“We don’t like smart-mouthed strangers around here,” he snapped at Nick and then glared around at the wolves as though to remind them of that fact. His point made, he turned his attention back to Jack and Gregor, his eyes hot with spite and old grudges. “And we don’t like beggars at our gates either. You’re not wanted here.”
Our gates.
Two wolves climbed up onto the wall and crouched on the stones. Thick winter coats obscured the lines of their bodies, but there were fresh scars on their snouts and legs. Another wolf that had usually picked Gregor’s side—Jamie, who was nearly as old as the Old Man but barely above a dog in the pecking order—only had half a ragged ear left on the side of his head. It might grow back, it might not, but for now it was a flap of scar tissue against his skull.
Gregor breathed in and felt the scar on his stomach tug at still-tender skin. It took… effort… to scar a wolf.
“What have you done to my pack?” Jack asked as he took in the same evidence.
The old rivalry hunched Gregor’s shoulders, a sore point even more tender than the slow-to-heal injuries the Prophets had sliced into him. That he had no grounds to challenge Jack’s claim now only stoked his resentment.
No wonder he hated Jack.
For the first time, Gregor wasn’t sure if that was his thought or leakage from the infection. He swallowed the bile that stung the back of his throat. It hadn’t even been therightquestion. Gregor’s voice scraped like sandpaper as he asked, “Since when do you speak for the Numitor, Lach?”
Lach nervously licked his lips and looked away. He checked the position of the Pack around him, weighed his support, and then squared his shoulders.
“I don’t,” he said and lifted his chin defiantly. He dropped his voice to a rough imitation of the Old Man’s bass rumble. “The Old Man’s dead and gone, and this ismyPack,myterritory. I’m the Numitor of the Scottish Pack now.”
Gregor snorted.
“The fuck you are,” he said. The competition to be the head wolf of the Pack had been his and Jack’s birthright. It galled Gregor that he’d have to cede the position to Jack, but he’d die to defend his brother’s right to it over someone likeLach Givens. “And if the Old Man was dead, the Wild would have rung with the news.”
Doubt flashed through Lach’s face and then he willed it desperately away. “He’s gone!” Lach said harshly. “Now so are you.”
He vaulted over the gate and lunged at them. The rest of the wolves followed, all red gums and white teeth as they snapped and snarled.
The smart thing would have been to let Jack take the brunt. He still had his wolf and he would be the Wolf King of Scotland one day, but no one had ever accused Gregor of being the smart brother. He flung himself into Lach’s path and took him down in a tangle of limbs and snarls.
Chapter Five—Gregor
BLOOD DRIPPEDinto Gregor’s eyes. It wasn’t his. Lach straddled him, hands twisted in Gregor’s shirt, and bled on him from a broken nose and gashed forehead. He held Gregor down with one arm, elbow straight and shoulder braced, and drove his fist down into Gregor’s face.
His knuckles jarred against Gregor’s cheekbone and sent a jolt of pain through his skull. Red and black smeared through his vision as Lach ground his fist against Gregor’s eye.
“You left,” Lach shouted. The wind had picked up as they fought. All around them Gregor could hear the snap of teeth and snarls of a fight. The storm had blown in from the north too quickly to be natural, the bruise-colored clouds tossed in on the breeze to clot thickly overhead even now. It was like the Wild wanted to come and see the fight for itself. Lach cocked his arm back for a second punch. “You should have stayed gone. The Pack’s mine now. They gave it to me.”
He threw the punch, but Gregor jerked his head to the side and Lach buried his fist in the snow, hammered his knuckles against the frozen ruts of the old hiking path. Even over the wind Gregor heard the stick-brittle snap of broken bones. It wouldn’t last—bones were easy enough to stitch together—but it hurt enough to make Lach yelp and yank his hand back.
“Only for as long as you can keep it,” Gregor snarled through stiff lips. The cold stung at his lips and made his eyes ache. He felt it more now than he had, but this was more than that. The chill was enough to make a wolf shiver and go to ground till it passed. “And you got your ass handed to you by a dog.”
He punched Lach in the throat. Flesh and soft tissue gave way with the brittle sound of crumpled plastic, and Lach’s mouth gaped open as he clawed at his throat. It was one of Danny’s moves, vicious in the way you had to be when you knew you were going to lose. Lach’s face went red as he tried to suck air in through his crushed throat, and Gregor flipped them both over.
Joints took the longest to heal. Sometimes, if the body was running hot to patch itself together in the middle of a fight, they’d get put back togetherwrong. They’d be stiff and locked, or bend the wrong way, or the muscle anchored too loose so the joint would slip in and out. Someone would have to hold you down afterward, break it with a hammer over and over till it worked again.
Gregor grabbed Lach’s wrist, twisted it hard, and snapped the elbow the wrong way until it crackle-tore like a wing ripped off a chicken carcass.
“Fuck!” Lach groaned through a swollen throat as he writhed in the snow. He hammered a blind blow left-handed into Gregor’s jaw. His teeth snapped shut on the inside of his cheek, and blood filled his mouth. Lach grabbed Gregor’s throat and dragged him down until Gregor couldn’t smell anything but the mutton-and-garlic stink of Lach’s breath. He dug his fingers down into the soft flesh to cut off Gregor’s breath. “We don’t have any dogs in our Pack now. We’ve cleaned house for Fenrir.”
Gregor spat blood into Lach’s face and pulled himself free when the grip on his throat weakened in surprise. He rolled off Lach and scrambled to his feet.
When he fought Rose in the stagnant pond, the Wild dammed off for the Sannock Dead, he hadn’t cared if he died or not. His wolf was gone, his lover dead—at least as far as he knew—and the Wolf Winter fairy tale of his childhood was tainted. Now Nick was alive, and Gregor tried to judge what he’d lost with his wolf as Lach lurched to his feet.
He wasn’t as strong, and he didn’t heal as quickly—the ache of the bruise around his eye would fade in hours rather than minutes—but he knew that already. With all his shortcomings he’d still beaten Rose. But since he made it back out of the wild, he wondered if he’d lost his edge—the brutally sullen anger that seethed under his skin, the killer instincts of the wolf that put his teeth in an elk’s jugular, everything that had given him an advantage over Jack, with his charm and his wise tongue.
It felt like it was still there. The anger was spackled over the scab where his wolf had been tethered, a poultice of old resentments and disagreements to hold the infection in. And once Lach got up, Gregor would do his damnedest to kill him. That should answer all his questions.
Lach swiped blood out of his eyes and rolled onto his side, elbow dug into the snow as it took his weight. Before he could get up to start the fight again, Gregor caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned, clumsy in the knee-deep snow, as Jamie lunged at him with bared teeth.
