of how he’d come to live with us here and I didn’t believe him,” Koko said as her smile widened. “So I decided to ask one of our elders who I knew wouldn’t lie to me,” she continued as her gaze seemed to lock on her front door. It was as though she were seeing right through it, like she was reliving a far-off memory. “And she told me it was true, that Amala really had found Taktuq in the forest.” The memory must have faded before her eyes because she suddenly seemed to remember me as she turned to face me. “Amala didn’t have other children at the time so she kept Taktuq and raised him as her own.”
Okay, so as far as I could gather, the story was true. Hmm, I couldn’t say I was that surprised. Alex didn’t strike me as a liar. “Thank you,” I started as she nodded. Now came the harder part. “Do you know anything about Alexander’s brother, Donovan?”
All the color immediately drained from Koko’s face and I was convinced she definitely knew something. “What about Donovan?” she asked, flustered.
I shrugged as I decided to continue my bluff. I just needed to sound unconcerned so she didn’t think I considered her an accomplice or somehow at fault for his disappearance. “While we had Alexander locked up, he started going on about some brother who was missing.” I cleared my throat and filled my head with background music. So far, it seemed to be working. “This was the first I’d heard of it.”
She nodded and played with the ends of her hair, refusing to look me in the eyes again. “Yes, Donovan has been missing for a couple of months now.”
“Do you know what happened to him?”
She immediately glanced up at me. “Why would I know?”
“I’m not saying you do. I just have to make sure I exhaust all avenues and Alexander mentioned something about you being Donovan’s girlfriend.”
Her mouth dropped open before she could catch herself. “I was his girlfriend in the past,” she admitted, her voice suddenly softer. “But we broke up a few weeks before he went missing.”
Hmm, this was interesting because Alex had failed to mention that part to me. Maybe he hadn’t even known they’d broken up? If what she was telling me was true… “Why did you break up?”
She shook her head. “I met someone else.”
“Alexander said something about you moving away for a while?” I pressed. “That you left the reservation?”
“I did,” she responded with a clipped nod.
“Why?”
She started to rub the back of her neck. “Donovan wasn’t welcome here,” she began. “And my parents forbade me to date him, so I did the only thing I could if I wanted to be with him. I left.”
“But then you came back?”
“Yes.” She nodded.
“How come?”
“I came back because Donovan wasn’t right for me.”
“Wasn’t right for you?”
She nodded. “He was… too wild for me. I thought it was exciting at first, but after a while, it wasn’t as exciting.” She looked up at me then and her eyes seemed suddenly weighty, forlorn. “He was an addict. There’s nothing exciting about that.”
“So the man you left Donovan for,” I started, but before I could finish, I heard the sound of a door opening and closing that sounded as if it were coming from the rear of the house. That was followed by heavy footsteps coming down the hallway and leading into the living room. A man suddenly appeared at the mouth of the hallway, wearing nothing but heavy boots.
As soon as I realized he was naked, I immediately averted my eyes as embarrassment warmed my cheeks. I could see, out of the corner of my eyes, that upon seeing me, he immediately covered himself. I was left to wonder why he would be naked in freezing cold temperatures, that is, unless he happened to have just shifted back from the shape of the wolf…
“Achak,” Koko said, her tone one of shock laced with worry.
Chapter Twenty-one
Achak—it was the name of the other wolf that had been with Alex the night I’d gone jogging. The night I’d first met Alex… in his wolf form.
“What the hell do you want?” Achak immediately demanded, eyeing me with what looked like hatred mixed with fury. He was a big guy, brawny and burly, but he had something about him that was slightly attractive. He was like one of those guys who wasn’t exactly classically attractive but had enough bravado that women flocked to him anyway.
Before