Wolf at the Door (Wolf Winter #3) - T.A. Moore Page 0,146

keep up, leave me.”

Jack growled at him but didn’t shrug him off. He could smell blood and exhaustion on Gregor, the stale chemical stink of spent adrenaline. Even without his wolf, Gregor would run until he dropped… but he’d already tapped his reserves. There wasn’t much left.

A flick of Jack’s ear signaled his agreement as he turned his head away. If Gregor fell behind, Jack would let him… but if they lived, he’d come back. The only people his brother had ever loved were Nick and his dead daughter, so he deserved the chance to at least hold this child.

To rest with them if that was all he could offer.

Danny scrambled out of the cave, ungainly and graceless. His front paws scraped the rock, and Gregor grabbed him by the scruff to drag him the rest of the way out.

The Sannock were next, boneless and graceful as they slid out of the hole. They had dirt in their hair and scrapes on their hands. It didn’t make them any less strange, any less other. Nothing else followed them out of the cave.

Jack sagged. He’d thought some of the Pack would follow, from the habit of loyalty if nothing else. But they’d had too much asked of them, from his dog to the Sannock. The Wolf Winter was meant to be their triumph, not their undoing. Maybe it was best that Jack wouldn’t be remembered in the catechism—king for a day and then packless.

Before he could slide too far into self-pity, the dog bumped against him, all rangy muscle and bony shoulders. It laid its head over Jack’s shoulders in reassurance, and Jack remembered he had a pack. A bird, a dog, and his brother—but they were his.

“Pick your path, wolf king,” the horned Sannock said. “Pick up the thread, never mind the blood, and pull your fate to you.”

The bird dipped out of the storm overhead. Its wings were rimed with frost, threads of it spread over black pinions like lacework, and it cracked on its beak as he croaked at them. It turned on one weighted wing, buffeted by the wind, and headed toward the frozen sea of the moors.

The dog lifted his head off Jack and focused on the bird, ears pricked forward as though it were prey. The side of its face was still bloody, half-frozen and raw, but it ignored that as it bolted after the bird. The big gray dog plunged over the lip of the hill and skidded down through the shale and snow, his momentum all that kept him on his feet and aimed at the right one.

“Not going to be shown up by a dog,” Gregor said dourly as he pushed himself up straight. He flashed Jack a shadow of his old, challenging smirk. “Last hunt, brother. Let’s see who’s best.”

He followed Danny down the hill, nearly on his ass as he slid down, one misstep away from a fall. His boots kicked deep muddy furrows in the virgin sheet of untouched white. Jack tensed to lunge after him—old habits and older instincts—and then hesitated as he remembered the Sannock. Before he could check on them, they surged past him and ran over Gregor’s trail, gleeful as malicious children as they kicked stones and trampled the brittle leaves of frozen heather underfoot.

The Sannock had been tragic and dead, but even in memorial, no one had ever claimed they were nice.

Jack chased after them and growled to himself in annoyance at being last. The wind yanked at his ears and tweaked his tail as he dodged through the Sannock’s legs. It buffeted him roughly, a rude shove that banged his shoulder against a rock or rolled the snow away from under his feet.

Overhead the bird pitched and rolled on the wind. Its wings battered the air, wrenched and awkward as it tried to make headway.

Did the Wild agree with the rest of the Pack that they should let Fenrir rise, no matter how? Jack’s head ached at the thought, but he roughly pushed it away. He didn’t serve the Wild any more than it served him. If it wanted to stop him, it would have to do worse than a breeze.

Maybe it didn’t want to. The closer Jack got to the bottom of the hill, the more the push and pull of the Wild felt less angry and more… impatient. It reminded Jack of sleepy mornings and the clip of his da’s hand around his ear to hurry him on down to the