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“Hi, Drew,” Liam finally said.
There his commanding officer was, in canine form, sitting on a bunch of towels on a lowered table in the middle of this veterinary examination room. Watching them. And now he nodded his head as if in greeting.
Liam turned back to Dr. Jontay. Rosa. This vet was fairly special, from what he had been told before he left Ft. Lukman. She had apparently been found after a long hunt for a good, smart backup by Melanie Connell, who’d been seeking a vet who knew about shifters, had provided medical care to them in the past and would keep her mouth shut about working with more in the future.
Rosa was one pretty, hot woman, to boot.
But checking her out wasn’t why Liam was there.
Seeing, taking care of his friend, his mentor, his superior officer—that was his reason for coming to this clinic.
Sure, he’d told his fellow Alpha Force members at Ft. Lukman about the accusations he’d found online. That was important, of course. But not as important as ensuring that Drew returned to normal. Fast.
And when the topic of needing Jonas to get back to the base to help find a solution arose, Liam volunteered to hang out with Drew here for as long as it took to get him cured.
The rest of the team had argued, since the idea of having so much garbage out there online about shifters and Alpha Force was horrendous, and Liam was the best tool they had for countering it. But he’d told them he had taught Denny how to start his critical counter–social media games. Plus, he would work on it himself as Drew’s condition here permitted.
They’d finally agreed, since most of those at the base would be focused on how to deal with what had happened to Drew, and keeping one of their own with him was critical, too. But if what Denny accomplished, with Liam’s backup, wasn’t enough, they would send Denny to trade places with him so Liam could focus on his job—which was now ridiculing all the ridiculous, and not so ridiculous, claims that had appeared on the internet.
So Liam’s giving a damn about his mentor and wanting to do something about it had worked out—at least for now.
“Okay if we sit down?” Liam asked Rosa. “I’ve got a few things to update for Drew.” Assuming that the elixir Drew had first developed, and had worked with over the years of Alpha Force’s existence, still allowed him to keep his mental acuity—his human mental acuity—hours after he should have shifted back. And his nod before had indicated that, at least, hadn’t been affected.
“Would you like a cup of coffee before we talk?” Rosa asked Liam.
Nice lady, or at least polite.
Or did she have an ulterior motive?
“Yeah, thanks. I’d love one.” But he’d love finding out what was on her mind even more.
“It’s just down the hall.” She motioned toward the door with graceful fingers. Probably skilled fingers, too, since she used them to cure animals around here.
He wondered what those fingers would feel like on him... Heck, just because she was a pretty brunette with shining brown eyes and full lips didn’t mean he should allow himself to feel any attraction toward her. She wasn’t a shifter. She might work with shifters, but he had no idea how she felt about them.
He followed, as she apparently wanted. Well, he wanted it, too.
A guy in blue scrubs walked past them in the fairly long hall—probably a vet tech, Liam figured. He waved to Rosa. “Everything okay?” he asked.
“Everything’s fine, Brendan,” she replied. “Are all our patients being handled okay?”
Liam assumed she asked that because she wasn’t caring for anyone besides Drew right now, or at least it looked that way.
“Sure. Melanie’s got it covered, and Dina and I are helping.” The guy waved and walked through one of the doors off the hall. Liam assumed Dina was another vet tech.
“Good,” Rosa said softly. Then, more loudly, she said, “We’ve got coffee brewing in the break room, right here.” She walked a few more steps, then opened a closed door and motioned for him to follow, which he did.
“Coffee’s fine with me,” he said right away, “but why am I really here?” He looked around. The room was a bit larger than the exam room and had a few small tables clustered in its center, a fridge on one side and a counter on the other where a large coffee maker sat.
The smile she sent up to him was pretty, as well as ironic. “I’m that obvious? Well, you’re right. I don’t want us to leave Drew alone for long, but I wanted to ask how things are going at Ft. Lukman. Does anyone there know why Drew hasn’t shifted back? What are they doing to help him? I figure that, since they wanted Jonas there, they must be working on that elixir, since I know he’s a medical doctor and has helped Drew before with that stuff.”
“You’re right, and I know they’re hoping to come up with some new formulation of the elixir that’ll help.” But from what Liam had heard, no one had any good ideas yet about why Drew hadn’t shifted back despite clearly wanting to, or what kind of adaptation could be made to the elixir to help him. They’d even given him some more of the current version of the elixir to lap up, but that hadn’t helped.
“Okay.” Rosa turned her back and headed to the coffeepot, where she poured some into two foam cups that she got out of the cabinet below. She handed one to him. “Milk? Sugar?”
“Black,” he said. “Thanks.”
She went to the fridge and added a few drops of milk to her cup. She turned again toward him. “We’d better get back to Drew.” She seemed to hesitate. “Do you know anything about the formulation of the main elixir?”
“Just generally,” he said.
“Then what do you do in Alpha Force? For one thing, I assume from what you said before that you’re a shifter.”
She said that very matter-of-factly, as if she knew about and accepted their existence, as she’d implied earlier, which fit with the little Liam knew about Melanie Connell’s assistant vet.
“Yes,” he said. “I am.” He thought he caught just the tiniest hint of a reaction in her expression. Maybe he was wrong, and she was good at hiding what so many regular humans who knew that shifters were real actually thought about them. Just to bug her, he asked, “Are you?”
Her brief laugh sounded genuine. “No, though I’ve worked with quite a few over the years.” She paused. “Do you do anything special for Alpha Force? I mean, do you handle some of their special ops–type assignments, or do you do something besides train for the future at the base?”
Somehow, he wanted to impress her, which made no sense. He had no intention of flirting with her. But it wouldn’t hurt to tell the truth. “Well, I do train for the kinds of special assignments we’re sent on,” he said. “But I’m also the chief technology officer.”
Those pretty brown eyes of hers widened. “Really? What does that entail?”
He didn’t want to tell her about the stuff he had seen online making claims of injuries and worse, caused by shifters last night during the full moon. From the little he’d seen here in Mary Glen it had all been false, anyway—he hoped. If all was going well, Denny was continuing with the solution.
So instead of being fully honest, he said, “I just scout around to see what technology is out there that Alpha Force may be able to use to enhance its already fantastic and covert abilities.” That probably sounded good, and it wasn’t entirely false, since he did that along with the rest.
“Interesting.” Rosa pulled her gaze away from his face. “Now, let’s go back and check on Drew.”
Checking on Drew was exactly what Liam wanted to do. And he was glad to see that the wolf with the silver-tipped, thick brown fur sat up on the towel-covered table as they entered and began observing them with his wide, golden eyes.
What was he thinking? Liam would try to find out.
“Hi, boss,” he said. “Rosa and I just got some coffee, but the caffeine wouldn’t be good for you right now. But I want to bring you up-to-date on what was going on at the base.”
That everyone in Alpha Force was scrambling around trying to figure out what happened to him. Liam would tell him that, but word it a bit differently.
Also, as the commanding officer of their unit, Drew would be the first person Liam would normally tell about the kind of online social media fiasco he’d discovered—under other circumstances. He wouldn’t now, of course. Giving Drew further information that would torment him wouldn’t help him shift back any faster.
And would it do any good at all for even a tech expert like Liam to do research online about what had happened to Drew? Shifters weren’t likely to post anything about problems in their shifting, let alone what to do about it.
Plus, Alpha Force had its own unique take—and elixir—that would render most comments inapplicable.
Just in case, though, Liam would take a look later.
“How are you feeling now?” Rosa moved around Liam as if taking charge. She approached Drew and patted him gently on the head between his pointed, moving ears as if he were a pet canine. That irritated Liam a little—although he had a passing thought that if she wanted to touch him that way, or any other way, he probably wouldn’t mind at all, shifted or not.
Drew actually did seem to try to communicate with her some, growling slightly, then shaking his head.
“Do you feel bad physically?” Rosa asked. He stopped moving. “Or are you just frustrated that you haven’t changed back?” He nodded.
Good. At least he seemed to be using human cognition and showed no sign of growing wilder, wanting to attack. He was a human in the guise of a wolf, but for a much longer time than Liam was aware any shifter had remained that way without choosing to stay shifted.
So how were they going to bring him back?
Almost as if he heard Liam’s thoughts, Drew gently pushed Rosa away with his head. He lay down on the table and stared at Liam.
“I think he wants you to bring him up-to-date, as you said.” Rosa looked at Liam with a wry grin on her lovely face, her brown eyes looking both interested and sad. She seemed to really care about her veterinary patient. She probably knew him as a person, too, since she worked for his wife. Liam wished he had something to say that would make her smile.
And Drew, too. Wolves could smile, after all. At least shifters could, somewhat, while in wolf form.
“Okay.” Liam sat down on one of the chairs. Rosa remained standing beside Drew at first, her eyes examining him as the wolf regarded the other man in the room. “Now, here’s the situation—and if you have any ideas we’ll have to figure out a way for you to convey them to me.”
Drew nodded as he continued to lie there. Rosa moved to the chair beside Liam.
“First,” Liam said, “Jonas and Melanie—and maybe Rosa, too—” he looked at her for an instant and saw she was regarding him steadily “—may already have asked you this, but do you know why you haven’t shifted back? I gather this wasn’t your choice. Was anything different this time from one of your regular shifts?”
The response was no, based on the low, grumbling noise he made and the slight shake of his head.
“Okay, then. Here’s what I learned from the conversations at the base before I left.”
Liam started talking about all he had heard and participated in once he had joined the meeting in Jonas’s office. No other shifter had had any problem, so they didn’t believe it was the elixir—the most current version of the tonic that Drew had begun brewing with the changes that had been suggested and tried by other shifters and seemed to work best for everyone. It allowed for all-important human cognition while shifted. There were slightly different versions now being used outside the full moon to give more choice about when to shift into wolf form and when to shift back. A version that wasn’t being used much, if at all, allowed for shifting back to human form when the moon remained full, but it had never been as perfected as the unit members hoped for.
“So,” Liam said, “did you drink the regular elixir we’re now using during the full moon?”
Drew nodded.
“And did Jonas use the light on you?” That was still preferred by Alpha Force members even under a full moon to ensure the timing.
Again, Drew nodded.
“I assume the elixir looked and tasted like it always did, right?” Rosa asked. Liam was impressed that she was jumping into the discussion, as if she knew what she was talking about. And most likely she did, considering who her boss and her boss’s husband were, as well as her own apparent background of at least knowing about shifters.
Shifters other than those in Alpha Force also sometimes attempted to develop their own formulas to help them change when they wanted to. Even some members of Alpha Force besides Drew, including second in command Captain Patrick Worley, and Lieutenant Simon Parran, had brought their own versions when they had joined the unique military unit, or so Liam had heard.
Rosa might have known something about that even before joining this clinic as a veterinarian.
Liam, though, hadn’t brought anything like an elixir with him when he’d joined the unit. As always, he’d been focused on his technological skills. He had been online when he’d first learned such stuff actually existed, beyond the stories and legends, and so did a special, covert military unit that used it.
That was how he had learned about Alpha Force, and the rumors about what and where it was. Why he had shown up at Ft. Lukman one day with a résumé in hand, and had asked to speak with the officer in charge, who happened to be Drew.
Drew had apparently been as impressed by him and his techie skills as Liam had been impressed by Alpha Force. The result had been Liam enlisting and joining the unit—and being taught and mentored by the man before him, the shifter who now couldn’t shift back.
Liam had to figure out how to help him, by assisting the others working on the same problem to succeed or otherwise.
“Well, it would be easier if I could report back to the rest of the gang that you admitted to drinking something besides, or in addition to, our regular elixir,” Liam said, pursing his lips a bit. “But I know they’re all trying hard, without knowing what they’re looking for, to research how this could happen.”
“I’m trying, in my own way, too,” Rosa said, standing again. “I gave him a brief physical before, but would like to do more now, although under these circumstances I’m not sure a regular veterinarian, even with some knowledge of shifters, can help.”
“But we appreciate your trying.” Liam also rose and looked at her. This, at least, was a different angle. “What do you want to do?”
“A blood test, for one thing. And I’d like to take a closer look at Drew’s body to see if there’s something visible, a cut or growth beneath his fur...anything that may be different. Maybe an X-ray, too.”
“Great,” Liam said. “I’ll help.”
Drew appeared to be okay with it as well, since he just stayed limp on the table, which Rosa adjusted to be closer to her waist level. She did the exam first, saying she would draw blood when they were done, then take it into the clinic’s lab to analyze.
“Many vets send blood out to a specialized laboratory for analysis,” she told Liam. “But with this kind of patient I’ve learned to conduct the analyses myself. It’s safer that way.”
Liam wanted to hug this attractive, smart, careful vet, but of course he didn’t.
Instead, he helped her work with Drew, moving him on the table so she could use her stethoscope to check his heartbeat—normal for a canine, she indicated. Also to feel his chest, his limbs, his back, his skin, seeking any kind of lump or other abnormality, but she found none.
With Liam’s help—and also that of Brendan, the vet tech he had seen in the hall before—they moved Drew into another room where the X-ray equipment was kept, but once again nothing unusual was discovered.
Brendan took charge of the move back to the same exam room. There were others in the hall then, including a woman also dressed in blue scrubs like Brendan, whom Liam assumed was the other vet tech Brendan 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 (#ub6ef44f9-2381-5259-ac8c-d2684b9e78b3)
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.
