Wolf at the Door (Wolf Winter #3) - T.A. Moore Page 0,45

the mud. The last time she’d kissed him had been his first day of school. Under the expectant eyes of other parents, she realized more than a sandwich and a brusque “Do well” was expected.

From what Danny remembered, he’d felt a lot like this about it—frozen uncomfortably to the spot. He hadn’t understood school at that point, and the kiss had seemed like a formal goodbye. Someone had been there to take him home at the end of the day, but it had felt like something released. This had the same finality, and for a moment, Danny felt the old, frantic desire to cling to his mother.

“She wasn’t exiled, she was executed,” she said as she drew back. “But did you ever wonder why the Old Man was kind to dogs?”

Danny shrugged. “We’re useful,” he said. The rationale was one he’d heard often enough to have off by heart growing up. There was always a wolf ready to grumble because the Old Man kept his dogs, insisted they be treated as pack even if they were at the bottom of the pecking order. “It makes dealing with humans easier, and there’s nowhere to live anymore where you don’t have to deal with humans.”

“You are, and that’s why he let Millie and the like hang around. He was never kind, though, until he had a dog,” Kath said. “A daughter, before the twins, but with their ma.”

That was new information. Danny blinked as he tried to absorb it and then grimaced as his mind made grim sense of it. He’d always known that his mam loved him, because she kept him when she had old, dark options she could have picked instead.

“He got rid of her,” Danny said. “Sacked her.”

That was the traditional way—a sack, a stone, and the loch. It surprised Danny how much that thought troubled him. He’d never put that much value on the Old Man’s fondness for him—Danny had been smart and useful—but the thought that the Numitor would have preferred to drown him threaded a chill through his memories.

“No,” Kath said. She twisted her mouth as though the memory was sour. “He would have. He was expected to. Fiona, his mate, she wouldn’t have it. Dog or not, it was her wain, and she wouldn’t give it over to the prophets. Fiona would have taken the girl and gone south first, rather than give another litter to the man who killed his own get.”

No one ever talked about the twins’ mother, the Old Man’s mate. Death had rubbed the human edges off her and left this idea of a perfect wolf. Danny had known his mam knew her, but until he heard this story, he hadn’t realized Kath liked the other wolf. It occurred to Danny that he might have too. She sounded a lot like Jack.

“What happened?”

“The Old Man let Fiona stay, and let her keep the baby,” Kath said. “He wasn’t gracious about it at first, but dogs love like it’s easy, and that’s hard to resist. By the time she died, he cared enough to grieve. I think that’s the only reason Fiona was able to stay.”

Danny absorbed that. It was a story that he’d never heard even whispered in all his years in the Pack. Not a secret, exactly, just unspoken because it was too tender a scar to poke. He supposed it explained a lot about the Old Man, but so far it didn’t answer his question.

“Did Nick’s grandmother kill the wee girl?” Danny asked.

“See?” Kath said. “You don’t need books to be smart, Danny.”

“Why?”

“She was rabid,” Kath said. Her lips curled back in an expression that hovered between a sneer and a scowl. “No one saw it, though, not until that night. Rose was the highest-ranking wolf in the Pack, the Old Man’s right hand, and if she was a traditionalist, it wasn’t any more than some of the other old wolves. Then one night she got up, stole a baby, and we found her at dawn by the loch with a wet, still sack. People said she was moonstruck, that she’d gotten too close to the moon goddess’s heels during the hunt and been maddened.”

“And you?”

“I think she was jealous,” Kath said. “All those years she’d spent at the Numitor’s side, his loyal wolf, and what did she have for it? Bad enough Fiona had the Numitor’s heart and his cock, but now she had his ear and his child too. I think that was the final straw, that