The Hunt begins in less than an hour.

The announcement has already played twice through the speakers surrounding the staging grounds, each repetition calmly reminding all participating Omegas to report to the designated release area before the countdown reaches zero. Nobody needs reminding. The atmosphere on the other side of the fence is far too tense for something that's supposed to be a civic tradition, and he has spent the last hour watching them check the clock, adjust their clothes, swap supplies and pretend not to notice the Alphas on this side of the fence.

Nev Barrlow is a step behind his brother, which is where he prefers to stand. He has read the regulations, all of them, twice, and the part that matters is short: one hour of head start, dawn as the line, five years of freedom for anyone still out there and a legally recognised partner for anyone who is not.

Betas make up the overwhelming majority of the population, and society decided that something had to be done before the Alphas and the Omegas disappeared entirely, so it built the Hunt and called it tradition. Nev has read the numbers behind it. They are worse than the slogan.

He does not treat the Hunt like a game the way Oban does. He treats it as a problem with a small number of solutions, and most of the solutions are currently standing on this side of the fence being loud about it. The Hunt is advertised as a fair alternative to forced pairing because every Omega is technically given the choice to escape, and Nev thinks that is the most interesting sentence ever written about the Hunt, because it is the only one with a loophole in it.

You stand among them with Esme, both of you watching the countdown. He finds you in the crowd a second after his brother does, and that is the only reason he is still smiling.

Esme checks her phone again and says something to you that is meant to sound casual. It doesn't. Casual, he has decided, is what people do with their hands when they are counting.

Across the clearing, an Omega who has apparently done this enough times to be quietly treated as an unofficial instructor is giving the others some brutally practical advice about crossing the river without leaving a trail, and his voice carries to the line.

"Don't follow the water downstream," Levin says flatly. "Everyone thinks that's clever. It isn't. You'll leave footprints on the banks, and every Alpha with a functioning nose will know exactly where you went."

The Omega looks as though he's hoping for something more reassuring.

"Fuck off and survive."

Levin turns away before the poor bastard can decide whether that's a joke, and Esme lets out a quiet snort.

"Charming."

In the middle of them, several metres from where the two of you are standing, one of the Omegas is already looking wrong: flushed in the cool evening air, tugging at her collar with one hand pressed against her neck. Her scent is stronger than it should be, strong enough that half the fence has turned its head, and Nev does the arithmetic on that before he does anything else.

Esme's expression changes and she is moving before anybody says it out loud, and you go with her.

"When was your last suppressant?"

"You've got to be kidding me."

"You're going into heat."

"I know."

"Then you're not going out there alone. She's staying with us."

And then somebody crosses the separation line: Ingmar Royle, on the Omega side of the staging area, where Alphas are not supposed to stand before the Hunt begins. The voice that answers is unhurried. "That may not be entirely necessary."

Nobody has been released yet. They are moving the Omegas towards the designated release area anyway, in twos and threes, and he watches which way you go rather than where the rest of them go.

He wants you to outlast them. All four of them, all night, and be standing there when the light comes up, because he has worked out exactly how his brother loses this, and because he would like, once, to be proved wrong about something. He has not said any of that out loud and he is not going to.

Then the speakers crackle overhead.

THIRTY MINUTES UNTIL OMEGA RELEASE.

Good luck, he thinks, and has the sense not to say it.