Page 54 of Rogue Wolf

But for now, she’d wait for him. And still she reached for the vacant space beside her, longing for Kodiak to be there.

Memories of the few hours they’d stolen together, fucking the way two people should when they’ve just met and were falling for each other, flooded her mind. Her body ached without him, especially since the peace of the hut would be the perfect space to spend time alone, to release some of the emotions that had built up between them, to talk.

Instead, he’d chosen to be in his wolf form and locked her up like a possession.

Tamaska sat up, restless, even though she needed the sleep to recover from her head injury. When she wasn’t thinking about Kodiak, fragmented memories of vampire fights came to mind.

If only the hut had a TV or something. She needed a distraction. Lying there alone, too many thoughts haunted her, and she feared losing her mind.

Amdis’ words echoed through her. Your blood… activation… Blood Opal… ancestors.

She rubbed her temples. Maybe looking it all up, doing some research would help.

But her phone didn’t have any signal. She slid off the bed to wander around the room, looking for something to help her focus on anything but being locked in the hut.

Ash’s laptop sat on the lounge chair in the corner. Tamaska picked it up and took it back to the bed.

Ordinarily, she wouldn’t open someone else’s laptop and spy on their browsing history. But she wasn’t living in an ordinary world anymore.

She opened the laptop, hoping it might contain some secrets to help her better understand her situation.

No password?

Things were looking up for her. It seemed odd for Ash not to have a password, but maybe she’d gotten distracted by the ceremony.

About a dozen tabs were open onscreen, and Tamaska flicked between them. Ash had been researching Tamaska’s heritage, the Blood Opal, and how to turn humans into shifters.

Horror hit her. Didn’t they know how to turn a human? But surely…

Confused, she flicked through all the open files, scanning blocks of text for anything promising. Then, she found Ash’s notes.

It’s risky to change a human. The moon needs to be full, and they might be unable to rein in their new powers. A new wolf shifter might roam around killing uncontrollably. If the new shifter does survive, they will be weak for weeks after the transformation while they recover.

Tamaska shook her head in disbelief. Surely, turning a human couldn’t be so risky. Maybe this was why Kodiak didn’t seem keen on making it happen any time soon.

She tried not to be offended as she read on. This time, she found more information about Kodiak’s pack.

The Shadow Pack is made of wolf shifters. Their DNA ensures that their skills can be fully developed. No member has ever been human; they are all wolf shifters by birth.

So they only ever chose other pure wolf shifters from whoever was out there? So where and how could she even fit in?

If a single pure shifter had mated with a human, then the shifter genes could have eventually gone dormant after a few generations.

Was that liaison the real reason why her grandparents had come to Australia? If she had shifter blood, of course.

Tamaska flicked back to Ash’s ancestry searches. Ash had looked through online immigration records and found many new arrivals to Australia in 1921. She’d even found records of migrants who left Seattle that same year.

But there were no Lanes.

Tamaska frowned. Why weren’t there any Lanes?

She’d never been interesting in researching her family history before. Her parents had spoken openly about her grandparents’ emigration to Australia, but they’d died when she was a young teen.

No one mentioned a change of name. Her granparents and great granparents on her father’s side had been Lanes. If it had been changed then it would have been long before, in the US.

So strange, though. She’d never sensed they’d kept secrets from her, but maybe they had. If her phone had any bars, she would have called her parents immediately and asked them about it.

Then, Tamaska remembered. Of course! Her last name, Lane, was her dad’s, and he was Australian. She needed to use her mum’s maiden name, Brown. One set had come from the US, the other way back on the convict ships from the UK. So she needed to look up Brown.

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