Page 10 of Monster. Me.

"Rupert wrote a few things about himself. You should probably take a look."

I focus on the screen. There are several short notes there, written pretty sparsely.

There's also a list of reasons he joined the program. The questionnaire had separate fields for applicants to list them individually.

Need for change in life.

Desire to start a family.

Desire to find a compatible partner.

Desire to relocate.

And…

Financial reasons.

That last one catches my eye immediately.

My eyebrows go up.

My brother-in-law told me participants get paid well for being here, but I never bothered asking for details because money is about the last thing on my mind.

Rupert obviously cared if he felt the need to list finances as one of his main reasons.

"Exactly how much are they paying people here?"

A small twitch passes across Dr. Lee's face.

He pulls a file from a folder beside him, opens it, and turns a chart toward me.

"Oh wow."

The words just slip out.

"Yeah, okay. That's definitely more money than a dental technician is making."

An unpleasant thought creeps into my head. Could some participants be here solely for the paycheck? Had Welrun gotten desperate enough to start throwing huge amounts of money around just to attract participants and keep the research going?

I look back at Rupert's application.

Every section I filled out in painstaking detail, explaining who I was, what I wanted, and why I was applying, has only a few brief sentences from him. It almost looks like he filled the whole thing out without really caring.

"He's here for the money," I say out loud.

Dr. Lee keeps wearing that same strange expression that's somehow both polite and formal.

"Mr. Nolan, participants in our program fall into two groups. The first group consists of ordinary alphas who have no interest in changing their hormonal profile but are capable of becoming sires. We call them ‘vectors’. The second group we call ‘varias’, who like yourself, genuinely want to live as omegas, experience heats, become pregnant, nest, and give birth. But I don't want that difference in goals to discourage you, though, because each group serves a different role within the program."

I breathe out slowly. To be fair, what was I expecting?

It's not like the guys Dr. Lee calls vectors are signing up because they have some lifelong dream of meeting an alpha who wants to become an omega. If that were their main motivation, it'd frankly sound more like a fetish than anything else.

Maybe this is better?

If he at least wants a family and doesn't have a problem building one with someone who happened to be born an alpha, that's already enough of a foundation. Maybe I shouldn't complain.

My eyes move across Rupert's questionnaire again.