Nineteen
Ollie
Keir’s waiting on theother side of the door to lead me to Julien’s office where we find Remy sitting behind the desk with a laptop open in front of him. The younger Matisse brother glances up and gestures us over. Keir grabs one of the chairs on the opposite side of the desk and drags it around until it’s sitting beside Remy. He motions for me to take that chair, then shifts to stand behind Remy.
Remy swivels his chair to face me. “I’ve been able to locate five packs who indicated in some way that they had a white wolf in their pack. Unfortunately, none of the registered white wolves were you. Two of them are clearly too old and the other three are all accounted for.”
“How is that helpful then?” I ask.
“Because even if theregisteredwhite wolves aren’t you, we now know of five packs that have the gene.” Remy ticks each pack off on his fingers. “Onaway, Michigan. Drift Creek, Oregon. Rockcastle, Kentucky. Denver, Colorado. Richmond, Virginia.” He pauses and raises his brows. “Any of those places sound familiar?”
I shake my head. “No, sorry.”
“No problem. I can still narrow things down a bit. Since you mentioned being from a rural location, we can probably already rule out the two bigger packs—Denver and Richmond,” says Remy. “How do you feel about looking at some pictures of the other areas to see if they spark some memories?”
“Do you really think that will help?”
“I do,” says Remy. He reaches over and wakes the laptop and pulls up a search engine.
Images of the first location fill the screen in a grid. None of them trigger any sort of recognition, so I shake my head. He repeats the search for each of the other locations—with the same result. Not a single image tugs at my memories, not a single one looks at all familiar.
“I guess that means it’s back to square one,” says Remy, scowling at the screen.
“What about missing persons?” I ask. “Can you check for any reports from these areas?”
Remy frowns. “I already did. There weren’t any missing person reports for anyone matching your description in the past five years. I can go back farther, but not in the databases I have access to easily.”
“No one’s even looking for me?” I ask.
Keir squeezes my shoulder. “Not necessarily,” he says. “It could simply be no one knows you’re actually missing. Maybe you left your pack or something before the humans caught you.If something had happened to me in the four years I spent on my own, there wouldn’t have been any reports about me either.”
“You left your pack for a good reason,” I say. “What if I did too? Maybe we should just let sleeping dogs lie, or whatever, and not bother looking any farther.”
Keir sighs. “We can do that if you really want, but even after everything that happened in Sweet Water, I knew where I came from. No matter what we find, I think it’s important you do too. No one’s saying you have to go visit your birth pack or anything, but you should at least know who they are.”
“I agree with Keir,” says Remy as he starts closing the browser tabs one by one. My gaze catches on an image in the lower corner of the screen. Only the top half of the image is visible, but there’s something…
I grab Remy’s wrist and point at the screen with my other hand. “Scroll down.”
Remy’s brows go up, but he does as I ask.
Memories niggle at the back of my mind as the full image comes into view. It’s a simple picture of tree on a river shore with a mountain vista in the background, but there’s something about the shape of the tree and the way the colors come together that makes my brain stand up and pay attention.
Iknowthis place.
And with that blast of certainty comes a memory.
The teenage alpha I saw in my dreams is holding on to a rope and swinging out over the water. He lets go as the rope reaches the edge of its limits and he plummets into the water, popping up a few seconds later and shaking the water out of his hair.
“Come on, Ollie,” he says. “It’s not that cold.”
Older than in the memory with my mother, maybe eleven or twelve, I edge closer, reaching out to grab the still gently swinging rope.
“Promise not to let me get swept away?” I ask.
“Promise,” says Blake—my brother—as he grins up at me from the water.
I can’t help the smile that takes over my face, and I whisper my brother’s name with something close to awe. My gaze flies up to meet Remy’s. “I have a brother.” I point at the screen. “He took me swimming there.”
