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“Yes, I was planning on staying there. It’s on the corner of Spruce and Maine, right?”

“I see you did your homework.” Argus looked pleased. “Well, I won’t keep you, Doc. I’m sure with moving and getting settled in at the clinic, you’ve got your hands full.”

“It’s no problem at all,” Theodore lied, clanking the peppermint against his teeth.

Argus insisted on walking Theodore out of the building and to his car. Theodore would have preferred to turn tail and run, but he didn’t want to set off alarm bells before he’d been here for a day. So, he complied like a good, meek omega.

“Is the moving van coming later? Or did you get one of them fancy pods they drop off at your new location?” Argus eyed Theodore’s sedan from the front window.

“Nope, this is everything.”

“Travel light, huh?” Argus was about to ask Theodore something else when Heather interrupted.

“Excuse me, Argus. But Royce and Nick phoned during your meeting with Dr. Abbott. They found the missing hikers; his team will be here any second.”

“I can see myself out,” Theodore interjected. “You’re busy running the town, it’s no insult.”

Argus smiled at him like he was the cutest little omega he’d ever seen. Theodore had to suppress the urge to vomit on Argus’s shoes before he fled the building. Meeting a pack of enforcers was the last thing he wanted to do right now.

He opened his car door as a group of alphas filed out of a large, navy blue SUV. Theodore’s stomach clenched as he made eye contact with one.

Naturally, he was a brute, but there was something about his face … and his hair fell in caramel waves around his shoulders. The man nodded in greeting, and Theodore’s stomach flipped as a fresh wave of heat ran over his skin. He jumped into his car and locked the doors.

That was odd.

What the heck just happened?

Was that oranges he smelled?

Chapter two

Royce

He put the SUV in park outside the Town Hall, and he and his passengers disembarked. Nick had been chattering a mile a minute since they’d called Argus. Nick was an alpha, like Royce, but unlike Royce, Nick was nineteen, a cougar shifter, and perpetually talking. Royce was supposed to be training him—that is, when he could get a word in.

Today the young alpha had been prattling about fated mates and the large group of omegas who recently moved into their tiny town.

A single new individual moving in would have been enough to cause a stir, but over a dozen new omegas at once? All the alphas were in a tizzy. Not just the young ones who hadn’t learned restraint yet. Fated mates weren’t guaranteed, but that didn’t mean the older alphas without mates gave up. Well, most of them …

Royce had abandoned dreams of finding anyone a while ago. He figured after everything he’d been through, all the places he’d been, if he hadn’t found his fated mate yet, he wasn’t going to.

Now he just sort of floated. Between towns, between jobs, it didn’t matter much to him. He got up and went to work like he was supposed to. Then immediately went back home by himself. He didn’t see much point in trying to insert himself into other people’s happy and contented lives. He was existing, and that was all he could ask for.

“The pull sounds terrifying,” Nick said. “I heard this one alpha, she stopped sleeping and eating. She’d like, almost black out and then wake up wandering a strange neighborhood with no clue how or why she got there. And then this other one, the omega was on suppressor so he just sat in the parking lot for two weeks unable to make himself leave until the omega came back and he could get a proper whiff of them.

“But the magical bond after the bite mark, now that sounds cool. You’d never have to wonder what they were thinking or feeling, and you’d never have to worry they didn’t like you back. I had this one girlfriend in high school; I could never tell where she was in the relationship. Drove me nuts. But I’d never have to worry about that with my fated mate.”

It was getting more difficult for Royce to listen to the young alpha’s hopes without raining on his parade. Couldn’t he just shut up for one minute?

Behind Royce and Nick, Amelia and Matt held their own conversation.

“Since you can’t rely on scent for betas like you can omegas, you need to hone your physical tracking skills,” Amelia said.

“Because of the lack of musk on betas?” Matt asked.

“Exactly. And because our alpha instincts seek out omegas on impulse, it can be harder to find betas. Some alphas refuse to learn the physical tracking needed for it—don’t be like them.”

“So, is that why you phased and flew overhead? But isn’t it harder to see from so far away?”