Before Gregor could gather himself to react to the opportunity, rough hands grabbed him and forced him down to his knees.
“Enough,” Kath Fennick snapped as she took the knife out of Lach’s fingers. “Do you speak for the prophets now? We weren’t told to kill them, and I won’t be a murderer if I don’t have to be.”
No one in Lochwinnoch had ever looked at Danny and not realized he was Kath’s son. They shared the same face—sharper on her, kinder on him—as though Lisa hadn’t bothered to involve a man at all. People used to joke that was why Danny had come out tame, inescapably a dog no matter how Kath tried to make him fierce, but then Kath birthed her daughter. Still her face but so much a wolf that she howled before she spoke.
When Lach claimed to be Numitor, Gregor had assumed that Kath and the other wolves with more rank had scattered… or died. Instead, here she was, under Lach’s thumb. Da wasn’t dead—it was impossible, every wolf on the island would have felt that, even whatever hungry wolves still subsisted in Rome would have felt the balance of the world shift—but if Kath bent the neck to this, Da wasgone.
The wolves scrambled up over the edge of the path, naked and barefoot in the snow with Jack dragging between them. Blood painted his face from forehead to jaw, and his arm had started to stitch the shredded meat back together with tender, pink stripes of new skin. Under the blood and clumps of muddy slush, his expression was drawn and bleak with anger as he was manhandled. As his muscles unlocked—agony soothed into agony he could work with—Gregor traded a grim look with his brother.
Lach wiped his forehead, greasy with cold sweat, and looked over his shoulder. When he saw nothing, he looked briefly relieved and then snorted as he turned back to Kath.
“It’s the Wolf Winter. We’re going to murder the world,” he said. Contempt curled the corner of his mouth. “Or do you plan to stay in Scotland and mind the hearth, bitch?”
There was a flash of tension as everyone waited for Kath’s reaction. Her spare, elegant face didn’t show anything as she tucked the knife into her belt. The loose folds of her dress flapped around her in the wind as she moved.
“You don’t murder a sheep or a cow,” she said. “Man will be our prey once Fenrir comes, and I’ll put my teeth in any throat he points me at. Wolves aren’t meat for the slaughter, Lach. Even cowards and traitors.”
Gregor growled at the insult, the sound thin as it squeezed through his still-tight throat. The “bitch” had been ignored, but the low snarl got him a scathing look from Kath before she dismissed him.
“If the prophets want them dead, let them do it themselves. They’ve enough blood on them that a few more pints won’t make a difference,” she said.
Lach scowled at her. “You’re not my mam,” he pointed out. “I don’t need anyone to mind my conscience. I’m the Numitor now. I tellyouwhat’s right.”
Kath made no attempt to hide the mockery in her thin smile. “Will you tell the prophets that?” she asked. “If they want them alive?”
The reminder of his leash made Lach blanch and backhand Kath across the face. The ridge of his knuckles split her lip against her teeth. Blood dripped down her chin, and she wiped it away on the back of her hand. She couldn’t hide the contempt on her face, but Lach had used up his courage for the night.
“Fine, then,” he spat as he turned his back. “Take them. Kennel them with the dogs. The prophets will be here tomorrow. I’ll tell them of your loyalty.”
Kath spat blood onto the snow. “Wolves don’t need words, even prophets,” she said. “They’ll see my loyalty, not hear it.”
She turned her back and stalked away. The wolves who had Gregor pulled him up onto his feet and marched him after Kath. After an uncertain look at the back of Kath’s head, Lach’s wolves dragged Jack along with them.
“Where’s Danny?” Jack asked Kath in a harsh voice.
The question made Gregor flinch guiltily and look around for Nick. He hadn’t forgotten about his mate, but it had been a long time since he’d cared about anyone outside his own skin. Back at the fence, Ellie showed a wet, torn coat to Lach, one hand shoved through a hole as though that would explain why a sort-of-human had gotten away from her. Lach raised his hand again but stayed it as she hunched her shoulders and curled her lip in a sneer. Another she-wolf—old enough to show silver in her muzzle and ears, so either Fern or Elsie, but without a wolf’s nose Gregor couldn’t tell which—growled and flattened her ears at him.
The Old Man could have beaten a wolf raw on the steps of his house and no one would have shown a tooth to him, not even the wolf on the ground. But then they all knew the Old Man never would. Da had always thought cruelty was inefficient.
It was good to know that Lach might call himself Numitor, but even the wolves that guarded his back didn’t trust him entirely. Even better to know, as a crow cawed angrily from somewhere in the storm, that the bird had kept Nick safe.
He turned his attention back to the ground under him as he tripped over a rock buried in the snow. The wolf on his left yanked him back to his feet briskly and kept him in motion.
“The dog?” Kath asked in a harsh voice. She wiped her mouth again, even though it had already healed. “He’s where he belongs.”
“Kath,” Jack said. The wolf’s anger bubbled under his tongue, thick and harsh in his throat. “Kathleen. Where’s your son?”
She turned around and walked backward for a moment. Her face was hard. “What’s it to you, Jack? He’s a dog. A pet. Nothing in the long run. Isn’t that right?”
There was something expectant in her face, almost hopeful. Gregor hated the instinct that made him lean forward against his captors’ hands. Two years ago, he’d have been happy to use his brother’s weakness for the dog against him. But Gregor would never rule now, and Jack was a soft-hearted idiot.
“He’s pack,” he rasped out the harsh interruption. “Dog or not.”
Kath gave him a cold look. She’d never thrown her weight behind either of them officially, but when the time came, she would have picked Jack despite the fact he’d ruined her son’s chances of being a good dog… or a shit human.
“Not anymore,” she said as she turned back around. Her hands were in fists at her sides and there was frost on the ends of her hair. “Dogs have a master, not a pack. They were a test we nearly failed, but the prophets have given us a second chance.”
Jack snarled and tried to wrench free from the hands on him. The wolves wrestled him roughly to the ground and put their boots in while he was down. Jack made a thick, furious noise in his throat and curled into a ball to absorb the abuse against his hips and forearms. Gregor sagged in exhaustion, blood hot against cold skin as it soaked his shirt. One of the wolves snorted in disgust and the other shifted his grip to pull back up.
