Page 8 of Monster. Me.

"That's probably called desperation," my tone is blunt. No point pretending otherwise.

Dr. Lee blinks, one of those strange half-blinks that barely seem to involve his eyelids at all, and for a moment he just studies me.

The silence stretches. Weird guy.

Then he looks back at his screen and opens his mouth to speak, but his face suddenly tightens, and he lets out a huge… sneeze!

Yeah. I know that one.

People sneeze around me all the time.

"Excuse me," he says, then continues in a tone that sounds like he's reading facts out of a report.

"I've gone through the questionnaires you submitted. I read them very carefully, and I have to admit they concerned me."

The room goes quiet.

I'm pretty sure I know what's bothering him.

The word that starts with an S. Everybody reacts the same way. Big eyes. Awkward sympathy. Are you okay now, sweetie? That sort of thing.

For a few moments, Dr. Lee keeps staring at the screen as if he's trying to decide what tone he should use now out of his repertoire. When he finally turns toward me again, I see something that looks suspiciously like a rehearsed expression of concern on his face.

"From what you described, you've spent many years struggling with the feeling that you were born in the wrong body, that you never really fit into the world of alphas or into relationships with omegas, and that you've received very little understanding from the people around you."

I grimace. Because damn it, I don't want to talk about this.

A month ago I was lying in a hospital bed after my latest suicide attempt. Well, the latest one they found out about. There were others before that. I just happened to save myself those times.

So. I could probably give the doctor the whole speech. About my impossible dreams. I could talk about how nobody understands me, how everyone looks at me like I'm completely insane because I've got a perfectly healthy alpha body, blah blah blah. The problem is that I'm tired of explaining myself. Nobody gets it anyway, so what's the point of wasting my breath?

"I came here to make my dream happen," I say, cutting off the conversation. "I'm not going to be super picky about the match."

Dr. Lee slowly pulls out a tissue and discreetly wipes his nose.

"Allergies?" I ask with a fake polite smile, that matches his facial expressions.

"Do you happen to have pets?"

"My roommate has a cat," I lie smoothly.

In reality, I spent my final year of veterinary school, alone in my dorm room. No roommates.

Just ME.

"Ah, that explains it. I have a severe cat allergy, and cat protein gets everywhere. Clothes, hair, furniture."

He sounds mildly annoyed, like he's personally offended by his own immune system.

"But where were we? Right. This isn't really a matter of being picky, Mr. Nolan. You need to remember that participants in our program are paired together because it’s expected to improve the chances of success. Fertility activation and hormonal transition aren't things that can be achieved in a sealed laboratory. We can't give someone a hormone injection and expect it to work. Artificial hormones have limited effectiveness in ABO populations. The only reliable proof that someone has truly transitioned to an omega hormonal profile is an actual pregnancy."

He discreetly wipes his nose again while I look away and focus on the fluffy pink ball attached to the pen.

I already know all of this and accepted it long ago. Still, I listen because it would be rude not to.

"But that also means that if a participant becomes pregnant, the father is the other participant in the pair, and that effectively creates the foundation of a family. That's why I was surprised when you declined to review potential partners and agreed to a match sight unseen. It's a very important decision."

I look down at my hands, flexing my fingers slightly. For a long moment, I consider what to tell him because he's just another person in a very large crowd of people who'll never get it.