Linda Johnston - Visionary Wolf

“No,” she said, “I’m not. But where I grew up in Michigan there were quite a few wolves, and I learned early on that a few of my school friends and their families happened to be shifters. The existence of real wolves in that area gave them a bit of cover.”

“Makes sense. My family lived in Minnesota for the same reason. But not being a shifter yourself, how did you end up learning that your friends were?” All the shifters he knew were taught from a young age to keep that critical fact to themselves.

“Well, I always wanted to become a veterinarian. I love animals. I always had a dog or two, visited the nearest zoo a lot and—well, I realized at a fairly young age that I heard more wolf howls in the distance on nights of the full moon than otherwise.” She leaned toward him a little. “Did you howl then as you were growing up? Turned out my friends did. One of them, a guy I guess I had a crush on in seventh grade, hinted to me about where to show up at sundown on one of those special nights. He knew I was there, hiding behind a tree, when his family and a couple of others went out into the forest together. It was really amazing to watch when the four of them went from being a regular human family to a small pack of wolves. I never forgot it, of course, though that guy stopped talking to me. Guess his family caught my scent and bawled him out.”

“But you knew then,” Liam stated. He couldn’t help smiling. It must have been quite an experience for a young non-shifter.

“I knew then,” she confirmed. “I hardly ever talked about it—but I just happened to snoop around on more nights of the full moon and saw that a few other friends shared that characteristic.”

“And did they stop talking to you, too?”

“I tried to be a lot more careful. If they knew about me, they never said so, and I never said anything to them, either.”

“But you still wanted to help them as a vet?”

“Sure. When I went to veterinary school I made sure to learn about all canine anatomy as well as volunteering to help the vets who worked with the local zoo. And then, as I learned enough to help, I visited that first guy’s mother one day—he was off at a different college by then—and told her what I knew about them, and how I was learning a lot about working with feral creatures like wolves, in case anyone needed medical help while shifted. She pretended not to know what I was talking about, but—”

“But sometime near then she called on you in her wolf form to come help another shifter who needed medical help that night, right?”

“Exactly.”

Liam could hear her big smile in the tone of her voice. He looked over and grinned back at her. “And from then on they knew you were there to help.”

“Yes, I was. I helped them and myself, and they were the ones to give recommendations about me to Melanie when she put word out—very discreetly, I might add—about how she was a regular veterinarian with...interesting contacts who sometimes needed medical assistance. Since the shifters around me made a point of not admitting their true nature, I thought that the type of organization Melanie hinted about—the US military, of all things—might be a fascinating group of potential patients.”

As he was growing up, Liam had known a couple local people who seemed to recognize what he, his family members and others in the area were, but although they were mostly polite, they didn’t attempt to get to know any shifters better.

He was impressed with this lovely lady who not only accepted the idea of shifters in her life, but actually seemed to appreciate them. Worry about them. Want to heal them.

“I’m sure Melanie is really glad to have your help,” he told her, then shared a brief smile with her before he made another turn on the twisty road.

“And I’m really glad to help her. And the others.” A tone he didn’t quite recognize modified Rosa’s voice.

“Especially Drew,” Liam guessed.

“Especially Drew,” she agreed. “But...I just hope we really can help him.”

“We will,” Liam asserted—hoping it was true.

Even though Liam had asked her to ride with him so he could ask questions about blood and blood types, Rosa was somewhat amused that they never really got into that topic much. And when they did, all she needed to do was go over a bit of what she had already been thinking about.

Yes, she told him when he finally asked, the blood types of people and regular canines had differences. So did the blood types of wolves in general from shifted wolves. People and their unshifted counterparts, not so much.

And the differences she saw from the blood she had drawn from Drew? Well, she didn’t exactly know what they were, except for the odd consistency and darker coloration. That was why she hoped for someone else’s advice.

She didn’t let him know how concerned she really was, although since she was looking for guidance he probably gathered that.

Would those at Ft. Lukman know whether that blood issue was the cause of Drew’s not changing back? If so, would they know how to fix it?

Liam didn’t seem inclined to talk much more about it, which was fine with her. It allowed her to avoid revealing how inadequate she felt, and instead gave her time to ask him about what he did as a technology expert for Alpha Force.

That got him going immediately—and what he had to say about the online claims worried her, too, as someone who had friends and patients around here who were shifters.

Sure, she had met actual shifters at home when she was young. She had also seen sites on the internet, mostly blogs or social media posts, that speculated whether there actually were such things as shapeshifters, as depicted in horror movies and otherwise. Sometimes people claimed to have seen the real thing, and maybe, like her, they had.

She had even found some references to oddities that had allegedly gone on here in Mary Glen a while back. But she’d also seen posts about how all that got resolved when it was discovered that one member of an offbeat group of people who claimed shapeshifters exist had made unsubstantiated claims for his own benefit. Discovering who it was and stopping him had helped quiet things down in this area—at least as far as the rest of the world was likely to know.

But what Liam was describing could be a lot worse for the ongoing peace of shapeshifters—and Alpha Force in particular. Rosa now lived near downtown Mary Glen, not far from the vet clinic. She had heard nothing at all regarding the claims Liam described about how shifters around here, under the last full moon, had hurt some regular people in this area—badly.

Neither had Liam, he assured her. It was simply untrue.

And it was his job to make sure that anyone who saw those ridiculous posts didn’t believe a word.

He’d already checked on how his aide, Denny, had started dealing with the situation, and believed he was doing a good job. But Liam would take over himself later that evening.

After driving through the thick woodlands, they finally arrived at the gate to the military base. Even Liam had to provide his ID to the guards despite being stationed there, and of course Rosa had to provide hers, as well. Then Liam drove across the base to a building she had visited once before to check on an injured animal Melanie had explained was a cover dog, resembling one of the shifters in canine form.

Most of the time, those cover dogs that needed shots or exams were brought to the veterinary clinic, like all other pets in the Mary Glen area. That was how Rosa got to meet and treat them.

However, they’d chosen not to move that dog, Spike—Seth Ambers’s cover dog—without getting him treatment first. Fortunately, though he’d been bleeding profusely, he’d had nothing worse than a fairly minor cut from a broken bottle he’d stepped on.