Everyone knew the Scribes only took betas and occasionally omegas. Alphas went to the Infantry, or the Riders. The Healers would take everyone they could get, because there were never enough hands on the ground to help. But Violet Sorrengail's father had trained her for most of her life to enter the Scribes, so it followed that Violet had to be a beta. Betas were the majority of the population. Sensible, logical, able to control themselves in ways alphas and omegas could not.
Violet's mother Lilith was an alpha from a proud name, a rider from a line of riders, because alphas were supposed to be the only ones strong enough to bond dragons without losing their minds. They were fierce enough to understand dragons and vicious enough to impress them. Her older siblings were the same. Her sister Mira was every bit as fierce as her mother and their ancestors. Growing up she'd constantly heard her brother Brennan compared to their grandfather and to the Sorrengail who had been first of their line.
But Violet was her father's daughter, fragile since birth, always asking questions and looking up answers. She was logical. She read history texts to calm down. Like her father, she would be a beta, she was sure. Everyone seemed sure.
And then six months before she would begin her formal Scribe training, she presented as an alpha.
Alphas could not enter the Scribe Quadrant. Lilith would not let any alpha of her line fail to live up to their name or die trying.
Violet would be a rider.
--
Riorson was also a proud name, or it had been once. Fen Riorson was not a rider. Infantry was the only other option for alphas and so in infantry he served. Xaden was raised with his father's attitudes, expected to be an alpha like his father and grandfather and each firstborn back to the first of their name, but by the time he presented Aretia was far too busy being razed for anyone to notice. By the time he had questions about the things his father had told him, his father wasn't there to answer. As far as anyone knew, Xaden was an alpha, because… have you met the guy? What else could he be, with the anger that seethed in his eyes?
Nobody ever actually asked him, which meant the time he spent practicing the lie went to waste. Just one more thing he'd expected to matter that didn't after his father's rebellion failed. Still, he had no shortage of other things to lie about as he came of age.
He worried about it again when he reached the Rider's Quadrant. He'd brokered the deal that allowed the Marked Ones to cross the parapet using General Sorrengail's assumptions- that they were all children of nobility, and could conceivably be alphas, and that by himself agreeing to enter the Rider's Quadrant, along with his cousin and the other children of Tyrrish nobles, there would be no one left who qualified to try to take the throne back.
Xaden climbed the stairs to the parapet half-expecting to be challenged. If it was possible to become an alpha by sheer force of will, he would have done it half a dozen times that first day alone. Even Garrick didn't know he wasn't one, and as far as Xaden was concerned, no one ever would.
He waited to be found out, and was surprised to realize it didn't come up as much inside the quadrant as it did outside. That made sense, he supposed. If everyone was an alpha, why gossip about it? Like civilized alphas they all took their fertility suppressants, and it worked just as well for the Healers and the Scribes and as the Riders and Infantry, so that was all well and good.
He was thankful for the suppressants. Xaden had gotten through a few heats on his own when things were chaotic, after his father was killed. He'd prefer not to have to do it again, especially surrounded by the kind of alphas who thrived in the Riders Quadrant.
For the most part, those same alphas were a great distraction. He was busy trying not to let himself or his best friend get killed by most of his fellow cadets for the name and the mark he bore.
He thought it might finally destroy him at Presentation, spent the whole time he was climbing the Gauntlet wondering if one of the dragons would sniff him out and burn him to death, whether it was for being an omega or being a separatist's kid. Neither seemed to be a problem for the dragons watching them, and Xaden was quickly distracted by the looming sapphire shadow that took his breath away.
She was looking at him. His mouth was dry, his mind stuttering like it had during those first awkward heats. Xaden bit it back.
He expected it again at Threshing, trying to decide if he'd know if he was losing his mind when a dragon bonded him.
When she bonded him, because he already knew it was Sgaeyl or nothing for him regardless of the risk of her having bonded his grandfather.
Fortunately for him, Sgaeyl was in agreement. She knew his secret immediately, of course, but she explained to him the unspoken agreement of the Riders Quadrant, one he'd suspected but couldn't confirm.
"Humans and your genders," Sgaeyl scoffed. "Regardless of how you rut, when you are chosen by a dragon you are an alpha in every way that matters."
And that was the last time he questioned it until he locked eyes with Violet Sorrengail the day she crossed the parapet.
Violet stumbled down from the parapet, the anger she'd felt at Jack dissipating almost immediately. Being an alpha was going to get her killed at this rate, and not just because she'd been sent to the Rider's Quadrant. She'd had six months to get this anger under control and she was still threatening to stab people in the balls.
Not that Jack fucking Barlowe hadn't deserved it.
"Come here," someone said, putting a hand on Violet's shoulder, and at least she didn't growl at Rhiannon when she spun on the woman.
"You okay?" Rhiannon asked.
"No. Yes." Violet corrected herself.
Before she could say anything else, she was being escorted off to the side of the courtyard and she realized she recognized the scent. Dain was there. Gods, she'd been looking forward to seeing him again but this was not what she'd pictured. She watched him and Rhiannon snap at each other before Dain pulled rank to get her to submit.
Squad leader, huh? she said to herself. Good for him.
She let Dain get her up to his room and wrap her knee, and the support- both literal and figurative- helped her get her balance back.
"What the hell are you doing here, anyway?"
Oh, right. She'd had this conversation five hundred times right after she presented, but she hadn't had to do it in months. First year cadets weren't allowed letters or contact, though, so there'd been no way for her to warn Dain about any of it.
"I presented, just before the Solstice. I'm an alpha, so the scribe quadrant was out of the question, and my mom insisted."
"Nobody presents that late, Vi, are you sure?"
She blinked slowly, trying to tamp down the anger that was trying to fight to the surface again. "Am I sure? Don't be ridiculous, how could I not be? You were sure, weren't you?"
Dain hesitated before he answered, but Violet was too pissed to think much of it. It didn't matter that he didn't answer the question. He was already walking her back to the courtyard and then he disappeared into the chaos of Conscription Day.
The hardest part was not finding Rhiannon again, nor was it watching other cadets run and get set ablaze for their trouble. It was the fact that she could. not. stop. looking at Xaden Riorson. Every time she met his eyes- because of course he was looking at her too- she felt the feral claws in the back of her head. Something in her wanted to maul the fuck out of that man.
Rhiannon elbowed her in the side gently. "Violet? You're growling," she whispered.
Why had anyone ever thought throwing several hundred alphas together in an enclosed space was a good idea? Well, it was only really an enclosed space for the first few months, because once you bonded you got to fly. Violet wasn't thinking that far ahead, though. She couldn't. She had to get through three months of proving herself, one day after another, before it was a concern.
"We can sneak you into the Scribe Quadrant," Dain offered for the first time after Imogen nearly tore her arm off at assessments.
"No, there's no way they'd take me. And I can't do it, I can't go in there now." She remembered patience, distantly, missed
"I'll protect you." Again.
"I'll sneak you out." And again.
"Let me protect you." And again.
It was a refrain that was driving Violet out of her goddamn mind, and by late September it was painfully clear to her that Dain did not believe she was an alpha. Did he think she was lying? Did he think her mother had somehow brainwashed her into believing she had presented?
Did he think she was this fucking angry all the time because it was fun? If anything, her temper was shorter than his, he ought to know how much effort it took to maintain that much composure.
She hated to think about it, but it seemed like a lot of the alphas in the Riders Quadrant were either much better at controlling their anger or just didn't get the alpha stereotypes in their genetic lottery. It seemed cosmically unfair that she was the least-likely alpha she'd ever met and also one with the hardest time controlling herself.
When she'd mentioned it to her squadmates, Rhiannon had a theory.
"Maybe it's because you were late presenting. I'd been dealing with it for four or five years before I got here, and you still haven't had a full year."
That made sense. Violet was pretty sure she'd heard something similar from a healer not long after her mother found out about her presentation.
"No, it's… well, maybe it's that too," Sawyer hedged when Violet and Rhiannon both glared at him, "but there's something else. I didn't figure it out until after I washed out last year. But not everybody here is an alpha."
"That's not possible," Violet stared at him, "is it?"
"Nobody admits it, not really, but once you look for it you can't unsee it."
"Now that you said it, I can see it," Ridoc grinned. "Picture Riorson and put Aetos next to him. One of those men looks like an alpha, and it's not our squad leader."
Rhiannon rolled her eyes. "Come off it, if it was that easy to tell, you wouldn't be here. You sure as shit don't look like an alpha."
"It's not supposed to be obvious since we're all on suppressants anyway," Rhiannon argued, but Violet frowned when she thought about it. The idea of other people just… ignoring their biology when she was stuck here because of it made her twitch.
Sawyer was right, though. Now that someone had said it, she couldn't stop thinking about it when she looked at the people outside her squad. The way some people had run at formation. The way some people seemed to look away when others (the Wingleader) went down the hall. Hell, the way people just folded when Xaden so much as looked at them.
Meanwhile Violet couldn't seem to stop arguing with him, staring him down, thinking about pinning him down… Fuck. She was losing her mind. She was going to get herself killed before she ever got the chance to meet a dragon.
Varrish thinks he's discovered Violet's secret, that she's an omega who doesn't belong in the Rider's Quadrant, and he will use it to break her. They've developed a serum that functions as the opposite of the suppressants and he's offering it to Dain, expecting that dosing Violet will cause her to submit and bond to Dain.
Dain does not want to do this. He wasn't there when Violet presented, and he's still not sure he believes it; they've been arguing about it since she found him in the courtyard. But regardless, he knows he's a beta, and he worries what will happen to her if Varrish is right.
"Don't you want your quiet, submissive, sweet friend back, Aetos?" Varrish asks.
Violet looks Dain in the eye. "Do it," she tells him, daring him to see her for what she is.
--
In the last two days, I've abandoned my post, possibly compromised the rebellion, definitely dropped a fucking wyvern corpse in a military outpost, flew so fast with Sgaeyl that I'm quite sure I lost a layer of skin to the winds, and fought my way into the cells below the war college, imagining sinking a dagger into Varrish's smug face the entire time. The entire way down, my body was screaming at me that something was wrong, something was different, something was coming through my connection to Violet, and I just kept shoving it back further and further. We would be in time. We would have to be in time.
The scent hit me even before I opened the door, and my knees nearly buckled. I pushed forward anyway, fighting back panic flavored with something else, something I didn't have time to name.
Varrish was already dead. Violet stood above him, blood dripping from her mouth where she'd torn out his throat with her teeth. She looked utterly feral, her hair hanging loose and her clothes stained and torn. I had never been so turned on in my entire life.
I wasted two seconds assessing the room. Aetos was in the corner, his eyes wide and terrified, not looking away from Violet. I could see confusion and resolve, and below that I heard a more primal intention. Hide from the alpha. A beta's reaction.
It was not my reaction.
I took a slow step toward her and she growled, dropping Varrish's body at her feet like the trash it was. This time my knees did give out. As she stepped over the body toward me, I shrugged my flight jacket off my shoulders and raised my chin, baring my throat to her. I didn't know what my body was doing and I didn't care.
"My alpha," I whispered as she reached me.
She leaned down and her breath was scalding as she whispered in my ear. "Mine." I felt it through the link between us, the word shooting through my veins like her lightning. I didn't need to be an Inntinnsic to know what she intended.
"We need to go!" Garrick's voice filtered in from the hall. He stuck his head in and froze. My senses have been blown wide open and I don't even have to try to read Garrick's intentions. Protect-- Xaden?
I wondered if Garrick had suspected about me, but he'd never seemed to internalize the social expectations for alpha, omega, or anything else. Garrick just treated everyone as they presented themselves, and I'd always appreciated that about him.
Garrick hauled me to my feet and I heard Violet growling at him. I had to dig my nails into my palms to stop myself from submitting again immediately.
"He's right, we need to go," I told her. "He's not a threat."
All three of us looked at Dain.
"Are you- going to-" he choked the words out.
"You trusted me in the end, with Varrish," Violet told him. "Do you still trust me?"
"I think I have to," Dain shook his head. "You're-"
"Going~" Garrick reminded us again, starting for the door without turning away from me.
"He's coming," Violet said, and I immediately nodded. Dain was not a threat, not anymore. Certainly not to her.
On the way up the stairs we ran into General Sorrengail. Violet stepped forward to match her mother and they growled at each other. For the first time I saw a resemblance between them.