Wolf at the Door (Wolf Winter #3) - T.A. Moore Page 0,52

nerves, dug down into his guts where the same infection festered, but he ignored it in favor of one last hard look at Rose.

Once upon a time, Nick had loved that raddled old witch, whatever was left of her between the grafted wolf and the Sannock skin, and now Nick had to live with the knowledge that he’d only ever been meat for her ambitions.

One day Gregor would kill her for that.

Two months ago, the Wild here had been as familiar to Gregor as his own face in the mirror, and he’d known it as well as his own body. Now he wasn’t comfortable in either. The Sannock’s old prison spread like a sour infection and made the native Wild swell and crease in reaction. It hung odd across the landscape.

Gregor counted his footsteps. Three hundred of them, his stride constrained by the wire that sliced him with each step. Yet he could feel the hot looseness of distance in his thighs and between his shoulders, and his sense of where he stood—on the Pack’s land, his territory—moved like sand under his feet.

“What did she mean?” Ellie asked, her voice so low it was almost inaudible as she fell in next to Lachlan. He growled dismissal at her and walked faster through the snow. “She can’t be pregnant—”

Lachlan turned on her with a snarl, closed his good hand around her throat, and pulled her up onto her toes. “Whatever Rose says she is, that’s what she is. Understood?”

The Old Man had never had to get physical to make an out-of-line wolf back down. Lachlan couldn’t get the job done even with Ellie’s throat as good as in his teeth. She slapped his hand away roughly and took a cautious step back but held her ground.

“She says she’s pregnant with the true Numitor’s brat,” Ellie said sharply. Her fair curls blew into her face and she swiped them away again. “If you aren’t Numitor, Lach, then what right do you have to put hands on me?”

He glared at her. “The right she gave me,” he said. “That… what she said… was just to hurt these two.”

Ellie glanced at Gregor and past him to Jack and then spat in the snow. “If she just wanted to hurt them, then she could have broken their legs,” she said. “Not written a play. I came up here, gave up everything, to follow the Numitor. Old Man or the Young Wolf, I don’t care. If you aren’t even the Numitor, why should we be at your heels?”

“She told you to,” Lachlan said flatly. He tilted his head toward the front of the group where Rose walked with her fist twisted in the monster’s slack ruff of raw skin. “You want to cross her?”

“She told the others to follow you,” Ellie pointed out defiantly. “Took their brats as surety they’d obey. I’d already thrown my lot in with you, and she told me nothing. But if something happened to you, I think she’d tell me to take over.”

“You think too much,” Lachlan said. “The Old Man’s dead, and his heir, if that’s what that is, isn’t even born yet. Maybe he never will be. Right now I’m Numitor, and if you question it again, I’ll slice your throat.”

He tossed her into the snow and stalked away.

“Wise wolves don’t make threats,” Gregor said. “They just do.”

Ellie gave him a bleak look as she scrambled to her feet. The smell of adrenaline and fear rose off her like a cloud of steam—thin and sharp as snapped fingers—and she bared her blunt human teeth at him. “And you’re wise?” she asked. “To come back here where you aren’t wanted? None of us asked for your help, neither of you, and we don’t need to hear you mouth off either. The Wolf Winter isn’t what we thought. So what? I’ll survive.”

She glanced down the row of prisoners, the tip of her head almost unconscious, and then immediately away. Her mouth twisted with bitterness.

Gregor would have asked, but Jack jabbed him with his elbow to shut him up. Habit made him want to ask anyhow, but he choked it off behind his teeth.

“You trust her?” Jack asked quietly. He pointed his chin toward Rose and her monsters. “What’s left of her.”

Ellie let a flicker of confused horror show for a second. Then she slammed a game face over it. She rubbed her throat and glared at Jack. “I trust power,” she said. “Of everyone here? She has it, and we don’t.