Page 28 of The Omega's Bloodline: Part One

“Tell us everything you know,” I said.

Seth sat down across from me with his steaming lasagna. “I’d heard bits through the grapevine. A coven went radio silent. A few lone shifters here and there disappearing without warning. Seems like the nests are okay, at least. I never saw anything, just kept feeling that‘predator is watching you’kinda vibe ever since I was here last.

“I was at a bar in Rochester earlier tonight and felt it sweep through. Crowd parted like the fucking Red Sea, but I couldn’t see anything there. A shifter we didn’t know got snatched up, the normies started freaking out, everyone was screaming. So, weran. The friend I was with decided to head to the New York nest, and I got him to drop me here on his way.”

Can you grab my phone?Caden asked me. I carried him into the bedroom to get it and punched in the code for it, letting him paw swipe on the screen on the way to the kitchen.Here, see what the forums are saying.

I read over the most recent posts for our state. Hundreds of messages from today were people panicking over the attack in Rochester. “It doesn’t sound like anyone knows what the attacker was, only that the shifters who were targeted died before reaching the hospital. The first was a Rochester local, owl shifter, one-hundred-and-sixty years old. The second was a deer shifter passing through, aged thirty-nine.” I scrolled further, seeing a familiar town mentioned. “Another shifter was killed in Fairport about an hour afterward.”

“It’s heading this way,” said Seth. He squeezed the fork, his knuckles turning white. “Shit.”

We should be prepared to leave. We need a safe house if it shows up. Caden looked up at me, his claws digging into my thighs.I can’t protect you from something I can’t sense.

“What kind of safe house would protect from that, though?” I asked.

Seth shoveled lasagna into his mouth and chewed quietly.

I don’t know. Caden shivered, his fur poofing out.But it’s coming this direction and people have already died. We shouldn’t risk it. If it was tracking Seth, he could have led it here.

I absorbed his words. I didn’t want to go anywhere, but I also didn’t want to get eaten by some unknowable entity. “Where would we go?”

“You could take her to the nearest nest,” suggested Seth. “New York is the closest.”

Caden’s little body was like steel in my hands. I looked down at him, stroking a reassuring hand over his fur.

I hadn’t been anywhere near a nest for years. “I thought those were to get your documents and stuff to reintegrate into people-adjacent life.”

“They can help with that, but it’s not their main purpose,” said Seth. “They’re gathering places, and they have super strict hierarchies.”

They’re shifter strongholds, said Caden.Some are better than others, but they’re not usually pleasant places to dwell.

“Why do shifters stay there, then?” I asked.

Protection. The strong gather the weak. It’s an exchange of services. Those weaker provide whatever the strong require without question, and the strong protect them from the outside world.

“Well, that sounds like a barrel of laughs.” I held on to Caden tighter than necessary, and he let out a squeak.

“It sucks,” said Seth between bites. “I stayed at one in Orlando after I left here the first time. Can’t say I recommend the experience. But I guess it’s preferable to dying.”

Caden’s claws dug into me again.He guesses. Such a vote of confidence for his suggestion.

“Quit with your picky toes!” I detached his claws from my flesh and turned to Seth. “Is New York the best option?”

“Hard to say for sure,” Seth said. “Smaller ones move around and might be closer, more undetectable, but if you want a big one, they’re more permanent, and based around big cities. New York has strong Protectors.”

We can’t go to a nest,Caden insisted.

“Is it really that bad?” I asked, petting Caden to soothe myself as much as him.

“Entry into a nest is implicit consent,” Seth explained. “The Protectors could do anything they wanted to you and your only recourse is to leave.”

I swallowed hard. “When you say anything…”

“Well, they won’t kill you,” said Seth. “That would defeat the point of going, but they could feed off you, demand sex, separate you from Caden, make you lick the bathrooms clean. I dunno. Some of the Protectors are pretty sick fucks. Power goes to their heads. The nest I was in didexoticanimal fights to fund things.”

“What?” I stared at Seth. “Were you involved?”

“I…unwillingly participated in a few.”

---