Wolf at the Door (Wolf Winter #3) - T.A. Moore Page 0,21
he said and lifted his chin defiantly. He dropped his voice to a rough imitation of the Old Man’s bass rumble. “The Old Man’s dead and gone, and this is my Pack, my territory. I’m the Numitor of the Scottish Pack now.”
Gregor snorted.
“The fuck you are,” he said. The competition to be the head wolf of the Pack had been his and Jack’s birthright. It galled Gregor that he’d have to cede the position to Jack, but he’d die to defend his brother’s right to it over someone like Lach Givens. “And if the Old Man was dead, the Wild would have rung with the news.”
Doubt flashed through Lach’s face and then he willed it desperately away. “He’s gone!” Lach said harshly. “Now so are you.”
He vaulted over the gate and lunged at them. The rest of the wolves followed, all red gums and white teeth as they snapped and snarled.
The smart thing would have been to let Jack take the brunt. He still had his wolf and he would be the Wolf King of Scotland one day, but no one had ever accused Gregor of being the smart brother. He flung himself into Lach’s path and took him down in a tangle of limbs and snarls.
Chapter Five—Gregor
BLOOD DRIPPED into Gregor’s eyes. It wasn’t his. Lach straddled him, hands twisted in Gregor’s shirt, and bled on him from a broken nose and gashed forehead. He held Gregor down with one arm, elbow straight and shoulder braced, and drove his fist down into Gregor’s face.
His knuckles jarred against Gregor’s cheekbone and sent a jolt of pain through his skull. Red and black smeared through his vision as Lach ground his fist against Gregor’s eye.
“You left,” Lach shouted. The wind had picked up as they fought. All around them Gregor could hear the snap of teeth and snarls of a fight. The storm had blown in from the north too quickly to be natural, the bruise-colored clouds tossed in on the breeze to clot thickly overhead even now. It was like the Wild wanted to come and see the fight for itself. Lach cocked his arm back for a second punch. “You should have stayed gone. The Pack’s mine now. They gave it to me.”
He threw the punch, but Gregor jerked his head to the side and Lach buried his fist in the snow, hammered his knuckles against the frozen ruts of the old hiking path. Even over the wind Gregor heard the stick-brittle snap of broken bones. It wouldn’t last—bones were easy enough to stitch together—but it hurt enough to make Lach yelp and yank his hand back.
“Only for as long as you can keep it,” Gregor snarled through stiff lips. The cold stung at his lips and made his eyes ache. He felt it more now than he had, but this was more than that. The chill was enough to make a wolf shiver and go to ground till it passed. “And you got your ass handed to you by a dog.”
He punched Lach in the throat. Flesh and soft tissue gave way with the brittle sound of crumpled plastic, and Lach’s mouth gaped open as he clawed at his throat. It was one of Danny’s moves, vicious in the way you had to be when you knew you were going to lose. Lach’s face went red as he tried to suck air in through his crushed throat, and Gregor flipped them both over.
Joints took the longest to heal. Sometimes, if the body was running hot to patch itself together in the middle of a fight, they’d get put back together wrong. They’d be stiff and locked, or bend the wrong way, or the muscle anchored too loose so the joint would slip in and out. Someone would have to hold you down afterward, break it with a hammer over and over till it worked again.
Gregor grabbed Lach’s wrist, twisted it hard, and snapped the elbow the wrong way until it crackle-tore like a wing ripped off a chicken carcass.
“Fuck!” Lach groaned through a swollen throat as he writhed in the snow. He hammered a blind blow left-handed into Gregor’s jaw. His teeth snapped shut on the inside of his cheek, and blood filled his mouth. Lach grabbed Gregor’s throat and dragged him down until Gregor couldn’t smell anything but the mutton-and-garlic stink of Lach’s breath. He dug his fingers down into the soft flesh to cut off Gregor’s breath. “We don’t have any dogs in our Pack now. We’ve