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RORY
Iparked the rental car in front of the Evergreen Medical Clinic in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and got out. I flipped my collar up against the wind that crept into it. New York wasn’t the warmest place I’d ever been, and on paper, the temperatures here were similar to Minnesota, but this state felt much, much colder.
“I’m Rory Holden, reporting for duty,” I said to the shifter behind the reception desk.
Her amber eyes flashed at me, and she had a mane of bottle-blonde hair.
“Doctor Holden,” she said with a smile after she glanced at the screen. “We were expecting you.”
I smiled at her, and she directed me toward the director’s office, where I would get a slew of nurses under my command and a long list of patients to see. It was overwhelming to remember everyone’s names, to not know where anything was, to have to get to know the rotations and the other doctors and nurses I’d be working with.
I felt out of my depth, uncomfortable, and I didn’t want to be here.
What the hell had Colter been thinking to sendmehere?
My best friend and the alpha in New York had decided I was the one who had to come here to find the trail of one of our newest pack mates who had gone missing. That didn’t seem like my problem.
My brother, Mykel, was Colter’s beta. Shouldn’t it have been his problem rather than mine? I hadn’t been able to argue with Colter, though. When he wanted something done, there was nothing I could do about it. We might have been really close since we were kids, but he was the boss.
He’d pulled all the strings to get me here—organized a job for me at the clinic, since I was a doctor who specialized in shifter healing. He’d gotten me a place to live, a car I could use indefinitely… He’d really taken care of me.
I just hated that I had to be the one to do it.
I liked New York. It was home. I was close to my brother and my friends there. I knew the clinic, and I knew I could do good. I felt like I’d been banished for something, punished, although I didn’t know anything I’d done wrong.
I was just being dramatic.
The sooner I found Turk, the missing shifter from our pack, the sooner I could go home. The new job and new home were just a cover to get me here and get me involved in the community to help me find him more quickly.
Turk had come to us in New York after he’d left here, saying he wanted to get away from his family. He’d integrated into our pack. We’d shown him how we lived and what we did, and then he’d run right back here.
Colter was suspicious of his disappearance, especially since he’d come back to Minneapolis. He was sure Turk would use what he’d learned with us by turning it against us.
It wasn’t common knowledge that Liv was part angel, for instance, and that mating her had given Colter a magical edge he hadn’t had before. That was the kind of information he wanted to keep under wraps, but with Turk running loose…
I didn’t think it was that serious. Turk was young, without much power behind him. I was sure his family was a part of this, and he needed all the help he could get.
Either way, I didn’t like that the help or the hunt—whatever it turned out to be—fell on my shoulders.
I forced the thoughts away and focused on work.
My first patient was a young shifter with an allergic reaction to fur. Yeah, talk about a bummer.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” she said with a stuffy nose, her N’s and M’s all sounding like B’s. She sneezed. “How can I live like this when I’m literally allergic to myself?” She sneezed again.
“We’ll give you antihistamine for now, and I’ll run some tests,” I said, opening the drawers to look for needles so I could draw blood.
There were none to be found.
“And then?” she asked.
“And then we take the next step.” I kept my voice calm, but my irritation started to climb. How could I do anything when I didn’t know where anything was?
I walked to the wall where I pushed a button that was supposed to summon a nurse.
“It’s not a terrible thing, sweetheart,” I said.
