Page 21 of Monster. Me.

"If you liked that alpha so much, you’ll get plenty of chances to stare at him and jerk off. Your sperm production’s been dropping lately, and Lomax keeps complaining your little factory isn’t pulling its weight."

He gestures toward a massive glass wall, and for a second I almost forget everything else and just stare because it’s an enormous one-way mirror, and on the other side is a cafeteria packed with people eating dinner. I watch it for a moment, trying to figure out if these are the participants in Alpha Activation, vectors and varias who came here for hormonal reprofiling. And it seems like they are.

"Yup," Wilhelm mutters. "Look at the people your body is supposed to be helping."

On the opposite side of the room, away from the glass, there’s a standard living space: a bed, a wardrobe, a table and chair, even a small door that likely leads to a bathroom and shower, plus a desk and a laptop, so on paper it seems almost comfortable, like a hotel room. Well, look at that. Full luxury treatment.

But the illusion of normality doesn't quite hold up under inspection, though. My freedom is fake. There's a heavy ankle monitor strapped around my leg, and even on the rare occasions they let me leave, usually once a week, I still have to wear it, a reminder of my fate.

"Like your new vantage point, you weirdo?" Wilhelm mutters. "Maybe it’ll make your balls more useful."

I grit my teeth as anger surges through me, at Wilhelm, at the entire damn team, at everyone feeding off me while they dissect me piece by piece.

Then it just comes out: "You know I could kill you, right?" My voice is steady when I say it, and I lift my wrist so the reinforced titanium and carbon-fiber cuffs clink together. "I could tear these off. I could’ve gotten up and turned you into a stain on the wall. With one move."

Wilhelm has heard it before, especially when I’m exhausted and cornered and done being treated like a specimen, so he just shrugs.

"But you won’t," he says. "Because you know you’d get life instead of a few more months of experiments."

I clamp my jaw shut because the bastard is right.

He removes the cuffs and leaves quickly, like he doesn’t want to push his luck, and the door slams shut behind him with a keypad beep. Yeah, I’m locked in. I leave when they allow it, I come back when they decide.

Of course I could break the door down if I wanted to because none of them actually know what kind of monster I am or what I can become. They’ve never seen it, and that’s probably for the best, because I have two faces: one that just looks like a monster, and the other, much worse, an actual monster. A predator, a killer. Not many have seen that form, well… not many alive.

Most people believe I can transform the way purple alphas do, into a more massive form that can extend bony spikes from the purple lines that mark the sides of their limbs, but that's not the case for me… I am something different.

Slowly I sit down on the bed. It’s wide and comfortable. My head is still spinning from blood loss, but underneath it is something else too, a strange euphoria that won’t go away because Marlow’s touch is still humming through my system.

Everyone says magical ABOs can’t have fated mates because we’re genetic anomalies and normal compatibility isn’t supposed to work for us. Regular people usually recognize their True Mate in three ways: through so-called First Touch, an irresistible Allure scent, or the First Orgasm, during which their souls merge in an epic spectacle of light and electric discharges.

But that’s for ordinary alphas and omegas, not for the bizarre category we are, something separate and variable that nobody really understands.

I press my forehead against the glass and stare into the cafeteria. At that exact moment the doors open and I freeze because Marlow walks in.

He’s finally made it through the line and joined the others. My eyes lock onto him immediately, on his slim, graceful frame, on the fluid way he moves… Damn! He really is beautiful, almost painfully so, in a way that feels ferocious rather than delicate, and I’ve never seen anyone like him.

Then I notice him sit down across from another alpha and my chest tightens, because right… I’d almost forgotten; everyone here is paired, vectors and varias.

Wilhelm called Marlow a varia, meaning he’s meant to shift toward an omega hormonal profile, which indicates he already has his vector.

I narrow my eyes.

So it’s him, the alpha who’s supposed to get Marlow pregnant, tied to him in this program, and the thought of it twists in my gut so hard it hurts.

But very quickly reality catches up with me.

What am I even imagining here?

In three months I’ll be gone, leaving nothing behind but tissue samples and genetic material for them to dissect, and unlike the last facility I worked at, I won’t have more contact with the participants, so that brief moment with Marlow is probably the only interaction we’ll ever have.

He isn’t mine, and he never will be.

What's more, he can’t be, because he’s too perfect to look twice at something like me, let alone choose it.

I’ve never had a real relationship, only casual encounters, because who would build anything with a monster? I’m a curiosity, something that makes people uneasy and aroused at the same time, but that kind of attention doesn’t turn into a shared life, love, respect, family. People want me because of what my pheromones do, but wanting and choosing are not the same thing.

Only in those short moments, when I dare to dream, I think of someone who could look at a monster and… stay.