Wolf at the Door (Wolf Winter #3) - T.A. Moore Page 0,34

Hector for the save. He slouched sullenly against the wall.

“Enough,” he said as he put his body between the two of them. He could feel Millie’s growl through her collarbone—a dangerous, back-of-the-throat, almost whine that wasn’t a warning anymore. “Fighting among ourselves isn’t going to get us out of here.”

It wasn’t Millie who backed down. Hector was the one who turned away with a hunched shoulder and silence, and one of the strange dogs barked out a harsh, unhappy laugh.

“At least if we kill ourselves, they won’t get the chance,” the man—his voice burred with a lowland accent and the remnants of an expensive suit hanging in filthy rags from his body—interrupted. He tugged nervously at his collar, fingers curled around the rough round of metal, and his voice dropped as though the dread had real weight to catch in his throat. “You’ve not seen them—”

He broke off as a chunk of ice caught him on the temple. It split his eyebrow open and blood dripped down into his eye.

“Shut the fuck up!” Tom, a half-blind dog kept in the Pack on Da’s charity, snarled where he huddled against the wall. He groped over the ground with clumsy, half-frozen hands for another projectile. “Monsters and murderers. You’re full of shit. That’s all it is. The prophets said they have a place for—”

“I know what I saw,” the stranger shot back. “I know what I saw them do. Our place is on the end of their knives.”

Tom grabbed a stone and cocked his arm back. Before he could throw it, Gregor stepped into the path of it and growled.

“You heard him.”

The unexpected show of support from his brother caught Jack off-balance. He gave the back of Gregor’s head a hard look and wondered if he could trust this. Probably not, he knew that, but for now it worked. Tom clumsily dropped the rock and lifted his chin in submissive acknowledgment of the reproof.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Ain’t my place, but he isn’t even pack. What’s he know about our prophets?”

“Same thing you do, that we all do,” Jack said. The question of where he stood with his brother could wait for later. The last thing Jack needed right then was to borrow more trouble. “That they’re scum, the dregs and perverts that no pack wants, and no wolf with half a brain lends an ear to them?”

Tom gave him a resentful look through his matted hair, his one eye faded blue. “Well, I ain’t a dog. The prophets told us the Winter was coming, and it did. They told us that the Old Man wouldn’t come back from the loch, and he didn’t. Now they told us that the gods got a special job just for dogs, that it’s why we were born like this… instead of like you. Why shouldn’t we believe ’em? They talk to the gods for us, don’t they?”

A mutter of uncomfortable agreement ran around the room. Some of the dogs, like Tom, seemed entirely convinced, even seduced, by the new catechism. The rest, like Millie, who nodded uncertain agreement a second too late for conviction, wanted to believe, since they knew what the alternative was. Only the stranger, fingers pressed to his eyebrow to pinch the wound shut, openly rejected Tom’s faith with a sneer as he spat onto the floor.

“We don’t believe them because the gods fucked us before,” Gregor snarled as he stepped forward to loom over Tom. “Or did you forget why we’re on this side of the Wall?”

Instead of being intimidated, Tom lifted his chin and nervously licked his lips.

“You, not us,” Tom said. His voice cracked as Gregor grabbed his shirt and hauled him roughly to his feet, but his words stayed steady. “Wolves, not dogs. The gods don’t need you anymore. They need us. That’s why they made us, to take your place now you’ve failed them.”

There was something unsettlingly fervent in his face—almost religious, almost human. Sometimes, even with Danny in his bed, Jack forgot how tame some of the dogs were. Danny might claim it as a virtue, but there was too much wolf in him to thrive on a leash.

Jack caught Gregor’s arm as it cocked back for a punch.

“For what?” he asked.

Tom opened his mouth, sure he knew the answer, and then nothing came out. He spluttered for a second and then rallied awkwardly. “To serve them,” he said. His eyes flicked up to Jack’s and then slid sidelong away. “To be loyal and stay by their