showed up to leave a sample. She was surprised he allowed it, but he’d seemed to calm a bit over the last couple days.
Since she was assuming they’d been wrong about testosterone being the main culprit making alphas different from betas, Evelyn figured there was no reason not to cover all the usual test, no matter if they seemed relevant or not. Metabolic panels, lipid screening, she even did a CBC and liver function study on top of checking hormone levels. Nothing stood out, but she would have to comb through the results once she had all of them compiled to be sure.
She made it through a good chunk of the samples before a slow trickle of alphas began stopping by in the afternoon. It stayed steady until the end of the day when her and Jett cleaned up and headed for Community. She could observe alphas at any restaurant, but it was the most unique, with a different atmosphere than any other.
They were walking back to her hotel afterward when Jett asked if he should meet her at the same time in the morning. She thought about it for a moment, but if there weren’t going to be any alphas coming in to leave samples, there was no reason to keep going in so early.
“I guess we can wait until later. If everyone is busy working in the morning, there’s no reason to waste our time. Even the lab tests can wait since all I have to do is get them in the machine and input what tests to run. I can do that in between taking samples later in the day.”
“If you want, I could take you by one of the worksites in the morning instead. You could see how the guys work together.”
Smiling, she nodded. The greater the variety of her observations, the more impact they would have.
