illegal in so many ways I can’t even begin to…”
“Then don’t,” he interrupted. “Because it’s way past the point of mattering. In case you didn’t notice, I’m no longer a baby.” Then he glanced down at himself. “Instead, I’m a fully grown, strapping young man.”
“Who could deal with a dose or two of humility,” I grumbled.
“Ah, come on, Chief…”
“Call me Elodie,” I interrupted. “Please. I’m sick of you calling me ‘Chief’ all the time.”
“Elodie.” He said my name with a giant smirk and said it in such a way that he might as well have been saying something lascivious.
“So going back to you and your roots.” I cleared my throat before taking another sip of my tea. “You were raised in secret. At least, secret to the outside world?”
“That would be correct.”
“And you say no one came looking for you?”
“As far as I know, no.”
“And your mother later gave birth to Donovan?”
“Isn’t that the way of it, Chief, er, Elodie? Childless for nearly a decade of marriage, then she finds me in the forest, and then later gets pregnant with Donovan. Coincidence, eh?”
I made a big mental note to look into his story, not caring if he knew. I mean, when did you ever hear of someone randomly finding a baby in the woods and raising it as one of their own? It had the makings of a fairy tale.
“Dig into it all you want, Elodie. There’s nothing there. No record of me anywhere. Trust me, I’ve looked.”
“This is disturbing. All of it.”
“Welcome to my world.” He paused. “If you think it’s disturbing, imagine being the one living it.”
I suddenly wished everything that was my life lately wasn’t. I wished the body hadn’t been found a few days ago. And I wished I hadn’t seen it tromp up the stairs, carrying its guts in a metal bowl, and I definitely wished I hadn’t seen Alex turn into a wolf. And I really wished I hadn’t seen his… sausage.
“And back again,” he corrected me.
“What?”
“I turned into a wolf and then back into a man again, don’t forget that part.”
“And I wish you’d get out of my head.”
“All you have to do is ask.”
“Well, I’m asking for the umpteenth time, although it doesn’t seem to do any good.”
“You have to ask really, really nicely.”
“Oh, piss off.”
I glanced down at my mug and discovered I’d finished my tea. Strange, but I couldn’t even remember doing so. Grumbling, I set about making another cup. As I did so, I asked, “So how long has your brother been missing?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I’d say he’s been missing since my ex-girlfriend returned to the reservation. She came back because he was gone.”
“What happened then? Did anyone alert the authorities to his disappearance?” I asked, but I already knew the answer. “No,” I supplied. “Because you try to avoid the authorities.”
“It was a cold winter, Elodie. Most of us keep to ourselves. And, given my brother’s nature, no one was keen to go after him. Besides, we all knew he could always hunt and fish, and take care of himself anyway. When you take the shape of a wolf, you’re a natural survivor.”
“And your ex-girlfriend, who ran off with him?”
Alex’s expression fell. “What about her?”
“Do you think she could have stabbed Donovan?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“She wouldn’t have missed either. If she wanted him dead, she knew how to do it.”
“So she knew he could take the form of a wolf?” I started to wonder something else. “Because if she didn’t, it does make sense that maybe she would’ve tried to kill him if she found out?” I took a breath. “Maybe he changed in front of her or something and she thought he was going to attack her?”
“No, no and no,” Alex announced. “She knew from the beginning. Everyone knew and knows.”
“About you both?”
“Yes.”
“And the fact that you and your brother are werewolves never bothered her?”
“No, not at all.”
My eyebrows furrowed because I couldn’t understand how this information wouldn’t bother someone. Until something dawned on me. “Wait... she’s not...”
“We all are.”
I stopped stirring the honey in my tea. “Who’s we?”
He grinned again, a little too shit-eating for me this time. “The whole village. We’re all werewolves.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Explain how this is all possible.”
“What all?” Alex fired back. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“How is a tribe full of werewolves possible? Actually, answer this first: how is it possible for a corpse to come back to life minus its brain, with its chest cavity exposed and all its organs removed?”
Alex