Almost every page was dog-eared with underlining and stars and highlighting. The first page he stopped on had exclamation marks on top of everything else. He read a few lines.

It’s essential not to leave the important issue of feeding an alpha until after you’ve caught one. You must impress them with your food choices in order to get to this point. Always remember an alpha’s senses are different to yours. What you think of as a well-deserved treat will make an alpha sicken at the sight of both it and you. Alphas hate sweet things and will consider you weak for craving extra sugar in your diet.

Harry frowned. The nicest things he’d ever tasted in his whole life were the cakes Aki made for him on his birthday. They’d been mud cakes at first when they were really young, which, yeah, probably had smelt a bit rank, but had still been special and he’d kept them as long as he could. And then Aki had used that charming side of his, (the one he never bothered showing Harry), and got access to the kitchen, and then saved up his own rations in order to have enough to make a cake for Harry’s birthday, with sugar donated by the dinner staff because Aki always got given extra things by people. Even thinking now about how that wonderful sweetness felt on his tongue made Harry want to jump about in pure joy.

His last cake had been a seed thing to fit in with his nutrition plan. He didn’t want to be ungrateful, but the mud cakes had probably been more fun.

He licked his lips thinking about the crunch of sugar in Aki’s best cakes. When his athletic career was over, he’d pester Aki into making him proper cakes every day.

He shook his head. Second coach had shouted at him several times for talking about what he’d eat when his career ended. He didn’t know why it was a bad thing, but there were lots of things he didn’t understand so he just had to accept what other people told him.

His fingers automatically flicked through some more pages until he saw a section that had been boxed off in red biro, double underlined in a different shade of red and highlighted in green.

Never talk to an alpha about emotions. When you reach the point of confession. focus your language on how physically attractive you find them. Alphas do not experience emotions as we do; their entire brain is wired towards the goal of obtaining sexual partners. They are programmed to be constantly procreating. Some alphas have learned how to mimic the romantic words of others, but do not be fooled. Only when they are securely bonded do alphas feel anything close to what the rest of the human species knows as love.

Suddenly struck by the certainty that this was not something he should be reading, he shut the book, replaced its fake cover, and then put the book bag on the table in the middle of the room.

Harry continued with his normal work activities and tried not to think about anything he read. It felt like reading someone’s private diary, or earwigging on a conversation, and learning that your friendliest friends actually thought you were some sort of monster freak they needed to tame. It created the feeling inside him that he didn’t have a name for, but whenever it appeared he normally dealt with it by doing cardio until he could barely breathe.

Today he sat down with a sketch pad and concentrated on designing a wedding bouquet. He hadn’t known he could draw before starting this job, and in truth he was very limited in artistic ability, but petals and leaves turned out to be within those limits.

The sound of the pencil scratching against the thick paper and the rough lines transforming into a recognisable image due to the movements of his own fingers, calmed him. Ideas of textures, colours and scents filled his mind and for a blissful time no other thoughts disturbed him.

Fingers tickled into his ribs and Harry yelped out.

Bikey laughed and wrapped his arms around Harry’s stomach lifting him off the ground for a moment.

‘We’re spending so much time together we’ve swapped. I’m a super strong alpha now and you’re a normal beta who isn’t in constant guard mode and can easily be crept up on!’

Bikey lifted Harry up again and swung him side to side, before dropping him down and leaning against the table next to Harry panting. ‘Seriously, Hairy, you’re so you. I couldn’t do that with any other alpha. I’d get totally clocked out for even trying, but you like just give an omega scream and laugh with me.’

Harry lightly punched Bikey on the arm. ‘Maybe you’re like going to develop into more of an Alpha than me.’

‘Ahhhh, don’t say things like that.’ Bikey dropped his head to the side leaning in to rest it on Harry’s shoulder. ‘I know like you found that article about alphas who didn’t develop until their twenties and thirties, but, yaknow, I’ve got two miracles in my life already. One, being allowed to train here. Two, most miraculous of all miracles, meeting an alpha like you. I can’t ask for anything else, can I? That’d just be greedy.’

‘Is being greedy sooo bad? Does that mean I should stop my daily prayers for science-heads to find out that sugar is the best food for athletes?’

They chatted on for a while about food, Bikey’s training progress, and Harry’s idea for the bouquet. Harry thought about telling Bikey about the book he found, they’d laugh about it, and the cloudy feeling around Harry would vanish. But instead, he found himself nattering on about how many forms there were to fill out to get sustainability clearance for flowers; how the sisters used him for calculations as it turned out he was only bad at weird school maths, all the everyday useful numbers he needed for athletic measurements were easy now, and that translated into quickly being able to work out costs and benefits for importing rarer flowers and also how much they’d have to charge if the clearance came through.

The day-to-day business of the florist and what he did here was all stuff he’d chatted about lots of times before with Bikey, but whereas Aki got irritated with repeated conversations, and he could never talk about this with his other alpha friends, Bikey always happily listened.

Aki said this was because Bikey couldn’t understand most of what Harry said so he was just daydreaming to himself and not bothering listening anyway. But Aki didn’t seem to get the relationship between him and Bikey at all.

Bikey flicked through the sketchbook of flowers and pulled a silly face at Harry. ‘When are you going to do a picture of this handsome mug?’

Harry did a doodle of a lopsided face with a tongue sticking out and they both giggled about that for a while.

As he double checked everything and locked up for the day, Bikey asked all about everyone’s different scents. This was another repeated conversation after Harry had once told him how since working in the shop he’d learned to recognise that most people had a nature scent as their base aroma.

‘I still haven’t found what Aki's is,’ Harry said as they walked out into the bright summer evening. ‘He must be a really special bloom that we’ve never had in the shop.’

‘What about you? Your scent. You’ve never said what you smell like. I’d really like to know what an omega smells when they’re near you.’

Bikey sounded unusually serious so Harry frowned thinking of the answer rather than give a joke reply.

‘If I’ve got it right, how I think I smell, which is, yaknow, just like similar to how you smell, isn’t how I smell to other people. I haven’t got great awareness. The times when, well, things started to happen, and I accidentally released pheromones, I couldn’t smell anything different. Aki says I stink like a dead bear though, if that helps!’

‘Not exactly,’ Bikey murmured.

‘You all right, mate?’ Harry asked.

For answer Bikey tugged on his sleeve. ‘This way, I’ve got a surprise for you.’

Harry obediently followed, but when they stopped a few feet in the other direction, he had no idea what he was supposed to be looking at. He turned around, but the street looked normal apart from the extra flashy car parked up in front of them.

‘So what do you think?’

‘Ummm, it’s a nice day? Not as hot as yesterday, so will be good if it’s like this tomorrow when we do our long run.’

Bikey elbowed him in the ribs. ‘Not the weather! The car! I finally bought a car so you’ll have something of your own to look at in the car park opposite like you’ve been dreaming of all this time! I want to be the one to make all your dreams come true.’

Harry was totally sure he hadn’t heard that correctly. As far as he knew they’d never ever had a conversation about cars except kinda on that first day when Harry was showing Bikey the amazing view from the flat.

But Bikey had car keys and the flashy car opened up and Bikey pushed Harry into the passenger seat and did his seat belt up. Then Bikey was in the driver’s seat and the two of them were vrooming along the road.

For a long time, all Harry could do was look around him in absolute wonder. Then all he could do was spill words out.

‘How did you buy this beautiful thing? I mean how? Why? We can like run everywhere or catch trams, we’ve got no special needs. I was just yakking about the forms you need to get roses out of season, how many forms do you need to get a car like this? I can’t believe I am in a car. I am in a car with my friend! Being on a train was amazing. Then when I got high enough scores to be allowed on the team bus, but this! I am really in a car with you, Bikey! How did you make this happen? I was like going to talk to Aki about whether we could afford a bike at one of those cheap auctions they do! I know I said Aki and me would get a car to look at in the car park one day, but I thought that would be in years and years when he’s like a really successful clever person and goes on those boring telly shows when they need someone to chat on and on about something boring using words no one understands! But you’ve got a car now!’

Bikey just laughed.

It seemed like seconds before they were out of the town and surrounded by endless green fields. Harry asked permission to open the window, then stuck his head out and laughed himself as the wind whipped around his face. This had to be absolute happiness.