The class was called Mate Bond Theory and Identification. It was listed as mandatory for all second-semester students, which meant there was no way out of it, and it was taught by Professor Harlan, a compact, soft-spoken alpha who had the particular gift of making the most dangerous information sound completely routine.

I sat in the third row and opened my notebook.

I wrote nothing in it for the next forty minutes.

"Instinctive protection," Harlan said, moving along the board where he'd ...