Maybe my second is more of a diplomat than I give her credit for.
I drop my hand and acknowledge Doc’s submissive gesture with a dip of my chin. “This is my second, Macy.”
“Welcome.” Doc bobs his head in her direction, then his gaze slides to me. “I’m not sure what the protocol is here. Before… my brother didn’t have an official second.”
She gives him a tight smile. “How about you just take us to this shifter you called about? We can worry about figuring out the formalities later.”
“Of course,” he replies, bobbing his head again. I expect him to lead us inside, but instead he gestures to the left and walks around the side of the house.
Macy and I exchange a look, and I jerk my chin toward Doc’s back, raising my eyebrows. She shrugs and nods, moving to take position in front of me. I can’t sense any sort of large grouping of shifters here, so everything’s probably perfectly fine. Still, the two of us stay alert, our gazes darting around the yard, ready for any sort of ambush.
There’s a narrow paver stone walkway leading to a smaller building near the edge of a group of trees on the left side of the house. The structure looks like a shed of some kind, but a very well appointed one, and I’m reminded again about what Keir said about this pack’s finances.
The Sweet Water pack could be considered land rich since all of us live in a compound on a single hundred-acre piece of property, but, hell, this “shed” might be nicer than some of the pack houses in the lower part of the Sweet Water compound.
Doc pulls a set of keys from his pocket and sets to unlocking the door.
“Why do you have him locked up out here?” asks Macy, frowning. “Is he dangerous?”
Doc purses his lips. “He was very worked up. I had to drug him just to get him out of the wildlife center and…” He gestures toward the shed. “I had no way of knowing for sure whether he was feral, so he needed to be secured.” Doc’s gaze darts to me,then away. “Putting him in one of the kennels in my lab area was the only way to do that.”
“You put a shifter in a cage like an animal?” Macy asks, her voice going hard.
“I didn’t have any other choice.” Doc’s lips twist with irritation and he shakes his head as he pushes open the door and clicks on the light inside.
The interior of the small building is deceptively large. Most of the space appears to be, as Doc said, a lab that’s filled with science-type stuff I don’t recognize. In the far right corner there’s a small cot, a mini-fridge, and a microwave, indicating Doc might spend a lot of time in here. Lengths of chain link fencing make up two kennels in the opposite corner and there’s a bank of three cages—all empty—along the wall across from the kennels.
My wolf perks up and a strange instinct draws me toward the occupied kennel and the small form huddled against the wall inside. The shifter’s coat, though filthy, appears to be completely white, a very uncommon color for a shifter, and there’s a small, shaved area on one of his front legs and a larger one on his right hind quarters.
I glance at Doc, tilting my head toward the shifter and raising my brows in question.
“His rear leg was fractured. The wildlife center put a cast on him and was giving him IV fluids,” he says. “I took the cast off before asking him to shift so it wouldn’t interfere.”
“Any idea where he was before all this?” I ask, moving closer to the kennel. The wolf doesn’t stir, even as I reach the fencing and curl my fingers through the chain link. “From his current condition, I doubt he was much better off even before his injury.”
Doc shrugs. “The vet at the wildlife center thought he might have been kept as a pet, though not one who was well cared for.He doesn’t have enough evidence of scarring or other injuries to make them think he was used for fighting.”
I study the wolf again, my stomach twisting. “But with shifter healing…”
“Exactly.” Doc nods, the corners of his mouth turning down. “I’ve heard a couple rumors about a dog fighting ring operating in the area. That’s another reason I thought finding out who he is and where he’s been might be important.”
I blow out a breath. The last thing I need is to be dealing with some kind of shifter fight club, or worse, humans using shifters for dog fighting. If either of those things is the case, this situation might quickly become way more than I can handle on my own.
I lean closer to the fencing and take a deep breath, letting my senses filter through the different scents layered over the small wolf. The strongest one is disinfectant or something, unpleasant, but not unexpected. The scents hidden underneath the chemical stink, however, make my lips twist with disgust.
Metal and sickness and fear.
And only buried under all that horror is the scent of shifter, faded and weak, enough to identify him as one of us, but nothing more. Not even enough to confirm his designation.
The one good thing is that I don’t sense anything that would lead me to believe he’d recently been in any fights. I relay that information to Macy who’s scowling at Doc.
“I’m still waiting to see why youhadto lock him up,” says Macy in a dry voice.
Doc shoots her an annoyed look. “Shifter or not, a frightened and injured animal is nothing to mess around with. It was for both his protection and mine. I couldn’t very well bring an unknown shifter into the house and put him in one of the bedrooms. Besides the fact he was liable to hurt himself, I had no idea what his motives for being in this territory might be.”
“His motives?” Macy rolls her eyes. “I think it’s pretty obvious that however he got to Smyrna, it wasn’t voluntary.” She turns her attention to me, her voice going softer. “Can you help him, Luke?”
“Probably,” I say.
