Naomi could sense the affection Winona felt for her brother. “The two of you are really close, aren’t you?”
Winona looked confused by the question. “He’s my brother.”
Naomi had never been close to Peter and Ruth’s sons. To them, she’d always been an outsider and a female.
Winona led her out the back gate and called to the wolf. “Hey, Shota.”
How could Naomi have mistaken him for a dog?
The big animal stood behind two heavy chain-link fences—an outer one that was about five feet tall and an inner one that must have been fifteen feet high. The enclosure ran up the side of the mountain and included a den and lots of toys—balls, a wading pool filled with water, and …
Was that white thing a bone? Yes, it was.
Signs in red and white warned people away.
BEWARE OF WOLF
This wolf is a wild animal and
will bite or attack if provoked.
Do not try to enter pen or
stick anything through the fence
you don’t wish to see ripped apart.
Okay. That was direct.
For all of his fierceness—and Naomi was certain Shota could be fierce—he whined like a puppy when he saw Winona.
“I try to get outside to play with him a few times a day. He gets lonely.” She stopped for a few minutes to talk with him, reaching inside to pet him.
“Have you thought about getting him a friend?”
“We’ve talked about it—a wolf-hybrid or a big dog—but we’ve found a kind of balance with Shota. It’s hard for a captive adult wolf to accept new pack members. It might work out, or it might end with Shota or one of us getting hurt.”
The back entrance of the clinic stood not thirty feet from Shota’s enclosure. Winona scanned her ID and held the door open for Naomi. “Tell me if you need to sit or if you’re too tired to go on. I don’t want to wear you out.”
Winona showed Naomi the intake area where she examined new arrivals, then led her past two small operating rooms to bigger treatment rooms on the other side of the hallway, telling her how the clinic operated. “Spring and summer are our busiest seasons because that’s when animals have their young. We get a lot of orphaned babies—fawns whose mothers were hit by cars, baby raccoons that got washed downstream, that sort of thing. Our goal is always rehabilitation and release, though sometimes that’s impossible.”
“If you can’t release them, are you forced to put them down?”
Winona put a hand over her heart, a horrified expression on her face. “Oh, no. We only euthanize animals that can’t be saved. If we can’t release them, we keep them here until we find a safe home for them.”
A woman with long red hair walked toward them, a sleeping red-haired baby in a carrier on her chest, a basket full of baby bottles in one hand. She smiled at Winona before her gaze came to rest on Naomi. “I’m Lexi Taylor. You must be Naomi.”
It was both strange and kind of nice that people knew who she was. “I would ask how you know that, but …”
Lexi laughed. “Scarlet is areallysmall town. Also, my husband, Austin, was part of the Team that brought you in.”
“Oh, yes. The paramedic. I remember. Please thank him.”
“Lexi is one of my volunteers,” Winona explained. “She and little Emily help out a few times a week.”
“I bribed my way in, but Win has been nice enough to let me stay.”
“I let Lexi stay because she’s good with the animals.” The two women shared the kind of smile that marked them as good friends.
