The next two weeks were a masterclass in avoidance. Leon became a ghost. He scheduled his classes to minimize contact, ate lunch in the library, and made sure he was never, ever in the same room as Harry "The Alpha King" Peterson. It wasn't easy. Harry was everywhere—on the football field, at the main quad fountain, and in the cafeteria. He was impossible to miss.
Every time Leon saw him from a distance, the memory of that morning rushed back, the heat of shame and a weird, unbidden flutter of something else he refused to name. He had successfully convinced himself Harry was too drunk to remember much, maybe just fragments. They had agreed tacitly, through silence and avoidance, that the event was non-existent.
Except Harry's body wasn't forgetting.
Leon started noticing the subtle changes first. Harry was tired all the time, not just 'staying up late partying' tired, but a dragging exhaustion that was obvious even across a crowded classroom. Leon, with his own unusual biology and heightened perception, picked up on it. Then came the nausea. He saw Harry duck out of their shared biology class one morning, pale as a ghost, a look of pure distress on his face.
Leon had to fight the urge to follow him to see if he was okay. He kept telling himself it was just the stomach flu going around campus, but his gut, that part of him attuned to the rare biology of others, knew something else was going on. He knew his own designation—the rare Enigma status that allowed him to impregnate an Alpha—and the horrifying possibility started to form in his mind. The subtle shift in Harry's pheromones confirmed his suspicions. Harry's usual dominant scent was slightly altered, softened in a way that spoke of a radical biological change.
He spent hours in the library, confirming his worst fears through obscure scientific journals and hushed forum discussions about rare designations. He was late in his own cycle—a small detail for him, but a huge red flag for the situation at hand. The anxiety became unbearable. He couldn't ignore the signs he was seeing in Harry. He went online and ordered a discreet package to be delivered to his apartment complex's P.O. box. A pregnancy test kit designed specifically for Alphas. Or rather, several, just to be sure. He felt like he was buying a bomb.