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It was tough out here for omegas. We accepted all the shit that was thrown our way and we had to sift the fuck through it just to find out what was of use. I couldn’t fully relate to everything the omegas I came across in my travels went through, but it was enough for me to throw my family’s wealth at whenever I could.

Five years ago, I quit my job as a nurse in a hospital because of the poor treatment of omegas in the area. Most of them never dared to even come in, especially when they were pregnant, and most opted for home births where their mates could be around to make sure their offspring weren’t switch in the neonatal unit.

It was difficult to communicate with Alphas and let them know their young were in safe hands, and it cut complications of their omegas bleeding out after birth. They didn’t care enough, it seemed, and I’d seen one too many omegas left on the hospital steps, only to die before being seen to.

My current line of work was sometime even more difficult to stomach. I was dealing with parents of missing omegas, and their search for their kids sometimes sent me down paths I’d never have traveled before, even with all my family’s wealth, I couldn’t always protect myself, or buy out of situations I got into.

Sat across from Mrs. Jeannie Berger in her one-story sandstone home in the middle of Nevada, she stifled her cried and blotted her eyes into a hankey she kept stuffed up her sleeve. “Noah wouldn’t just cut contact,” she said, and she’d said it several times before. “He would never leave us. He always told us where he was going, and we were always so proud of him.”

Leaning forward as I scribbled notes, my brow furrowed. “We?” I asked. “I thought you said your husband was out of the picture.”

She sniffled and nodded. “I meant my daughter. She looked up to her brother. He—he sent us money every week. It helped pay for childcare. You see, she’s still in school, and it’s impossible to pay for everything and then childcare between the time she finishes school and when I finish work.” Her hair was coiffed and coiled inside curlers.

“Listen, I’m going to find him,” I said, extending a hand and touching her knee. “I’ve been doing this for years. I’m pretty good at picking up a scent.”

“On your website, it didn’t really say much about what— type you are.”

“I’m from a family of flying squirrel shifters,” I told her. “I assume people knew who I was.” It’s why I wasn’t surprised whenever clients mentioned needing money, because people always needed money when they were talking to someone whose family was in the top richest in whatever magazine or article they’d read.

She shook her head, but the lacquered hair stayed still. “Sorry. I found you through a forum. Your website was mentioned, you’ve had success with these things,” she said. “You also said you do these for free, is that still right?”

“Yes, of course. This is free. I’m just here to bring families back together. Now, I have the email you send me,” I said, pulling a folded piece of paper from inside my notebook. “You’ve mentioned he worked odd jobs in Vegas and Reno, and he’s also been known to not have access to his phone for weeks at a time.”

She nodded to each point. “Yes, but he’s always sent the money. That’s why I know there’s something wrong this time. That’s why I know my son is missing. Please help.” She grabbed my arm. “I feel it in my bones.”

As did I, and I certainly wasn’t a psychic. All the signs were there. This was clearly a missing omegas case. “I believe you. Ok. Now, if you can show me some of the most recent pictures of him, and any information on where he took this new job. I’ll find him for you, don’t worry. I’ll find him.”

I always felt a dread inside whenever I promised I’d find someone, because I never knew if I was going to find their missing omega dead or alive. I never wanted to deliver bad news, even as a nurse, giving bad news was—well, left up to the doctors, but it was still awful. There was such a large gray area in terms of what I could say and how much I could promise these families, it wasn’t like they could sue me for promising them the world and delivering them a body bag. It was awful, but their closure was worth it.

After Jeannie showed me around her home and pictures of her son, Noah, she showed me his bedroom and even asked me to take some of his clothes, in the case I did find him, she wanted him to have fresh laundry. It was sweet, but I couldn’t take it from her. I was already traveling in a fairly full car.

The kicker was when she handed me the contact card with the name of a company and a location. That was where Noah was supposedly employed, even though the phone was disconnected.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time I’d seen it.

The card listed the location as New Eden and the slogan was, building a better life for all , and I wondered just how true that was. New Eden was one of those ghost towns now existing in Nevada that had been a commercial project which fell through after millions of dollars were pumped into it.

Several other families in the area had been in contact, all of them in similar situations, and each one of them with the same creased, discolored card stock with the poorly printed all caps words, NEW EDEN written on them.

It was difficult to tell these families all the rumors I’d heard, but they could hear them too if they searched the internet for half a second. This wasn’t a place people went to for the new life that those cards promised. This was the place people went to and never came from.

Jeannie was the last person on my list of people to meet before I inevitably set off to the crumbly ruins of New Edens. Or what I assumed were going to be crumbly ruins. There was little information on the ghost town now, since anyone who got close to it was never heard from again.

I spent the night in a nearby town and the first heavy rain pour since I’d been in the deserts of Nevada came falling down. The motel on the side of the road had people standing outside their rooms by their trucks, staring up at the large clouds and embracing the full impact of the large raindrops.

I watched from my room as the sand outside turned dark. On the table in my room, I had a map of the state stretched open and pinned in place by a couple heavy items; my phone, two cups, and a plate.

“This could be the last time anyone sees me,” I mused, checking the red dots on the map. Each of them occurred from the smaller towns around the larger cities, and each one had pulled at the omegas desperate enough to take on a job without checking it out first. “Or, I could be the first person to break the news of what’s happening.”

There was a lot riding on this, so much mystery, so many lives, each of them rested on my shoulders. My phone rang, my mom was calling. As I picked it up, the map curled up at the corner.

“Hey, mom,” I answered. “Signal might be weak, so you might cut out.”

“Sweetheart, when are you coming home?” she asked, her voice dripping in Southern charm. “I miss my baby. I don’t ever hardly see you now. It’s really awful sometimes because you know I like to have my home full.”

“I told you, I’m working,” I said.

She tutted at me in her signature way. “Not for us, you’re not. You’re just playing right now. And we let you, darling. But please, remember to come home. You know you’d easily take a position at the company, and maybe think about settling down.”

“I’ll think about.” It was better than going through the spiel of telling her time and time again how I didn’t want to bring life into this world. “I’m going to have to go now. It’s raining pretty bad here and I need to grab some stuff from my car and settle in for the night.”

“Where are you?” she asked. “I could charter a flight and come spend time with you. Maybe bring that peach cobbler I know you like.”

My stomach rumbled at the thought of some homecooked food, but it didn’t sway me. The last thing I needed was to be home where all my family cared about were their company. QuillAir was a private jet charter company. It was funny how we were all flying squirrel, even though we didn’t actually fly, we glided through the air. The entire family worked for the company, and my mom was now in charge of pilot training, hence her insistence on me coming back, hoping I’d rebrand myself for the third time. From nurse to private investigator, all the way to pilot. My brother, James was going to take over, so I didn’t need to worry about that, and my sister, Amelia was in marketing. They didn’t need me.

“I’ll be home as soon as I’ve finished this last case,” I said. “And for what it’s worth, I think you’ll be proud of me for it.”

“Well, baby, please don’t get yourself hurt,” she said. “Just because you know how to thread a needle through a wound, it doesn’t mean you’re invincible.”

I was thirty-three years old, but I was always my mom’s baby because I was the youngest. I didn’t mind it, it meant I got away with a lot, like being able to choose what I wanted for my life rather than being force into playing the part they wanted.

Once the call ended, another one came through.

Liam Barclay, my best friend of—too many years. “Your family are hounding me,” he said. “Your mom’s left me like a hundred messages. I think she’s using voice-to-text as well because some of these messages make no sense.”

“I just spoke to her,” I told him. “I don’t think I’ve had much signal the past couple of days.” In fact, I knew I hadn’t because the GPS on my car had gone weird a couple of times while driving between places. “I’m sure she’ll stop bothering you now.”

He chuckled. “And you know she absolutely hated to message me,” he said. “But who else was she going to ask, Zoe? Marcus? Your mom knows you broke up with Marcus, right?”

My eye twitched at the name. “I haven’t spoken to Marcus in years, and Zoe is busy in pilot training, she’s probably already got it every day from my mom.”

“I figured,” he laughed. “So, where the fuck are you?” he asked. “I’m not asking for her. I’m asking because the last time we spoke, you were in South East Asia. So, come on, what’s got you all hyper focused this time?”

Six months ago, I’d been in Thailand, the country of smiles, where I’d found one missing omega not quite as missing as his family had led me to believe. He was living a very happy life on a beach, thriving in the waters there. That one had been easy to break to his family, even after he’d told me he didn’t want them to know. He was a whale shark shifter and his family had been living in a landlocked American state.

“I’m probably going to keep that on the DL right now,” I told him. “But I might be off the grid for a bit. You’ll have to tell my mom that you’ve spoke to me if she asks. Tell her I’m fine, I’m working, and I’ll call her when I’m free.”

Liam sighed down the phone. I could feel him do that thing where he’d massage the inner eye with his knuckles. “Fine,” he said. “But you owe me one, Soren. I’m being serious.”

“And by one, you mean a free charter jet to the destination of your choosing.”

He hung up. Liam was from a rival company, and our friendship was controversial in our parents eyes. It actually only pushed us closer as friends, but it’s why my offer of him being given a free private jet flight was funny, since he had easy access to his own.

I was glad there wasn’t another call coming through. Usually, from my experience, once I’d spoken to my mom about a job I was on, I would be immediately contacted by my aunt, her sister, Sophia, she was a lawyer, who worked for the family, and would advice me on how to stay out of trouble when I was conducting my private investigations.

There wasn’t anything I needed to do now but wait. I had to wait for the rain to pass, and I had to sleep, but sleep didn’t come easy when my nerves were all bundled up and tense. It was a sense of dread knocking me off-kilter. I knew something bad was going to come of my visit to New Eden, and I didn’t want anyone close to me to be right about their predictions of me getting hurt, eventually.

Shortly after eating a cup of noodles with hot water, I napped. Waking to thunder claps and lightning strikes casting shadows of shapes through the closed curtains into my motel room. It was enough to rouse me and investigate.

Twitching at the curtain, I looked out into the parking lot directly outside the room to see a large black truck with two entwined red ouroboros snakes. I’d seen that before, ten years ago, marked on the arm of a young injured Alpha.

The Serpentine Syndicate were here.