Wolf at the Door (Wolf Winter #3) - T.A. Moore Page 0,55

impatiently waved it away with a freckled hand. “Besides, they’ll be dead soon enough. Who will they tell? Take the dogs inside, put them with the rest.”

Tom protested as they dragged him inside, promised that he was a loyal dog and they could trust him. He was still marched through the sheep guts and into the old ruin with the rest.

“And us?” Jack asked.

“She has set aside special accommodations for you,” Ewan said. He sounded almost regretful, as though he’d realized what he’d thrown his support behind too late. “So you can properly appreciate what’s to come. Now everything is in place, it will be over soon enough.”

He stepped back and gestured for a prophet to take them away. Gregor resisted the yank at his collar and dug his heels until Ewan actually looked at him, bloodshot blue eyes reluctant.

“If you hurt Nick, I’ll kill you,” Gregor said. “Alive or dead, I’ll find a way.”

“Gregor,” Jack warned softly.

Ewan straightened his shoulders and glared indignantly at Gregor. “He’s my grandson,” he spat out. That was new information. Nick had only ever spoken of his gran, but Gregor supposed there had to have been a grandfather or two. Maybe even a father somewhere. The flicker of jealousy in his gut resented that. He wanted Nick to be his alone, but it made sense. “My flesh, my blood. All I have left. You think I’d hurt him?”

“She did,” Gregor said. He wanted his wolf, wanted the bite it would mark on the edge of his word. But it was still gone, and he had to make do with his own anger. “And Nick’s mine, prophet.”

Ewan looked taken aback. Maybe Rose hadn’t told him everything about why Nick had been willing to come north. But it only made him hesitate for a second, and then he gestured sharply for the prophets to get on with it.

This time Gregor went when they dragged him away.

Chapter Eleven—Gregor

OLD MOISTURE stains blotted the eggshell-blue walls and warped the once-glossy wooden floorboards underfoot. The dark oak was scored from neglect and pitted with round, golf ball dents from the hail, rough-edged chunks of which still lay along the skirting.

Gregor glanced through a door as they passed it, into a room with bowed, empty shelves and a smashed desk. He craned his neck to look up the stairs, and he could see right up through the roof, to the span of pale sky that floated overhead. The Winter had reined its storm in, but it would be back soon enough.

A prophet punched him in the back of the head. The impact made Gregor stumble forward, and he felt the wire rip something important in his ankle. A jolt of pain slashed up the back of his leg, and his toes went numb and unresponsive. They folded under him as he forced himself forward, bloody and ripped with splinters.

Jack staggered over and braced his shoulder against Gregor’s to keep him on his feet. The fact he needed the help, and from Jack, tasted like rotted meat on the back of Gregor’s tongue. He swallowed it anyhow.

“There’s nothing to see up here,” the prophet said. He sounded almost proud of the run-down den the prophets had moved into like hermit crabs on the beach. “Our lives aren’t spent where wolves can see them. Ailsa, get the door.”

The prophet who ducked past Gregor was small and dark haired, with a sallow, mean face dominated by nothing in particular. She’d already shed her coat to reveal the patchy silver-and-black hide of a wolf that Gregor did recognize. Jess had been old, maybe even older than Da, and only part of the Pack by courtesy these days, since she preferred to keep to herself in the hills.

But she’d been alive and well when Gregor had left for the Wall, and from the gore-tatted hole ripped between the shoulders of her hide, she hadn’t died well.

It looked like the prophets weren’t willing to wait for a corpse to skin anymore.

“I hope Jess took her gelt from your guts on the way out,” Jack said before Gregor had the chance. Irritation scratched at him, one more thing his brother took, but he ignored it. “She deserved better.”

Ailsa spat on the ground and crouched down to unlock the thick, iron padlock that hooked through a hasp sunk into the floor. Once it was undone, she unlatched the two steel bars and hauled up the trap door with a stink of old dirt and fresh musk muggy as it