Alpha Wolf

He watched her with bright amber eyes. Intelligent eyes. He seemed to thank her.

She gave a quick shake of her head. No way was she going to buy into the absurd legends around here. The dog might be smart—heck, she’d guess him to be a mix between a malamute and a German shepherd, both bright breeds. He was moderate sized. His multi-hued coat was mostly gray tipped in black, but was all white in some areas, others all black. He had a long, strong muzzle and erect ears. Did he resemble a wolf? Sure. But he wasn’t one.

And even if he was a conglomeration of the smartest breeds of dogs, that didn’t give him human intelligence—like a werewolf would supposedly have.

“Good morning, guy,” she said to him. He immediately stood in the cage-like enclosure, his long, fluffy tail wagging. “How do you feel?” She didn’t expect an answer, but she knelt on the clean, sunshine-yellow linoleum floor and examined the bandaged area near his left shoulder. Good thing the gun used to shoot him apparently hadn’t been very powerful. Although he’d lost a lot of blood, not much damage had been done. The bullet had barely nicked his scapula without ricocheting, then lodged there.

Not enough to kill a strong, healthy dog, thank heavens. Was even a minor wound with a silver bullet supposed to be enough to slaughter a werewolf?

Maybe she’d need to read up on the lore, to maximize her effectiveness as a vet around here. Only so she’d be prepared for situations like this, of course.

In the meantime, she had to make a phone call. Probably should have made it last night.

“No such thing as werewolves, are there, boy?” she said, giving her patient a gentle hug without putting pressure on his wound. “But I wish you were able to talk, or at least communicate your name and where you came from. You appear well taken care of—not starving, and though you look a little straggly now, I’d guess someone brushes your coat pretty often.”

He made a small whining noise, as if trying to hold up his end of the conversation. Melanie grinned as she stood. “Even if I don’t believe in werewolves, I sure do a lot of anthropomorphizing.” The dog’s head was cocked as if he tried to understand her. “Anthropomorphizing? That’s ascribing human characteristics to animals. Like now. Understand?” The dog barked, and Melanie laughed. “Maybe you do understand.” She glanced at her watch. “Know what? It’s nearly six-thirty. Some of my staff will arrive soon, which is a good thing. Patients, too, and that’s not so good when I haven’t slept much. But I’ll manage. Just need a cup of coffee to get me going.”

Her patient stood up and wriggled in the crate.

“You’re surely not suggesting you need coffee. Water, though—I’ll get you some. And you seem to be doing well enough to try a little food, too. I’ll have one of the techs bring you some as soon as they arrive—it’ll help them get some antibiotics and painkiller down you. They can take the collar off for a while and see if you lick.”

She left the operating room and went down the hall to look in on the patients in the infirmary. They all stood at eager attention at her arrival. “Good morning,” she said. “You all look chipper.” She made sure they each had water available and got a plastic bowlful for her surgery patient.

Her next stop was her office, where she called the Mary Glen Police Department. “Chief Ellenbogen, please. This is Dr. Melanie Harding.”

It took nearly five minutes before the chief got on the line. Her fingers thrumming in irritation on her desk, Melanie alternated between listening to public interest announcements blaring in her ear and speaking with underlings who apologized when she said she had something important to tell the chief. No, it wasn’t an emergency—now. She considered hanging up.

But this was important. Or at least it might be.

Eventually…“Ellenbogen here.”

“Chief, this is—”

“Yes, I was told the vet was waiting. How ya doing, Melanie?”

She had met the chief when he had brought in his own pet, a sweet, aging bloodhound named Jasper that supported the adage that people adopted dogs that resembled them. Chief Ellenbogen was as wrinkled and laid back as his pet. “I’m okay, Chief, but I found a dog late last night outside the clinic who’d been shot with a silver bullet. He’s going to be okay, but since I was told that my predecessor vet here, Dr. Worley, and his wife were killed that way, I thought you’d want to know.”

“I’ll be right there, Melanie. I want to see that dog.” He paused, then said, “Er…have you checked on him this morning?”

It was all Melanie could do to keep from chuckling. “If what you’re asking is whether he’s still a dog, or if he morphed into a human in daylight, the answer is ‘arf.’”

The chief cleared his throat. “Just jokin’.” But he sounded more embarrassed than humorous. “See you in a few.”

Melanie’s head was shaking as she hung up. Werewolves. People here obviously believed in them, as ridiculous as it sounded. Even, apparently, the chief of police.

Well, she’d kind of known that before she bought this practice from Lt. Patrick Worley, son of Dr. Martin Worley, who’d been shot and killed by a silver bullet only a few months ago. His wife was killed the same way, a year earlier. The shooter—or shooters—hadn’t been caught. And Melanie hadn’t known before how widespread the legend was of werewolves—and how widely accepted.

Ridiculous. No doubt about that. But she promised herself yet again to take a crash course in werewolf lore, so she would be better prepared to deal with this silliness.

No. More than silliness, she reminded herself as she headed for her office door. Viciousness. A man was killed because of it—even though she’d heard no rumors that anyone considered her predecessor vet, Dr. Worley, a werewolf. But the silver bullet bit—that had to be a result of the legend.

And now she’d saved the life of a dog that someone may have mistaken for a shapeshifting human.

At least she was fairly certain that the legends said that werewolves turned back into people as the moon disappeared into daylight. No way would anyone be able to mistake her patient again for a shapeshifter.

Time to go check on him again, before her staff started arriving in a few minutes. She headed back down the hall to the surgery room, thrust open the door—and stopped.

Just inside, staring at her, was a man. He was tall, dressed in jeans and a gray sweatshirt stretched taut over substantial muscles, his black hair flecked with brilliant silver.

And he regarded her with intelligent, grateful amber eyes.

Chapter Two

Melanie barely stifled a gasp. Where was her patient? Surely, he hadn’t turned into this man. The Mary Glen werewolf legends were utter fiction, the creation of superstitious minds…weren’t they?

But if the dog she had treated had become human, this man had some of the features she would anticipate…

“Dr. Harding?” The man’s voice was deep, throaty. All sexy. All masculine.

Human masculine.

“Yes?” she said, hating the slight tremor in her voice. “Who are you?” Good. Her voice was stronger now. “What are you doing here?” She had to see for herself. She sidled uneasily away from the doorway, where this large, compelling man commandeered every inch of her vision, preventing her from viewing the rest of the room.

She needed to see the crate in which her patient had slept last night. Make sure it wasn’t empty. It couldn’t be empty.

“I’m Major Drew Connell. I want to thank you for saving my dog, Grunge.”

“Grunge?” As Melanie said the name, she finally reached a position where the man wasn’t blocking her view. There was the wire crate, still on the floor between the chair she had dragged in and the tall metal table where she operated. The furry dog with the recovery collar was still in it, sitting up, tail wagging furiously.

“Yeah, Grunge.”

“Interesting name.” Melanie felt almost giddy with relief. The dog was still there. Of course. How silly of her to have entertained any doubts, even for a second. Not that she’d really doubted.

But Grunge? The dog looked anything but grungy to her, at least since she had cleaned the blood off him.

“Interesting dog. You should see him after a workout. He really throws himself into it.” Major Connell knelt and put his arms around Grunge, obviously careful not to push the collar into an uncomfortable position, an oddly touching scene—the large, powerful-looking man and the injured dog. He backed off to ruffle the fur on Grunge’s head, then gently turned the dog so he could see the bandaged area. “What happened? How was he hurt? I was engaged in a training exercise on the base late last night, so I wasn’t aware till just a short while ago that he was missing.”

Melanie didn’t answer his question right away. She had too many of her own. It was one thing to keep her imagination in check. It was another to take this man’s appearance at face value. “Then how did you know to look for him here?”

“I couldn’t find him anywhere else, so I used process of elimination and decided to check out the closest vet. And here he was.” He gave the dog another rough pat, then stood again.

Did his answer make sense? Maybe. The nearest military base wasn’t next door, but there weren’t other veterinary clinics or animal shelters any nearer than this hospital.

“He’s your dog?” Melanie demanded. She had to look way up to meet the officer’s eyes. Damn, but the man was good-looking: straight, dark brows over those amber eyes, a slender nose with slightly flared nostrils, a sensuous, full mouth. All that and a hint of dark beard beneath his closely shaved skin.

“Yes and no. He belongs to the U.S. Army, but we’re assigned to work with one another. He’s a highly trained military dog. We use him, and others like him on the base, to help sniff out bombs and other weaponry, to attack on command, and—well, some of his work is classified.”

“Yeah, if you told me you’d have to kill me. I get it.” Melanie kept her tone light, but she stared at the officer. “By ‘base,’ I assume you mean Ft. Lukman, right?”