Visionary Wolf. Linda Johnston O.

kept him under her care, had looked for any abnormalities in his canine form—and had, of course, taken a blood test.

      “I don’t know that I need to get into much detail here,” she told the group. “I did find what appears to be some irregularity in the consistency and color of the fluid and, not being a chemist beyond the skills needed to be a damn good veterinarian—” she smiled a bit sadly at that, realizing that her own fears of inadequacy were showing in her irony “—I wanted to see if anyone here could help analyze Drew’s blood and determine if it’s the cause, or an indication, of what’s going on with him.”

      “We’ll take a look.” Patrick was the first to stand, then Jonas did. “Come into the lab area with us, Rosa, and we’ll start checking things out, okay?”

      “Of course.”

      She glanced toward Liam, who nodded. He apparently wasn’t joining them, but he was her ride back to town. She suspected she’d be able to find another one, though, if necessary.

      Patrick picked up the box. She wasn’t surprised when Seth joined them. It wouldn’t hurt to have all the doctors who knew human patients’ traits getting involved, or at least that’s what she surmised.

      Patrick led Rosa next door to the lab areas, where he asked Seth to start the analysis process, getting slides ready for the microscope and more.

      “We really appreciate this,” Patrick said, standing with Rosa in the middle of the main room, which was lined with shiny metal cabinets with glass doors. Some had equipment on top—a lot of microscopes, for one thing.

      Patrick was a tall guy, dressed in camos like all the people around here but Rosa. His hair was light and short, his face long and nice looking, with a cleft in his chin.

      He didn’t resemble Liam except for his height and outfit—and for an instant Rosa missed Liam’s presence. Ridiculous.

      “I appreciate it, too,” she said to Patrick. “I just hope you can figure this out.”

      “I’m sure you know we want to,” he replied. Seth was already removing the various vials of blood from the padding in the box. Rosa had labeled them with the time collected and whether she had done anything to attempt to examine each particular sample, so she figured they at least wouldn’t have any questions about that.

      But what they all really needed was answers.

      She hung out in the lab for a while, mostly watching the others, listening to them discuss what to do next. Then Patrick said, “You know, Rosa, this is going to take a while. Why don’t you go back to your clinic, and we’ll let you know what we find, okay?”

      In other words, her staring wasn’t making them go faster, but might be causing them some discomfort.

      She didn’t want that. Besides, back at the clinic she’d be able to bring Melanie up-to-date, such as it was with no answers so far, and maybe do something helpful there before the day ended. “Sounds good,” she said.

      She just hoped that Liam was ready to leave.

      Liam was champing at the bit.

      He had gone to his own office, upstairs in another part of the building, but only briefly to check on how Denny was doing.

      He’d promised to return Rosa to town, and though he figured he could get someone else to do it, he wanted to be the one.

      He also wanted to get on his own computer and get busy doing his own thing to start fixing all the absurd and detrimental rumors.

      “Here’s what I’ve done,” Denny had told him, and good guy that he was, Liam’s aide had followed his prior instructions and started with one of the social media sites where the posts were among the most awful and accusatory against shapeshifters the night before, including an unnamed military group containing shifters. Oddly, as Liam had previously noted, a few had signed their posts with the names of Greek or Roman gods, like Zeus, Hera, Orion, Diana and Poseidon, and even Cerberus, the three-headed dog. They could be a group of anti-shifters, or just one person pretending to be a bunch. Which frustrated Liam. He hadn’t had the time to start figuring that out yet.

      Still, Denny had used one of his own fake identities to make fun of the stupid stuff. That needed to be started even before they attempted to figure out the sources of those posts.

      “Good job,” Liam had told him, making his short, young helper grin widely.

      “Thanks. You want to take over?”

      “Soon,” Liam assured him. “Meantime, keep up the good work.”

      He returned to Drew’s office, where some of his fellow Alpha Forcers remained. Could he text Rosa to see how much longer she’d be? He felt a duty to do as he’d promised her.

      He also felt eager to see her again, and not entirely to get her update on what the others were doing to assess Drew’s weird blood.

      He was delighted when she came back almost immediately after his reappearance. “They’re working on it now,” she told Liam and the others in the room. “Not much I can do to help, so do you think...” She looked at Liam, who just nodded, reading the question in her eyes.

      “Yep,” he said. “I’ll take you back to the clinic now. Right?”

      “Thanks.” She smiled at him.

      He got a promise from the clearly worried Jason that he’d keep Liam informed about anything the doctors found and revealed about his cousin Drew’s bad blood. Then he told Rosa, “I’ve a stop to make before we leave.”

      “Oh. Okay.” The way she looked at him, he assumed she thought he meant the restroom.

      “Pit stop first is fine,” he agreed, “but that’s not what I meant.”

      In a few minutes, he met her to go upstairs. Instead of heading for the door out of the building, he turned and said, “Time for some cover dog attention.”

      “Really?” She sounded delighted. “Then you’re going to get yours?”

      “Yep, that’s my Chase.”

      “Is Spike there, too?”

      He knew that was Seth’s dog. “Sure. That’s right—you took care of his wound, didn’t you? I’ve heard a lot about it.”

      “He’s still okay, isn’t he?”

      “He sure is.”

      They’d reached the door to the large room where the cover dogs were in enclosures. For fun, Liam let out a brief howl as if he was shifted, and several of those inside responded in kind. He grinned at Rosa’s pleased smile.

      “Gee, these guys sound a lot like wolves,” she said, “and so do you.”

      “I wonder why.”

      He asked her to wait outside while he went in for Chase. She agreed, but asked to peek in the door and see all the canines hanging out there behind the low fences.

      When he returned with Chase, her smile was even broader.

      “So this is how you look when you shift?” she asked.

      “Yep, that’s me—or close enough to me for now.” He asked what she knew about cover animals. From what she told him, Rosa had already learned from Melanie that the shifters in Alpha Force all had cover animals who resembled them when they were shifted. That way, if a non-shifter happened to see them while they were in shifted form and claim they must be werewolves or whatever, they could later bring out their cover animal—mostly wolves here at Ft. Lukman these days—show the non-shifter, and tell them they’d simply seen the Alpha Force member’s pet. That seemed to work well, Liam thought, since Alpha Force members didn’t need to wait till a full moon to shift.

      Now Rosa and Liam walked outside toward his car, then into the warmth of the midday air, and he soon tethered Chase in the back seat. His look-alike cover dog-wolf sat