Visionary Wolf. Linda Johnston O.

had mentioned before.

      Melanie, too, came into the hall just as Brendan got Drew inside the room. “How is he doing?” she asked in a thick voice.

      Rosa, who’d been following them, said, “We haven’t found anything yet. He seems tired at times but he—” her voice lowered “—he seems to know what’s going on and communicates with us when we ask questions.”

      “That’s good,” Melanie said. “I just wish...” She didn’t finish, but instead hurried away from them, down the empty hall.

      Liam looked into Rosa’s lovely brown eyes. She looked sad. No, worse, tormented. He had another urge to hug her in empathy. Better yet, to come up with an immediate answer.

      He did neither. But he also didn’t look away from her.

      Odd, but he felt they’d somehow bonded over this difficult situation. They both wanted to resolve it. Fast. For similar, but not identical reasons.

      Alpha Force needed Drew back the way he was. And Liam needed his friend and commanding officer.

      His wife, head vet at this place and Rosa’s employer, mother of Drew’s daughter and son, undoubtedly needed him most of all.

      Brendan came out the exam room door. “Okay, he’s situated on the table again. He looks tired.”

      Rosa immediately pulled her anguished gaze away from him and Liam felt a pang of...sorrow? “Thanks, Brendan. I’m going to draw some blood now.”

      Which was what she did, after entering the room again accompanied by Liam, who helped to keep Drew resting despite the prick of the needle.

      But there wasn’t a lot he needed to do. Drew appeared exhausted.

      What was wrong with him?

      And how were they going to fix whatever it was?

       Chapter 3

      In a way, Rosa appreciated the break from hanging out with Drew and using her veterinary skills to watch over him for any illness symptoms that the wolf he was now might evince.

      She was of course happy about his apparent understanding of what she, and other people, were saying. That tended to be true with shifters she’d had as occasional patients around here, unlike before she moved here, when the shifters turned fully into the animals they were. And despite his apparent exhaustion, Drew seemed to be doing all right.

      But of course he wasn’t.

      So, after drawing his blood using a needle, she said, “I’ll be back soon. I need to analyze this.” She waved the tube containing the red liquid just slightly. She felt sure that both Drew and Liam understood what she meant even without saying so.

      But notwithstanding the pressure caused by her worry, she felt even more concerned as she left the room. Drew was her patient, and as a veterinarian she was always anxious about her patients, who generally couldn’t tell her what their ailments were.

      In Drew’s case, she might not know all he was feeling, but she knew what his most important condition was.

      Plus, oddly, she felt a bit apprehensive about walking away from Liam at the moment. Not because she thought leaving him with Drew was inappropriate in the least. But she recognized that, in the short time since she had first met him, she was relying on him to at least acknowledge, and possibly approve, what she was doing with his commanding officer to make him well.

      “Ridiculous,” she muttered, as she reached the door to the lab, next to the room where Drew’s X-rays had been taken. She was the vet. Liam just worked—and shifted—with her patient.

      Yeah, and probably had more knowledge than she did about how to deal with this situation. But Rosa would do all she could.

      As she’d told Liam, if blood work was needed for most patients of the vet clinic, they sent the sample to a nearby lab for analysis. But the blood of shifters in wolf form was different from that of other canines.

      Rosa had learned those differences where she had first obtained her veterinary license and begun practicing, in an area of Michigan where wolves of both types were prevalent.

      That was one of many reasons why she had fit in when Melanie had conducted a hunt for the right type of vet—one with knowledge of what, in shifters, remained the same and what didn’t.

      Not that Rosa was a doctor for humans, but from what she understood, shifters’ blood and other characteristics remained the same as other people’s when they weren’t shifted.

      Now, as she entered the lab, someone was already in there: Dina, the clinic’s other vet tech besides Brendan. “Hi, Rosa,” she said. “Anything I can do for you here?”

      “Not now, thanks,” she responded to the short young woman in the typical blue scrubs.

      “Let me know if that changes. I just checked out the discharge from a wound of one of our canine patients. Fortunately, the bacterial count was low.”

      “Great,” Rosa said, as Dina left the room.

      Sometimes Rosa did have one of the techs handle the blood work, often preparing it to be sent to the official lab. Other times they analyzed other kinds of liquids or discharges from the animals.

      But the very rare times there were samples from shifters in animal form, either Melanie or Rosa handled it herself.

      Not that the techs or other people who worked here didn’t know, or at least suspect, that some of the patients were not exactly regular pets. Still, though they talked about it a little, everyone around here seemed to understand the need for tact and confidentiality. Now, at least. Rosa had heard that there were some rumors after Melanie had taken over this clinic, as a result of the death of the former veterinarians—parents of one of the officers at Ft. Lukman, Captain Patrick Worley, who happened to be a shifter.

      Not wanting any interruptions, after placing the tube of blood carefully on the table, Rosa locked the door and muted her phone.

      She then washed her hands carefully once more, as she’d done before extracting the sample.

      Finally, using a microscope and other appropriate equipment, she began the process of analyzing the contents of the sample, including the red blood cell count and the blood type. As anticipated, both were quite different from a normal canine’s—even though canines had more blood types than humans did.

      But there was more that she didn’t anticipate. She had done only a few analyses of shifters’ blood, since they generally remained in shifted form for only a short while. She figured that those around here might have extra chemicals in their blood thanks to their imbibing the elixir to help them with their shift.

      That didn’t explain, though, the additional contents in Drew’s sample. Stuff she couldn’t really analyze. It seemed a darker red than usual, somewhat thicker than the blood cells surrounding it.

      She was knowledgeable but not an expert in chemistry, and what she saw might mean nothing.

      But she realized that, whatever it was, this might be the evidence of whatever was keeping Drew in his shifted form.

      She needed someone else to check it out, though. Someone more skilled in this than she was.

      She placed the samples into airtight containers for now. Then she hurried back to the exam room that contained Drew—and Liam.

      She slipped in without knocking, which was a good thing. Drew was asleep.

      Liam had his smartphone in his hands and seemed to be concentrating as he typed something into it. He heard her, though. He probably would have even with normal ears, not just those of a shifter in human form. He looked at her right away.

      She gestured for him to follow her, which he did after aiming a glance in Drew’s direction. Evidently