I WAS TOO LATE, OF course. The Barn rats—now including several of my young-adult relatives in addition to Wolfie’s core yahoos—were fully ensconced in the largest room of the clinic by the time I arrived. There were wolves on the floor, two-legged shifters sitting on benches, and, inexplicably, helium balloons floating through the air. The last appeared to be simply toys, although I was pretty sure I’d noticed a few of the human-form shifters tying ribbons together in preparation for hoisting Ember aloft.
The bloodling would have to take care of herself, though, because my attention immediately went to the F2F trial taking place at the other end of the room. Dale was injecting the d**g into a wolf’s upper leg as I walked in, and the change back to a human Fen was nearly as rapid as my mat
