What, though? That Jack was Numitor despite what his father had decided, and he’d fucked it up for all the reasons the Old Man had banished him? That the Wolf Winter wasn’t what any of them had expected. Or just that this wasn’tfair?
Whatever was left of his da, wherever he was, Jack supposed he knew that.
Jack let the wolf out in an explosion of tawny fur and snarls as he lunged at the Old Man. He ripped chunks out of the Old Man’s heavy thighs and dodged the wild swing of heavy-knuckled fists. It didn’t always work. A backhand caught Jack under the jaw and snapped it out of the joint with a jolt he felt all the way up into his skull. He staggered backward, and Gregor broke his chunk of branch across the small of the Old Man’s back and then jammed a sharp, dagger-sized length of it up and under his ribs.
Pain made the Old Man stagger, his knees suddenly unreliable, and reach back to pluck the splinter out of his kidneys. His fingers closed around the bloody bit of wood as Gregor grabbed his wrist. There was too much muscle to bend it far, but he wrenched it as far as it would go. The joint visibly strained under the skin, tight and swollen, as Gregor threw his weight behind it.
Jack lunged in and ripped at the Old Man’s heavy stomach. His teeth tore through skin and yellow fat down to the hard slabs of laid-down muscle. The raw weave of muscle tightened as Jack slashed at it with a physical pressure that he could feel against his teeth. Blood soaked his face, clotted in the thick ruff of hair around his throat. He tore a long strap of muscle from its moorings before the Old Man got a leg up and kicked him away. Jack skidded backward into the snow, his breath tight as his breastbone throbbed. A second later Gregor was sent after him and rolled head over heels. He landed badly on something buried in the snow and felt a bone snap with a loud, definite crack. The pain made Gregor try to squirm away from it, bent like a bow and with a curse caught in the back of his throat.
The Old Man threw his head back and roared in triumph.
Hail hammered down around them, balls of Ping-Pong-sized ice that bounced off rocks and dented trees. It caught Jack on the hips and back, impact dulled by thick fur, and rattled down onto the Old Man. The skin over his eyebrow was split, blood splattered down his face, and bruises showed up red and gray on his shoulders and arms. It didn’t seem to bother him any more than the open wound on his stomach, where a bulge of pink intestine was visible through the shredded muscle.
Jack sucked in air—his already bruised lungs tight as the cold hit them—and threw himself forward. He didn’t bother to look at Gregor to make sure they were on the same page. Either they were or they weren’t, and there was no time to make another plan. Besides, it might not even make a difference.
The Old Man grabbed at him. He closed his fist around Jack’s ear and yanked. Jack pulled free and sank his teeth into the thick, muscled forearm. He bore down until he felt his teeth grate against bone, and the Old Man swung him up in the air and then slammed him to the ground. The scattered hail dug into his side and skull. It was cold enough that it was almost comfortable. A heavy foot came down on his tail and jolted him into movement as Gregor tussled with their da over Jack’s sprawled body. He dug his fingers into the Old Man’s wounds and smashed his nose—again—with a short, brutal headbutt that rattled bone on bone.
Blood splattered them both, and the Old Man snarled as he sank his broken, sharpened teeth into Gregor’s shoulder. His jaws worked, muscles thick as ropes under his skin, until Gregor’s arm hung limp from shredded meat.
This time Jack took out the big muscle in the back of the Old Man’s thigh. It squirmed under his teeth as he viciously shook his head to drag it out of the meat, and he was nearly crushed as the Old Man toppled back onto him.
They struggled on the ground for a moment, the Old Man’s hands in Jack’s mouth as he tried to yank his jaws to dislocation. Jack howled in pain as he felt the joint click out of true. Before the tendons could snap, Gregor hooked an arm around the Old Man’s neck and yanked back until his throat was taut and bared for Jack’s teeth.
Flesh tore open and blood spluttered out. The ground was already sodden, the white snow trodden into a mire. The Old Man gagged and dragged himself off Jack to scrape Gregor off against a tree. He lost a hamstring to that distraction.
Jack had seen Nick after a fight. The bird god in his head stitched him back together, quicker than a wolf sometimes, but not immediately. Humanity gave it a skin to walk the world in, but it cut its godhood too, like water in whiskey.
The Old Man had always healed fast, and he did it faster with whatever scraps of Fenrir Rose had shoved in there, but not instantly. All Jack and Gregor had to do was hurt him faster than he could undo it, bleed him until he dropped like a stag on the moors.
Then they could kill him.
Between the two of them, together or in turn, they wore him down bite by bruise. It cost them—and their bones took longer to heal—but they were willing to pay.
Eventually the Old Man staggered to his knees and didn’t get up. He doubled over and wheezed like a half-dead horse, and blood and spit sprayed from his lips as he strained for breath. His guts lay in his lap in thick loops, and his bones showed through his skin.
“Do it,” Gregor said. He staggered back, arm folded over his chest to clutch his ruined shoulder. When Jack hesitated, Gregor snarled in frustrated desperation. “He said you couldn’t be Numitor. Prove him wrong. For fuck’s sake, do it before he gets back up.”
Jack limped over on three legs. He steeled himself to do what he had to. The Old Man snarled at him, mean as a beaten dog, and crawled away. He dragged himself through the mud of the fight, after Rose.
Before Jack could strike, Lachlan staggered out of the thick curtain of snow. His face was shredded, barely recognizable, and one hand dangled like so much chewed mince from a swollen wrist. He dragged a snarling dog with him under his arm, muzzle clamped shut with his good hand.
“Let him go,” he yelled, his eyes swollen and clotted black under torn lids. “Go near him and I’ll kill your fucking dog. Maybe I’ll skin him, wear him like the prophets do their wolf. Would you like that?”
Jack curled his lip in silent answer. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the Old Man drag himself farther away, but he couldn’t take his eyes away from the strain of the dog’s neck. It would only take a little more pressure to snap the bone, sever the spinal column. Like the rabbit that Jack had killed earlier.
“Let him go, Lachlan,” Gregor said. “Fuck’s sake, Lach, look around. The old bitch has left you to die here.”
Lachlan grimaced around the ruin of his face. “She… she’s gone to have our baby in peace, safe from you. We’re going to rule the world together. Fuck being Numitor. I’ll have sired agod.”
The dog growled, noise strangled by the angle of its neck. Lachlan jerked roughly at its nose and it choked on its own blood, the tender scar on its face torn open again. It scraped the ground with its paws and tried to twist its head free. Jack lost sight of the Old Man as he took two quick steps forward.
“She’s dried up like an old bit of jerky, you idiot,” Gregor spat. “She’s got a bitch’s skin on that makes you sniff after her like she’s in heat, but whatever she’s going to pull out of that gut of hers isn’t going to be a baby.”
Lachlan gagged on his own laugh. “You’re wrong,” he said. “I saw her put it in.”
Jack forgot about Danny as he realized what that meant. He dropped his head and whined in disgust at the image. It took a second for Gregor to catch up with him, but when he did, he roared in angry grief and went for Lachlan. Fear made a brief, understandable appearance on Lachlan’s ruined face as his fingers tightened around the dog’s nose. Before Lachlan could do anything, Jack got in Gregor’s way and shouldered him back with a snarl.
If it would have done them any good, if it would have gotten the baby back, then maybe Jack would have sacrificed Danny. He knew it was what Danny would have wanted. So maybe, but not for nothing.
