“Welcome, Miss Dorne. I am Dr. Simon Axell, and I will be your mentor these first few weeks.”

I couldn’t contain my beaming smile at the approaching alpha as I got to my feet. He was broad like his biology dictated, but for an alpha, he didn’t make too intimidating a figure. The lab coat also helped.

“Thank you, Dr. Axell. It’s such an honor to join your team. I’ve been following your work since I was a grad student.”

It was true. I’d been quietly and nerdily fangirling over Dr. Axell’s work in bio-research for years. When my old advisor had notified me of a position on his team, I’d leapt at the chance. He might be working with “biological defense” these days, rather than disease control as I’d majored in, but for Dr. Axell, I’d work in sewage disposal if I had to.

He returned my smile, albeit a bit more measured, and clasped my hand in a brief shake. “You come highly recommended—Professor Remmer is an old acquaintance of mine. He promised me you were one of the best bioanalysts in the country.”

I did my best not to blush bright red at the praise—an unfortunate flaw of mine. Judging from the heat in my cheeks, I didn’t luck out. Damn it. Not the most professional image to portray on my very first day.

At least if Dr Axell noticed, he graciously pretended he didn’t.

“Professor Remmer has been very kind.”

“I trust you’ve been granted a temporary access pass?” he asked, brushing off my bashfulness.

I nodded and held up the pass I’d been given by the receptionist upon arrival.

“Good. HR should have a permanent badge made out for you before the end of the week.” Dr. Axell led me through the sliding doors behind reception, swiping his own badge to unlock them. “I’ll get you introduced to a couple of key members of the team, and then we can go over the project itself. We are only two lead researchers with three support staffers, not counting the guards.”

I nodded enthusiastically at him as we walked down long, white-painted corridors lined with metal on all surfaces and a strip of fluorescent lights guiding the way. I hadn’t been informed of what exactly I’d be working on, except that it was “biodefense,” highly classified and sanctioned by the Ministry of Defense, even if it was run by a private corporation—SilverCorp.

I’d done as much research as I could on my new employer, but nowhere had there been any records of what exactly they worked with, so I was more than a little curious. Especially after I’d been sworn in by government agents in black suits and stern faces to keep a strict non-disclosure agreement. Suffice it to say, I was pretty much expecting to walk into a Men in Black situation when I arrived at the heavily guarded compound earlier this morning.

The long hallway we were following didn’t do much to dissuade my overactive imagination, with the way our shoes made the metal flooring echo ominously and the smell of disinfectants in the air, but when Dr. Axell finally opened a door and ushered me into a small staff room, I was utterly disappointed.

It smelled like coffee and looked exactly like any break room you’d see in millions of companies across the country. No extraterrestrials in sight—only a lone beta male in a lab coat eating a sandwich by the large, white table in the middle of the room. A newspaper lay sprawled next to his sandwich wrapper, opened to an article about the stock market, as far as I could tell.

“Dr. Urwin,” Dr. Axell began, “I want you to meet our new bioanalyst, Miss Lillian Dorne. Miss Dorne, this is Dr. Dave Urwin. You will mainly be running tests on my data, but occasionally you’ll also need to help Dr. Urwin—he’s responsible for the female subjects.”

The beta got to his feet and extended a hand toward me. “A pleasure, Miss Dorne.”

“Likewise.” I smiled and shook it as I looked around the small break room, doing my best not to pinch myself. This high spec research facility, so important it was under government protection and unsearchable on the web—was now my actual workplace. I wasn’t even thirty yet and I’d already reached the pinnacle of my dreams.

Since I’d left high school with a 4.0 GPA, I’d dreamt of working in a place like this, under a man like Simon Axell, and here I was.

The only thing that could have made today any better was if this did in fact turn out to be a secret government department for intergalactic diplomacy.

“Female test subjects?” I asked, turning from Dr. Urwin to my mentor. “Am I to understand that the research is in human trials, at this stage?”

“Very observant, Lillian.” Dr. Axell smiled as he handed me my coffee. “That will do you well here. And yes, indeed it does. Are you keen to learn about the project?”

So no aliens, then. I nodded nevertheless. “Very.”

“Well, since it looks like our support staff are working through lunch today, why don’t I take you down to my department and I’ll give you an introduction to the project as a whole and what I’m working with right now? Bring a cup of coffee—there are no biohazards.” Another smile as he nodded toward the coffee machine in the corner of the room. “I know you come from disease control.”

I grimaced at the thought of what bringing a cup of coffee into the lab could have done at my previous job and quickly poured myself a mug. As much as I’d loved my former field, being able to keep caffeinated while working would be a nice and unexpected bonus.

Dr. Axell poured himself a cup as well, and then led me out the door with a nod to the beta doctor by the table.

“We’ve been working on developing a way for our most specialized troops to gain an edge in combat,” Dr. Axell explained as we walked further down the corridor. When he came to a thick door, he swiped it with his card and pressed in a code before it opened with a heavy clonk. On the other side, a spiral staircase led underground.

“It’s undeniable that our very best troops are alphas, which has given us a unique angle from which to approach the problem of improvement. My team and I are working on using the biological imperative that separates alpha males from the rest of society to enhance our subjects’ combat skills. Bluntly put, we found a way to purify the alpha instincts within the males. The results have been very promising so far, but not without their drawbacks.”

I frowned as I followed the doctor down the stairs and through another set of password protected doors. I’d been quite shielded in my academic cocoon—most alphas who advanced in academia had learned to control their more animalistic impulses early on, to be able to excel within a dynamic that cherished mind over physique.

That didn’t mean I hadn’t seen the other side of them. No woman could live in ignorance of the latent aggression within the part of the male species we knew as alphas. These large men, whose biology had marked them as the leaders of society, the warriors and protectors, were known for their dominance and ruthless aggression toward anyone who didn’t bend to their will. It was a predicament largely ignored by polite society—something no one spoke of, but quietly accepted. We craved their leadership at an instinctive level, but many alphas abused their superior strength and the benefits it got them.

I may have been shielded from the worst of them—the ones who terrorized the city streets at night and took whatever and whoever they pleased—but that certainly didn’t mean the idea of enhancing their alpha instincts didn’t fill me with dread.

“Forgive me—what do you mean by purifying their instincts?” I asked as I stepped through the final door after Dr. Axell. I was going to elaborate, but just as the door slid closed behind me with an audible click, my eyes adjusted to the bright light in the room spread out below us and I stopped cold.

“It was a quite simple process, once we perfected the formula,” Dr. Axell said, that easy smile still on his face as he turned to look at me. “In its essence, we’ve created a serum that will turn any alpha injected with enough of it feral.”

I stared mutely into the room below. We were up a few steps from the main room, which gave me a perfect view of the lab and every person in it.

Two young men in white lab coats were walking from one subject to another, noting down numbers on charts.

And all along both walls and curved around a big, glass-paned room in the center, was cage after cage of imprisoned alphas.