Wolf at the Door (Wolf Winter #3) - T.A. Moore Page 0,4

anything at the threshold.

It had been an insult originally, the prophets. The wolves only sent the dregs of their kind to parlay prayers, the caitiffs and the degenerates, to show what they thought of the gods. In hindsight that might also have been a mistake. The prophets knew more than they told in the catechism or read in the auguries, and they hadn’t shared all of it with the wolves.

At least—Jack thought grimly of Job’s claim that the Old Man had full knowledge of all this—he hoped they hadn’t told.

“Go to sleep,” Jack ordered roughly, as though there wouldn’t be anything there if Nick didn’t get to see it. “We’ll reach Irvine tomorrow, and there’s no more free ride after that. We walk.”

It was the god who laughed, a caw of scratchy amusement as Nick tilted his head to the side. “You’ll walk.”

It wasn’t the Wild. Jack knew the Wild—the smell and taste of it. Whatever it was that flickered around Nick was something… else. Something that smelled like the charred bones and long dead of the bonefires on the beach.

Whatever it was wiped Nick away and let the bird out. The coat dropped in a heavy puddle to the crate below. An empty sleeve dangled limply over the edge, and a black crow-like bird mantled a thick ruff of feathers. A black eye glittered at him down the pickax length of bone-white beak, old words carved like scrimshaw along the smooth plates, as it turned its head to watch him.

It was only the human gods the wolves had issue with, the ones that had made them and used them and then shat on their long service. The gods of fur and feather—the coursers and feasts of their masters—they were neutral too. In theory. As the first wolf in centuries to come snout to… beak… with one? Jack felt no kinship with it. There was something essentially alien behind that bone-carved beak.

Maybe that was because it was a bird. And at least it didn’t look like the old bitch.

He curled his lip in mute warning he wasn’t roadkill for its breakfast and then went back to his nest of blankets and lover. Jack wrapped himself around Danny, who turned sleepily into him with a yawned “What?” and an arm curled over Jack’s hip.

“Nothing,” Jack said. He tangled his fingers through Danny’s hair, grown out in messy curls after his days being leashed, and brushed a kiss over his forehead. “Don’t worry about it.”

Danny grunted something skeptical but let himself slide back into his dreams. The soft huff of his breath was warm against Jack’s throat, a metronome to count down until dawn. He’d told the bird to get some sleep, but Jack had no intention of taking his own advice. Not until he had to.

Wolves didn’t dream like men did, or—Jack absently stroked Danny’s hair—like dogs, but Jack didn’t want to dream at all. He already knew what the Wild wanted to show him, but he didn’t feel like doing what it wanted right now.

In Durham—with Danny back in his bed and Gregor at his back instead of his heels for once—he’d plotted a hero’s return to the Scottish Pack. Whatever the wolves thought about where Jack put his cock, the Wild had chosen him. Even the Old Man would respect that. Then the old bitch had carved the pride out of him, and the Wild had let her.

Without the Wild’s seal of approval, Jack was just another exile, come to beg for scraps.

Jack laughed a dry choke of noise, as he rolled away from Danny and stared up into the dark at the ceiling. The rattle of wheels over frozen tracks vibrated through his bones and hummed between the plates of his skull. He ran his hand up under his shirt and spread his fingers over hard muscle and healed, naked skin. No, not just another exile. One who had taken the time away to double down on what made him unwelcome. Not only had he refused to fuck one of the women in the Pack, he’d taken a dog as his mate. He didn’t even have proof of his rank anymore.

What else could the Wild show him to make it worse?

IT WAS barely dawn when the train groaned sullenly to a halt a few miles away from Glengarnock. Ten miles from home. The sun hung low and pale in the sky, as if the cold had sapped its energy to climb any higher, and the brakemen grumbled to