Wolf at the Door (Wolf Winter #3) - T.A. Moore Page 0,72

twisted their monsters into caricatures of the wolves, but they couldn’t tell them apart.

Jack huffed out a wolf laugh, and his bloody tongue dangled out of his jaws as he rolled onto his feet. He shook himself and quickly ducked his head to scrape his paw over his eyes and peel away scabbed blood and dead flesh so he could see—more or less—again. There was still a taint of pink to the world, and the cold burned his face, but his peripheral vision was back.

His legs trembled with exhaustion under him. Whatever reserves he’d scraped together since Rose peeled his skin off were gone. He shook his head and found more from somewhere as he went after the monster.

It was easy to track them. Blood and a trail of churned, stained snow. Until it wasn’t.

The trail stopped cold, between one step and the next, and the scent filtered away on the wind, just like the site of Job’s bloody slaughter back in Durham, where he’d stepped away from guilt and into the Wild.

Footsteps crunched behind him, and Danny nearly ran into him as he dashed through the snow. He stumbled to a halt and crouched down next to Jack. His breath steamed on his lips as he gave Jack a concerned look and then turned his attention to the straight line division between there and gone.

“Was that Lachlan?” he asked as he put his arm over Jack’s shoulders. His fingers twisted in the thick hair of Jack’s ruff. The gesture pulled at the fresh wounds hidden under the mats, but Jack ignored that. It was worth the discomfort to be able to lean into the embrace and sigh out his weariness.

He folded his wolfskin away and knelt in the snow, naked and stippled with ruined ink and fresh bruises. Blood scabbed his skin over almost healed injuries. Danny hissed in concern as he gingerly prodded at the edges of the deep punctures bruised into Jack’s shoulders.

Without the wolf, the simple pleasure of the embrace fanned out into something more complicated. Familiar and sweet, a dull hint of desire twitched under the dull weariness of the fight It was layered over with need and fear and, unfair though it was, anger.

“Saved by a dog,” he heard Bron’s voice hiss inside his head. “I’ll tell everyone that.”

Let her.

“It was him,” he said. His lip curled in contempt. “The new Numitor that was.”

Danny rubbed his hand over his face, and his nose wrinkled as he squinted. “He couldn’t do that,” he said. “Lach could hardly touch the Wild.”

Jack snorted and pushed himself to his feet. “And prophets used to be toothless, and monsters were for stories,” he said. “It’s the Wolf Winter, Danny, things change.”

He offered Danny his hand and hauled him up out of the snow.

“No,” Danny said. “You don’t get it. Lach couldn’t touch the Wild at all without another wolf’s tail to chase. Why do you think he hated me so much? He was practically a dog. He only made it as a wolf by the skin of his teeth. The Wild’s not gotten strong enough to change that. Has it?”

Probably not. Not here, where the skin of the Wild was shot through with the dead flesh of the Sannocks’ prison.

“Maybe,” he said. There was something there—woven in with the certainty that there was something wrong with Lachlan—but Jack couldn’t pin it down. Either he didn’t want to look at it, or he didn’t want to admit he needed Danny to tie the threads. He shrugged it off and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. Back at the prophet’s den, he heard a thin, territorial howl challenge the drone of the wind. “The rest? Your sister?”

“Wiping up the prophets who couldn’t run,” Danny said. He pulled a befuddled face. “Still pregnant.”

Jack could have told Danny then, but he didn’t. Something like jealousy caught painfully at his ribs. It would have been so easy for Gregor. His brother could have had what he wanted and what he loved. Instead Jack would have to give up one or the other and then live with it.

It wasn’t fair, but that wasn’t new. He also didn’t have to deal with it just yet.

“We should get back,” he said. A crooked smile twisted his mouth. “Before they think it’s over.”

He started to limp back on scorched feet, blood still hot on his thigh where Lach had raked him during their brief scuffle. Danny edged over and unselfconsciously tucked himself under Jack’s arm