over the Pack until he found Nick’s bony profile under his crest of dark hair—was a bird, and their enemy’s next of kin.
“You can trust him,” Gregor said from just behind his shoulder.
Jack didn’t twitch. The two of them might not be at each other’s throats openly anymore, but that didn’t mean Jack didn’t make it a point to know where his brother’s teeth where. To be fair, Gregor would have been insulted otherwise.
“You would say that,” Jack said. “You love him.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gregor’s smile—a quick, unaffected twitch of joy in the midst of all this. Jack remembered how clean it had felt to just hate his twin.
“I do,” Gregor said. He still had enough sense to sound bemused by how ridiculous that was. “That doesn’t mean I’m blind to him. I’m not you.”
Jack snorted. He knew Danny’s faults. They were just less major than being a prophet’s spawn and a Sannock.
“If it comes down to it, will he put his… beak in her eye?” Jack asked.
It reassured him when Gregor took the time to think about the answer. “I won’t let it come to that,” Gregor said finally. “Nick doesn’t need to live with killing someone he loved, and I have enough reasons to rip that bitch’s throat out to justify calling dibs on her death.”
Jack didn’t know if that was a reassuring answer or not, but it was an answer, and it would have to do.
The wolves still waited. Some had already given in to the itch of the Wild and the moon hunt and pulled their fur on, chest high to the tallest man in the Pack. Their breath steamed between their fangs as they hung their tongues out and panted in anticipation of the run. Others hung on to the human skin that made it easier to nurse a grudge. A wolf understood the necessity behind wiping out a threat to the Pack, but humans were the ones who could enjoy it.
Jack took a deep breath—the anger of the Pack stung his throat like cinnamon, itchy and red—as he stepped forward.
“Tonight the full moon will rise, but for the first time in generations, we have fresh prey to hunt. Selene might be faithless and a fool, but the prophets are worse. They dripped lies in our ears and called it the catechism, they took our young like we were stock bred for slaughter, and they fed us poison meat rather than face a fair fight.”
Tea would be more accurate, but it didn’t have the same resonance.
The wolves groaned low in their chests, a thick noise that wasn’t quite a howl. Not yet.
“No more prophets,” Jack said. “If we kill them tonight, we’ll howl a new catechism that they have no place in.”
One of the wolves threw her head back, black-striped nose to the sky, and howled. It was a sharp and lonely noise, mournful in the way only wolf-song could be. Others scrambled to their feet or shed human skin for brindled fur and growled their support.
“What if we don’t kill them?” someone asked. It was the strange dog—Kier, the one Ellie knew. Everyone turned in unison to look at him. He took a step back and then steadied himself to give Jack an almost challenging glare. “What then, Numitor?”
“Kier,” Ellie said, her voice tight in her throat. She raised her hand and tightened her jaw when he glanced at her, a shorthanded “not now” that Jack recognized. What had she said, last night? “It isn’t easy to love a dog.”
She’d been wrong. It was. Jack couldn’t imagine how not to love Danny.
“Then they’ll have killed us, so what do we care?” Danny said as he stalked out of his childhood home, goodbyes apparently done with. “But I’ll be fucked if they have anything of mine or my kin for a trophy.”
He stalked over to the bonfire. It cast harsh red shadows across the soft planes of his face as he shoved his way through the gathered wolves. They gave way out of surprise that didn’t have time to mature into affront. Danny shoved his hand into the flames and grabbed a thick, tarry chunk of wood. It shed a trail of sparks as he dragged it out, enough to singe the fur or clothes of anyone who crowded him, and the end of it flared hot and angry as the cold tried to dim it.
“If the gods want this to be the Prophets’ Winter?” Danny yelled as he