Page 17 of Omega Hunted

I’d felt his grief across our bond, understood it, and tried to be strong, and I hadn’t gone to him because he told me he didn’t want his alpha fixing things,

But we can fix the omega in our room. My beast shifted, restless.

“What do you want me to do?” I waited for an argument, but he seemed happy to just throw out orders and not debate what to do next.

I pulled my phone from my pocket and opened the browser. He had said a place, his voice breaking apart: Center 14. I’d caught it and filed it without thinking—to absorb the detail to run it later. I typed the name into the search bar and waited for satellite links to catch up.

The search loaded, and I scrolled through results, finding a piece from the Northeast Kingdom Courier, six years old, sitting under the headline “New Center Offers Safe Harbor for Displaced Omega Shifters in Lincoln, New Hampshire”.

Some instinct told me this was the Center 14 he meant, and I continued reading.

Center 14. The newest residential facility for shifter survivors opened its doors last month, offering what founder and director Adrian Vance calls “a genuine alternative to state-managed housing for vulnerable and endangered shifter individuals.” Center 14, the most recent in a network of facilities, occupies a converted farmstead on forty private acres outside Lincoln, with capacity for up to eighteen residents at a time. The facility operates on a trauma-informed model and accepts referrals from shifter advocacy networks, legal aid organizations, and community partners across New England. “We exist because the system doesn’t serve these people,” Director Vance said in an interview at the facility’s opening day. “Center 14 is a place for delicate omegas to heal, not a place for them to be processed.”

Then there was a subtle postscript which sent chills down my spine.

Center 14 works closely with the Shifter Enforcement Directorate to ensure every resident’s legal welfare, identity documentation, and family protections remain fully compliant with federal shifter legislation.

I stared at the personnel page—no photos, but bios of everyone from director Adrian Vance to admin—and made some notes in an app, then scrolled further. Next up was a lifestyle feature from a regional magazine, also from three years ago, with photographs—wide lawns, a long white farmhouse, raised vegetable beds, a view of the hills from a sunroom. High walls and security, like any place that might have to keep omegas safe inside and away from predatory alphas. Something pricked the base of my neck. Everything was so tidy and promising, but I’d seen this type of place before, and the darker parts were always hidden.

The headline was “Finding Peace: Inside a Shifter Center Where Alphas Are Absent”. The piece ran to three pages. It described beta managers and caregivers, organic meals, private rooms with views of the property, and a resident garden program. Vance appeared in one photograph, smiling, crouched beside a row of kale. “We don’t use the word ‘safety’ here,” he was quoted as saying. We use the word ‘home’. Omegas—even pregnant—were safe there.

Like the omega in my bed.

I dug a little deeper. Founded by Director Adrian Vance—no prior public record I could find, no history before the nonprofit incorporated, no other professional footprint. Which wasn’t how legitimate founders worked. Legitimate founders had previous roles, previous affiliations, a professional story. This man had appeared, fully formed, with a building, a budget, and a model nothing like any trafficking warehouse I’d seen in the field, and everything like something that had roots in a warehouse but had been refined over time into something that could be stamped as legal.

I set aside the older results and went to the recent one, timestamped only three hours ago.

Local law enforcement and officers from the Shifter Enforcement Directorate responded to reports of gunfire at Center 14—Multiple Casualties Reported.

A regional online paper had the scoop.

Center 14, a residential sanctuary and rehabilitation facility, was the site of a violent incident late Tuesday evening that left at least four people dead and several others hospitalized with gunshot wounds. Local law enforcement confirmed they responded to the property following reports of gunfire. The facility is a registered nonprofit focused on trauma-informed care for omegas and has been operating for three years. A spokesperson for the SED office declined to confirm the identities of the deceased but said the situation is under active investigation and that the welfare of all omegas is paramount. The facility has not issued an official statement at the time of publication.

I read it twice.

The welfare of all omegas is paramount. Corporate bullshit. I’d seen too many operations dressed up in polished language to trust a sentence like that. Somewhere underneath it was the idea that omegas were worth protecting because they were valuable, not because they were people, and the inclusion of the SED—the accepted authority enforcing alpha law and the official government agency dealing with omega welfare and legal protection—was enough to make my wolf start growling.

The next result came from Skinside; on the outside, this was an information site that broke extraction reports long before any of them reached official channels. Run by someone who went by the name The Archivist. Half the ORT had thought he was a former operative; the other half thought he was just some hacker who got lucky sometimes. Still, our teams had learned more about the omegas in danger from there than from any other intel we received.

Center 14 Attacked: Sources Dispute “Break-In” Framing—This Was Targeted.

What multiple sources are now describing as an organized raid on Center 14, the alleged safe place for omegas, resulted in at least four confirmed deaths, including staff, late Tuesday. Residents were evacuated or fled the premises.

The SED confirms that as of Wednesday morning, one omega resident is missing. The SED has taken control of the scene, and ORT is not allowed on site; more importantly, the ORT has not persisted in requesting access.

More to follow.

Certain words lodged in my head. Alpha level. ORT denied access and not pushing to get inside? What was that about? After what happened with Raff, I’d learned they weren’t the good guys balancing out the SED. They’d failed omegas in different ways, hidden behind rescues and promises while deciding which lives mattered and which ones didn’t, but there’d always been some balance.

I read to the end and stayed with the phone in my hand to read the comments. I recognized a couple of the names there, and my stomach fell when I got to one that was all too familiar. InsideRT02. The capital R was for Ronan, the T for our team, the 02 was the year Raff had been born—Ronan’s username. Most of the ORT had handles on this site to share information, even me, but I hadn’t used it in a very long time.

InsideRT02: Don’t call home.

Fuck. It was a standard Team Three message, one we’d used more times than I could count. Don’t call home meant stay away from ORT command in case they realized we’d gone beyond their orders, which they hated. They’d learned to tolerate Team Three for our success rate, but we’d colored outside the lines on many retrievals, and that was what we’d said… they won’t know if we don’t tell them… don’t call home. The thought of trusting anyone at ORT made something vicious twist inside me. I’d already learned what their loyalty was worth, what they were prepared to sacrifice when it suited them.

I listened for the omega, but his cries had stopped. His peaches scent lingered in my nose, and my wolf shifted restlessly inside me. Fix this, he demanded.

I didn’t go into his room, but I called from outside that there was a food tray. It sat outside his door long enough for the tea to go cold, so I’d gone back downstairs, made a new one, and put it in an insulated cup. I’d hovered at the top of the stairs for a while, unable to decide whether the omega was asleep, too frightened to open the door, or sitting on the other side, trying to decide if the food was safe. My wolf hated the thought that I’d scared him, and I wasn’t particularly fond of it either. I was one of the good guys, but fuck, I didn’t know half of what he’d been through before crashing outside. He’d escaped something bad enough to send him driving through a blizzard.