Wolf at the Door (Wolf Winter #3) - T.A. Moore Page 0,40

throat. The nicest thing he’d ever said about Gregor, but whatever Jack felt about his brother, he was a golden son in comparison to Lach. “He’s my brother. And he’s more wolf than you. More man too.”

Lach stamped down on Gregor’s stomach. The impact made Gregor grunt, the breath shocked out of him, and curl up around the pain.

“He’s nothing,” Lach said. He bent down to grab Gregor’s collar and pull him up off the ground. Spit strung his lips together like stitches as he snarled into Gregor’s face. “The prophets will kill you, and I’ll lead the Pack into the Winter. It’s my name they’ll remember.”

Gregor snapped his head forward, and his forehead smacked against Lach’s face hard enough to smash his nose in a welter of blood and pulped tissue. The pale, freckled skin puffed and purpled as it swelled, and Lach yelped in surprise as he staggered back. Blood snorted and spluttered between his fingers as he tried to fumble the mess back into place.

It would heal, but noses were like joints—it would heal but that didn’t mean it would be pretty.

“They’ll remember you were lacking,” Gregor jeered. When he grinned, it showed bloodstained teeth. “Lacking Givens, the Prophets’ Puppet.”

Lach made a stuffy, inchoate noise of rage and let go of his half-molded nose to jerk his arm back and punch Gregor. His knuckles bounced off the side of Gregor’s face as he turned his head to the side to save his nose.

“I should never have listened to that bitch. I should have killed you when I had the chance,” Lach raged. “I could have made it last all night.”

The cackle of low, dirty laughter that escaped Gregor despite his swollen eye didn’t need any explanation. “That’s not what I’ve heard.”

Jack laughed. Someone else tittered with a stifled burst of repressed humor. Lach kicked Gregor again and turned to glare at the people who’d gathered to watch. Da’s inner circle was there, grim but resolutely not involved, and Jack glanced around to confirm the kids were missing. He’d got one wrong. Jaclyn was there, with a dark scowl on her four-year-old face as her da tethered her in place with a tight grip on her arm. But her ma’s stomach was flat, and the smell of sour milk hung around her. The baby had been born and taken while Jack was away.

She caught Jack’s attention on her and glared at him. If she couldn’t risk anger at the prophets, Jack supposed, he’d do to blame instead.

Kath was there too, her back stiff and her hair in damp, half-frozen elflocks around her face. She didn’t look at Gregor, but her lip curled when Lach called her a bitch.

“Enough,” the ginger prophet barked. He handed Jack over to one of his fellows and limped forward. If he had a new wolfskin to wear, he’d left it behind today. It didn’t matter. Lach still grimaced and backed away from Gregor like a pup who had to cede a kill to the alpha. “Call yourself the Numitor if you want, but the Pack is ours now. You don’t decide who lives or dies. You’re lucky we let you decide when you need to piss… and we can take that away from you too if we can’t trust you to hold your own dick.”

Lach flushed with a hot, humiliated misery that made his supporters lick their lips nervously and shuffle backward in anticipation of the payback being spilled down. The prophet ignored him as he bent down and pulled Gregor onto his feet. He even brushed clots of bloody snow off Gregor’s shirt in an oddly polite gesture.

“Where is she?” Lach asked.

“Busy.”

“When will she be back?”

“When she ain’t busy.”

Jack clenched his hand around the collar at his throat. Blood was slick against his fingers as it dripped down his wrist. “Where’s the Old Man?” he asked. “What did you do with my da?”

The question pulled the air out of the day. Everyone caught their breath as they waited for the answer. Even gone—even assumed dead—the Old Man had to have a story, right? The prophet felt it too. He glanced around and then gave Jack a thin smile that acknowledged the move.

“Run off,” he said. “Dead in a ditch. Lost in the Wild. Who knows? He was an old man, and now he’s gone. Are you going to weep that you’re an orphan?”

Jack’s temper flared, and his anger pulled at the Wild for fuel the way he took a deep breath before