Page 55 of Rogue Wolf

Her phone had no bars, but they had wifi in the cabin to her delight.

She resubmitted her information to the ancestry website and clicked to search. She pressed her lips together tightly, hoping this would yield what she needed and shed some light on her family history.

Ornate branches spread across the screen as her family tree was electronically constructed. Elaborate heritage developed slowly in front of her eyes, giving her time to comprehend the information.

Bingo.

She smiled at the screen. There were her grandparents’ names, even her great-grandparents’ details. Tamaska lost track of time as her family tree was populated with people she’d never even heard of.

How will I know if they were wolf shifters? A human ancestry website probably wouldn’t include supernatural information. She snorted at that. What she needed was the supernatural one.

Actually, that probably did exist, but she didn’t know how to even begin to find one and she was being invasive enough of Ash’s computer as it was.

She flipped through the rest of the open tabs. Ash was an organized and thorough researcher, but Tamaska saw nothing that would help her determine whether her ancestors had been wolf shifters.

Another dead end—

Then, she noticed another open app. She clicked on it, and finally found what she wanted. It showed a site that specifically tracked wolf shifter ancestry. “Ask,” she said, “and you will find.”

Tamaska filled the screen with the new information she’d found, and clicked to search.

“Fuck!” she exclaimed when she saw a family member whose full name she recognized from the previous site. It lay so many generations back, it was no wonder that her shifter genes were dormant.

Her great-, great-, great-, great-, great-, great-grandparents had been wolf shifters. Their daughter had a red cross through her name, and that branch ended there.

Did she die?

Tamaska typed her name into the human ancestry website and gasped at the information that appeared onscreen. Their daughter had married a human and borne three children.

In front of her lay the moment when her family’s shifter genes had been mixed with humans’, hundreds of years ago.

Nerves fluttered in her belly. She did have wolf shifter genes. That might help her case. Kodiak would have to turn her—he wouldn’t be able to ignore this.

Finally, it made some sort of sense that the vampires wanted her. But still, why did they prefer her over a pure wolf shifter?

Tamaska rubbed her eyes. No wonder it took Ash so long to research all of this. Tamaska had only spent the better part of an hour, with all the hard work already done for her, and she was tired. Her eyes hurt. But that wouldn’t stop her, not while she was locked inside a hut.

What was so special about her blood or her genes? What made her superior to a purebred shifter?

Or maybe inferior. Maybe the fact it was so dormant and weak meant the vampires could use it.

Tamaska she returned to Ash’s notes. She found a list of wolf shifter families with stronger abilities than others. She gasped. Brown was on the list.

Her skin prickled as she processed the new information. Could that be why the vampires wanted her?

Her gut roiled. That was it. It had to be. Now, all she had left to research was the Blood Opal and its potential powers.

But how? The shifters had been doing just that since it went missing. But maybe a fresh pair of eyes…

Ash had noted that the Blood Opal possessed regenerative powers that could be activated by blood. The gem would behave differently depending on the type of blood used to activate it.

A quick scan of Ash’s notes revealed that the Blood Opal alone would amplify its user’s powers. Weird.

It just didn’t make sense that the vampires wanted her blood to activate the opal if it amplified the user’s power. That would be her. Or did it mean her blood would strengthen the person who bled her? It wasn’t exactly clear and could be read either way.

But either way it was odd. So what if she came from one of the strongest shifter families? Her wolf genes were dormant. And what wolfish powers could the vampires possibly want?

Her gut churned. And if their plan involved her specifically, if they used her blood to activate the gem, it would amplify her powers and turn her into a wolf. Why would they want that?

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