Wolf at the Door (Wolf Winter #3) - T.A. Moore Page 0,97

slid his hand back and twisted it into Gregor’s hair, and the tug of his fingers in the dense curls was echoed in the clench of Gregor’s balls.

“I’d still rather not freeze my cock to a tree,” Nick protested halfheartedly. “And that soldier could get away—”

“Let him,” Gregor said. It had been a whim that made him drag Boyd back with him. He might be useful, but if he got away, then Gregor would just change plans. He scraped a kiss along the hard wing of Nick’s collarbone and offered slyly, “You can go on top.”

The whimper escaped Nick, thickened to a moan as it spilled over his lips, and Gregor could almost ignore the sound of an approaching ATV under the storm. Almost.

He peeled his lips back in a frustrated snarl as he lifted his head and stepped back. Nick stumbled as the wind took advantage of him being off-balance to shove at him. Gregor caught him by the shoulder and then jerked his head back toward the abandoned house they’d passed earlier.

“They’re here,” he said.

Nick hunched his shoulders and swore, the guttural Glaswegian accent dragged from his childhood in frustration, when nothing happened. He roughly scrubbed his hand over his eyes, as though he could scrape the poison out.

“Alone?”

Gregor strained his ears. He isolated the rumble of the ATV and the howl of the wind to filter out and tried to pick out any other noise. If the wolves were out, he wouldn’t know they were here until one had their teeth at his throat. They could hunt silently in the snow. Humans lumbered and talked, the crackle of radio and confidence of something that hadn’t realized it was prey.

“No, soldiers.” He licked the back of his teeth and caught the greasy aftertaste of the monster’s off-putting reek on the air. “Maybe one of their monsters.”

Nick shuddered and didn’t stop as he remembered he was meant to be cold… or that he was afraid.

“I guess Grandad is on the same child-rearing book as Gran,” he said bitterly. “Good to know.”

Gregor grabbed the back of Nick’s neck and pulled him into a quick, rough hug. He pressed his face to the tangle of dark, fine hair and breathed in the odd, candy sweetness that was unique to Nick.

“Fuck him,” he said. “I was going to kill him anyhow. Now I don’t need to make up an excuse.”

Nick laughed unsteadily. He pulled his jacket over again and ducked out from under Gregor’s hand to head back to the hut. “Since when do you need an excuse?” he asked skeptically.

“I don’t,” Gregor said. “But I’ll pretend it matters if it makes you feel better.”

Nick snorted and hunched down into his coat. He leaned forward against the wind as it tried to push them back to the lake.

“Should have let him drink,” Nick said. “It would be easier.”

Gregor hesitated, eyes narrowed against the snow. It was Nick’s voice, the sanded-off vowels and quiver from the cold, but Nick was in front of him. The voice came from the lake.

He didn’t turn around. Whatever was there—dead thing or Sannock ghost—wanted to play games, and this wasn’t the time. If they wanted to haunt him, they could wait their turn.

Maybe when they saw what he’d do to Ewan, the prophet who’d been dumb enough to think Gregor would trust him, they’d give up Nick’s voice before Gregor had to reach down their throat and rip it out for them.

He grinned at the thought and broke into a jog to catch up with Nick.

Chapter Eighteen—Nick

PAIN PECKED at the inside of Nick’s skull. His head throbbed as though it were about to crack open like a melon and misgivings would spill out like guts.

Something is wrong.

Nick rubbed his finger up the bridge of his nose and pressed against the span of skin between his eyebrows. The pressure didn’t help, but the small new pain distracted him from the dull thump in his brain as he hunched down behind a heaped mound of frozen snow. Gregor was only a few feet away, folded in behind a scrawny tangle of threadbare bushes, but it felt farther. Every time Nick looked over, it took him a second to pick Gregor out from the frost and branches. They were stationed across from the lonely little house tucked onto a pocket of land just off the road. It had been all straight lines and modernity a few months ago, from the look of it, but now the white plaster had broken