Page 58 of Hired for Research
And so was greed.
The mandates may have begun due to fear of alphas because a few bad ones had taken advantage of their dynamic traits, but it was greed keeping them in place when people were willing to look past the exaggerations and mistruths that had been perpetuated. If alphas had really been the problem, locking them away should have put an end to crime, but it hadn’t.
Evelyn sighed as the city came into view, having cried herself out during the trip. Despite the way it ended, she would cherish the time she’d spent with Jett. She’d never considered mating, never expected to even meet an unbonded alpha, but she knew Jett washeralpha. She’d felt it from the beginning and going through a heat with him only confirmed it.
But she’d ruined that. Part of her wished he’d lost control and bitten her during her heat, so they’d be forced to work things out instead of running away.
The lights and noise of the city grew closer as the speeder descended toward the university. It was midafternoon and past time for the other researchers and professors to have left, but it was still a blow to pass through the empty halls with the cart carrying her supplies. She’d had the speeder land out front since she had to get everything put away before going home, and while she’d never paid much attention to her solitude prior to going to Eden, now it was a physical weight pressing down on her.
What was she doing with her life?
She’d had friends back when she was still in school, but as classes grew harder, she’d stopped going out. Then her friends began moving away or moving on with their lives while she focused on proving she could do everything the betas could. Once her parents died she’d been left alone, and while it was familiar, she hadn’t realized how much the loneliness affected her. She was living the shadow of a life.
It was dark by the time she walked out to where she’d left her car, not a single star visible in the sky. She wished she’d gone back to Twinkle and taken pictures, but all she had were memories.
The drive home seemed to take longer than usual, the traffic grating on her nerves. Light, noise, the stench of too many people crammed together and not enough greenery, all assaulted her senses, sending her running for the door as soon as she pulled into her drive. She tossed her bags down as she rushed straight to her bed, fresh sobs breaking free as soon as she threw herself into her blankets.
She spent the weekend wallowing, only leaving her nest when necessary. When Monday morning rolled around and it was time to pull herself together, she considered calling in sick, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Dragging herself into the shower, she made herself presentable and managed to make it downstairs in a decent amount of time. She avoided the luggage lying beside her dining table, grabbing the laptop bag and heading out the door. She didn’t even take her coat, knowing it would carry the lingering scent of him, but luckily the warmer weather was holding out and it looked like winter was finally relenting to spring.
When she arrived at the lab she should have gone to talk to the director, to at least let him know she was back, but he was tangled up in her feelings of guilt and anger over the project so she had no desire to see him. An email would work just as well, so she typed it out, letting him know she’d be studying the results as she waited on the rest from the special tests.
Evelyn threw herself into the work. Focusing on finding correlations helped keep other thoughts at bay. She set herself a grueling schedule, working from seven in the morning until nine in the evening before forcing herself to go home and sleep for a few hours and repeating.
A week passed.
Then another.
She received the results from the specialized testing and dove into them, hunting for anything that set alphas apart. She pulled up copies of testing done on betas, comparing them.
She found little things.
An increased enzyme here, a larger gland there, a lower level of certain hormones and higher of others… Nothing she could point her finger at and say for sure was what made alphas different. Nothing that would give a direction for the drug research she was supposed to be doing.
The relief was enough to keep her going. Instead of growing disheartened by her findings, it drove her on. She dug deeper, looked harder, even asked for favors from others who specialized in microbiology and endocrinology and any field she thought might have an insight.
She was down to only two weeks before her findings were to be presented, and she had nothing. No proof that mandates were necessary. No drug ready to test. Nothing even in the theoretical stages, because there was nothing she could find to change.
The director was surprisingly hands-off considering his personal interest in the project. He walked by her lab frequently, checking on her, but he seemed content with the short notes she gave him about her progress. It was obvious she was working, her goal just wasn’t the same as the purpose of the Alpha Project.
This was what happened when someone let their personal feelings bias a study. And as much as she wanted to reach out to Jett, to tell him everything she’d been doing, she didn’t try, because she didn’t want to have anything that could be used to discredit her work.
And because she was scared.
She doubted anyone else could find anything after she’d searched so hard to be sure she left nothing unchecked, but there was always the chance, and she’d rather the project be dropped and forgotten than have a researcher take over who didn’t have the morals to care if messing with the alpha’s hormones would cause negative side effects.
That was the extent of the plan until she walked into the director’s office the day before the board meeting to tell him she was finished, to find his eyes red-rimmed as he held the picture he’d showed her six months prior.
“Deacon presented Monday. He was at school. Twelve is a little early, but not unheard of, especially considering how long he’d been showing signs of being an alpha. My brother presented early too.”
Her lips parted, the room suddenly feeling like it didn’t hold enough oxygen. She didn’t know the boy, but she didn’t need to, to imagine the heartbreak her boss was feeling.
“They came and took him from school.”
The director’s voice broke, and he pulled in a shuddering breath as Evelyn wracked her mind for something to say. Twelve was so young. Too young to be on your own in a strange place, ripped form your life and family.
“We were told alphas need time to settle in and they’ll contact us when he’s allowed to have visitors. Once he passes the Primary Training we can petition to have him moved to the Camp my brother is at.”
