Wolf at the Door (Wolf Winter #3) - T.A. Moore Page 0,11

many times he stopped and almost went back. A wolf could have done it quicker than that, even on two feet.

They’d already been on the road for half a day, slowed down by the wet resistance of the snow and the ice-needled wind that pinched ears and worked its way through every zipper and seam. It pushed them back until they had to lean into it like mimes to make any progress. Danny tried not to think about the Hunt in Durham, when he’d caught the Wild like a tailwind as he ran. This was just weather. If the Wild didn’t want them back on the Old Man’s territory, then Jack or Gregor would have said something.

Instead they took point, grimly silent as they broke a path through the snow for those not lucky enough to be wolves. All Danny could see without looking up was their sodden jeans and old, ruined boots as they kicked the fresh-fallen snow out of the way. Their uncomplaining stamina made him feel guilty for the sluggish weariness that dragged at him.

He could feel the dog’s restlessness in his bones. If he shifted, he could cut across country and move faster. The cold wouldn’t bother him as much, and the dog didn’t need glasses.

Danny grimaced at the reminder and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

He’d gotten his first pair of glasses when he was eleven, old enough to realize his ma couldn’t deny he was a dog, but she wouldn’t accept any other defect in him. The fact he couldn’t see farther than the end of his arms, the way he sneezed the spring away, and his habit of being too tall to go unnoticed all had to be character flaws. Something he could overcome if he worked hard enough.

He hadn’t blamed her, not much, anyhow. She’d wanted him to live, to thrive, and that was how she thought she could make it happen. But he wanted to see, so he bunked off school and went to the optician.

The sharp edges of the world had amazed him. His ability to land a punch in the right region impressed his ma enough she’d let him keep them. For a while, in Leeds, he tried contacts, but they’d never felt right. The glasses always had, the weight of them on his nose the evidence he didn’t belong up here.

Now they were gone, and Danny still didn’t belong.

He refused to belong. Even if sometimes—when Jack pulled him into a kiss or slung a lazy arm over his shoulders—he wanted to. It was easier that way. If you didn’t want something to start with, no one could take it away from you.

He went to push his glasses up his nose again and huffed out a misty sigh of exasperation when he poked his eyebrow. At least there was nothing along this road he’d miss out on seeing. Even before he lost his glasses, Winter had blurred the edges of the world. It was long stretches of white and the pencil scrawl of bare trees that lined the road. They stood out black against all the white, stripped down to the bark. Ice coated the branches and hung down in long, glittering spears. The trees groaned and creaked under the weight, and occasionally one of the icicles would break free and drop down to break into brittle sprays of needles against the ground.

Abandoned cars lined the road. A few of them—left behind in the first days of winter—had pulled in crookedly to the verge and locked the doors behind them. Others had been left where they stopped, ice crusted up around their tires and doors left open, so snow filled the inside.

Danny paused for a second next to an old green Ford. There was someone inside, propped up in the driver’s seat. Danny pulled his sleeve down over his hand and scrubbed it over the window to dislodge snow and a layer of loose ice.

There was a woman inside, wrapped in a heavy parka and a tartan wool blanket. Faded red hair was clipped up top of her head and her eyes, glazed gray with death and ice, stared blankly forward. Danny wanted to say they’d been blue.

“Do you know her?” Nick asked. He’d struggled even more than Danny since they left the train. The long black coat he refused to abandon was matted with snow from hem to knees, and the cold pinched the end of his nose white. He still sounded sympathetic, in the slightly distant way