Chapter 2

      “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?