Wolf at the Door (Wolf Winter #3) - T.A. Moore Page 0,165

of it curdled under his skin, and letting it out made his bones rattle with it and his skull ache. The back of his face burned with the pressure as it ripped him apart in search of his wolf.

Maybe, he thought dully, this was for the best. He didn’t know how the prophets lived with this every full moon as the Wild chewed their scars open and rubbed their faces in what it couldn’t find.

This once he could bear it. He glanced around, hopeful for a last glimpse of Nick or a black wing against the sky. Nothing. Gregor supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. The world had spent years not giving him what he wanted. Why change now?

Gregor took a deep breath, the cold like splinters in his lung, and threw himself forward. He slammed into Fenrir’s shoulder, the full weight of his stocky frame barely enough to make the wolf grunt, grabbed a greasy, knotted hank of fur, and dragged him out of the world and into the Wild. Dragged them both.

Virgin snow crunched underfoot as Fenrir staggered at the sudden shift. He snarled and twisted around to snap at Gregor with sharp, jagged teeth. Gregor punched him on the nose and dragged himself in close enough to sink his teeth into the wound Jack had opened in Fenrir’s neck. The meat was dry, mealy with age, and the jelly of thick blood that coated Gregor’s tongue tasted like rotting apples and nails.

Gregor steeled himself against the urge to retch and swallowed the mouthful he’d torn free. It curdled as it hit his stomach, something so wrong his whole body wanted to puke it out, and Fenrir dragged them back into the World.

Danny was crouched in the snow, blood on his back and his arms, with the dead dogs clustered close around him. They snarled at Lachlan—whose eyes were wild and black with stolen power—as he stalked across the snow. Jack tore at a monster’s throat with desperation as he tried to squirm free of its grip in time to reach his lover.

“Nice try,” Gregor said as he reached up to grab Fenrir’s ear, twist, and yank them back into the Wild.

Again.

Again.

Danny as he spat blood into the snow.

The oddly shaped bundles of branches that memorialized the fallen Sannock in the Wild, lashed together with strips of human sinew and stacked for a fire that might never come.

A glimpse of Nick, one hand cupped over the wound pierced between his ribs, as he dragged a bloody prophet out from under Bron’s feet.

Again.

Again.

The thin, weak mewl of Gregor’s son on the wind, the gray-blue stain of the cold on newborn skin as it squirmed.

The dead hounds at the horned Sannock’s heels as they loped after Lachlan. The damned wolf, gray and choking on blood from his own lungs as he ran, and the wild bay of the new hunters on the wind.

Again.

Again.

It was Fenrir who gave up. His sides, ribs prominent through his staring coat, heaved, and his breath smoked from between his jagged, flesh-picked teeth. A long red tongue hung from his mouth, and his anger pushed at Gregor like the tide.

“You don’t need a body to walk the world. Not you,” Gregor said. He rested his forehead against Fenrir’s. The stink of old meat and sweat wasn’t as sweet as Nick’s scent, but it mingled with it in Gregor’s lungs. “You just want one, lonely old wolf. So take me.”

Fenrir tried to recoil in confusion, but Gregor didn’t let him go. He could taste the infection the prophets had left in his spirit when they cut his wolf out, the rot-hollowed cyst it had left.

Why?

The voice was the howl of the wind between trees, the gargle of blood in a throat as fangs bore down. Gregor stepped back and stared at Fenrir. He could feel the blood in his stomach, the ache in his chest as his heart slowed and struggled.

“Because you won’t fuck off otherwise,” Gregor said. “And you can’t have my son.”

Fenrir stared at him with blind, ruined eyes and waited. If Gregor hadn’t been dying, he might have won that contest.

“Because it’s the last thing I can do for them. The Pack has Jack, Jack will have my son, and my son will have them all to take care of him.”

That only left Nick. Gregor didn’t have a generous enough spirit to hope Nick would forget him or be better off without him. He’d survive, though. After this, Jack would feel guilty enough to take