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 somethingwrongwith 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 wantedandwhat 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 and cupped his hand around Jack’s hip, fingers callused and familiar.
It was easy. He was Jack’s.
“I wouldn’t have gone if I’d known you’d get hurt,” Danny said. “Mam said it was bad, but you and Gregor are the Old Man’s sons, and—”
He was cold, shivering as he thought too much about the wind that nipped at his skin. Jack wasn’t sure if the body pressed against him was there to hold him or steal his heat. He didn’t mind either way.
“Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to,” Jack said.
They limped back into the aftermath of the fight. The fire had finally given in to the inevitable and guttered—just embers and black smoke as the storm dumped snow down on it. The bodies of the prophets who hadn’t escaped lay where they’d fallen. Snow already covered their bodies in a white blanket, stained with faded pink as it soaked up the spilled blood.
Ellie was on her knees in the middle of the wolves, the back of her neck scruffed unkindly in Kath’s thin, bony hand. One of the dogs—the stranger—was yelling a protest, but the dogs’ help in the fight had already been forgotten. The wolves snarled and cuffed him, eager to get him to shut up or go away. On the outskirts, the rest of Lachlan’s wolves watched sullenly.
Shit.
He pulled himself away from Danny and squared his shoulders as he stalked across the bloodstained snow and dirt.
“Let her go,” he said.
Kath tightened her grip instead. “She’s the prophets’ lapdog.”
Ellie writhed in the painful grip on her neck. “Fuck you,” she spat. “Lach was Numitor.”
“I’d sooner have a goat,” Bron said with a contemptuous curl of her lip. “What sort of wolf would follow the likes of Lach?”
“Everyone did,” Jack said, his voice harsh. “Kath. Connor. Tom the dog. Maybe for different reasons, but the prophets had you all on a string. If you want her to pay for that, you’ll be accountable too. Let her go.”
Kath studied him with hooded, dark eyes. Then she glanced past him to where he’d let Danny fall back.
“You the Numitor now?” she asked dryly. “Here to give us all orders?”
Kath had always believed that it was best to rip the plaster straight off. The pain would have to be faced eventually, so why not make it clean? It was a wolf way to be, but Jack had spent too much time with prophets and humans over the last few months.
“I’m the Numitor’s son,” he said. “And if he contradicts me, then do what you want. Until then, let her go.”
She did. Ellie rubbed the back of her neck and gave him a grateful, thoughtful nod.
Jack felt the Pack settle in around him, the structure of it clear as glass as he was folded back into the hierarchy. Just like that.
“What now, then?” Hector asked from the back. He didn’t mean immediately, but Jack decided to take it that way.
“We go back to the Old Man’s,” he said. “And work out what to do next. This isn’t over, and I am done with being prey.”
Someone howled, sharp muzzle thrown up to the sky in defiance, and a low mutter of agreement rolled through the Pack. It felt good for a moment, heady as a draft of the prophets’ poison drink.
Then he looked over at Danny—always the last person he looked for at the end of a fight—and Danny dropped his gaze in polite submission. Jack’s stomach sank with it, because he supposed he’d made that decision.
