Wolf at the Door (Wolf Winter #3) - T.A. Moore Page 0,63

his feet, the panic in his head that the bird picked up from him like an attack. A road. That image flicked sharp and clear into Nick’s mind—the snowed-crusted lorry wedged under a bridge and the trail of cars abandoned behind it. Belongings—important enough to pack in the car but not carry on your back—piled up at the side of the road.

Then he was here. Nick squinted and tried to peek through the bird’s eyes to see the Wild, but there was nothing there. His head was quiet, and the world was as solid as he’d spent years and pills determined to believe it was.

“I don’t remember,” he said carefully. “I was on the road, looking for a sign to follow into town—”

“I thought everyone up here had evacuated?” Malloy said pointedly.

“Not everyone,” Nick said. “Some people, the crofts have been in their family for generations or everything they own is in their sheep herd. And some people don’t like to be told what to do.”

“And you are?”

“A doctor. I didn’t want to leave my patients, and then I couldn’t leave,” Nick said, because it seemed to make sense. He rattled his cuffs again. “What did I do?”

Malloy considered that answer for a moment, his eyes narrowed, and then nodded toward the guards. They backed off to the door, and Malloy pulled a chair over to the edge of the bed to sit down. He crossed long legs.

“We found you in the snow outsides, naked and raving,” he said. “You mustn’t have been out there that long, though, because you seem… intact.”

The glance at Nick’s groin under the threadbare white sheet was obvious enough to make Nick’s ears hot. He shifted uncomfortably.

“I don’t remember anything,” he said. “Where am I?”

The odd, lewd distraction in Malloy’s face snapped off as he pulled his “give nothing away” mask back on.

“Somewhere you shouldn’t be,” he said as he stood up. “But another doctor might be useful. We’ll discuss it. Get some rest, Nicholas. You’ll need it.”

There it was again, the flash of furtive lust that made Nick squirm uncomfortably. He wasn’t a prude—a loner but not a prude. People had found Nick attractive before, but they hadn’t looked at him like that. Malloy eyed Nick like he didn’t care if the interest was mutual, like maybe it would be better if it wasn’t.

“Could you?” He held his arm up.

A small smile folded Malloy’s mouth, and he licked the corner of his lips. “No,” he said. “Not yet.”

Nick accepted that with a nod and lay back against the thin pillows. He let his eyes flutter closed and evened his breath out into the slow patterns of steady sleep despite the itch that intensified. Malloy didn’t move for a second, and then his hand touched Nick’s thigh, warm through the sheet. It took an effort of will not to twitch as his skin crawled and his balls tightened, but Nick managed it.

The hand slid higher, and then one of the guards shifted with a creak of leather and stiff canvas and cleared their throat. Malloy snatched his hand away.

“He seems harmless,” Malloy said, a thread of tension in his voice. “And he could be useful.”

One of the two soldiers spat. “We should have killed the bastard,” he said flatly. “He’s not supposed to be here, and we’re meant to let him eat our food? Breathe our air? Ewan should have left him in the snow. It would have been kinder. At least Big-Nose wouldn’t have seen it coming.”

“He can earn his keep,” Malloy said, his voice starchy.

Someone laughed crudely.

“Enough,” Malloy snapped. “We have other things to do. Tell Ewan that he found Nicholas here, so he can keep an eye on him.”

There was a grunt in answer. Nick listened as the door opened, feet scuffed over the floor, and it closed again. He waited for a moment and listened to the room. After a few years of working in a morgue, you learned what a room where no one else was breathing sounded like.

Once Nick was satisfied he was alone, he lifted his head and opened his eyes.

The room was silent. There was nothing pressed to the sliver of reflection in the metal-covered cupboards, no dry, dead eye that watched him through the crack under the door. When he rattled at the inside of his brain, nothing shed feathers or croaked laughter at him.

None of it had been real—to the monsters, not the Wild, and not even Gregor and his awkwardly sweet mouth. Or that’s