He lifted his thumb from the button and picked absently at the crust of ice matted into his stubble. Any information Gregor gave Ewan would probably make its way to Rose’s stitched-back-on ear, no matter what he promised. Or she could already be there behind him, Ewan’s strings wrapped around her fingers.
It didn’t matter. Gregor already assumed he couldn’t trust Ewan. If prophets had any honor, they wouldn’t have been sent to be maimed. Still, something of the man he’d been had survived. Enough that he wanted to believe he could care about his bloodline.
“Do you want to know what Rose did to Nick?” Gregor asked. There was no answer. He’d take that as a yes, or close enough. “I told you what to do. If you can still think for yourself, I’ll see you there.”
Gregor tossed the radio back down onto the dead woman’s body. It crackled, voices lost as he turned to look at Boyd. The soldier stared back at him with a grim expression on his bruised face. He pulled his lips back in a humorless smile, blood on his teeth as his lips split.
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “I’ve outlived my usefulness?”
It was past the point he could put up a fight. Whatever benefit the drink offered required a steady top-up of it in the bloodstream. Boyd still hunched his shoulders and lowered his chin aggressively. It would almost be admirable, in a wolf. In a human, it was deluded.
Still—Gregor dodged the punch, and Boyd tripped forward over the corpse and went face-first into the snow—not quite yet.
“HE’S GOTfrostbite and the early signs of hypothermia,” Nick said. He winced as he turned Boyd’s hands over, his nails a pale blue that shaded into black toward the beds, and tied blunt fingers together with vinyl strips torn from the kayak’s covers. Boyd sweated silently through the treatment, sweat beaded on his forehead from the pain. “There’s a chance he’ll lose some of his extremities, even with proper treatment. Which I can’t provide in a boatshed, Gregor. He needs to go back to the base. The infirmary there was full stocked, and I might not have agreed to being drugged blind, but whoever did it could at least put a line in.”
Boyd laughed. “British military equipment,” he said bitterly. “Our boots melt in the desert, and we get frostbite in the winter. Who are you, anyhow? Why is it so important we get you back?”
“That doesn’t matter,” Gregor said. “Just accept you won’t.”
“Is it because of Doctor Ewan?” Boyd pressed on despite the warning. “Is he really your grandfather?”
Nick fumbled the knot, the pinch of wrinkled fabric yanked tightly enough to make Boyd hiss in pain.
“Is my what?” Nick asked. His attention was on Boyd, and then, as the question sank in, he turned to look at Gregor. He narrowed his dark eyes. “What’s he talking about?”
Gregor shrugged. “You heard him.”
Nick stared at him for a second, face blank and composed. Then he nodded slightly to himself, gave Boyd his hands back, and pushed to his feet. He walked over to Gregor and punched his upper arm.
“Go to hell,” he said, his voice tight. “You don’t do that. Not to me.”
Gregor caught his wrist and tightened his grip to keep hold of Nick as he tried to pull away. The fact his hand still fit easily around the narrow joint made him loosen his fingers slightly. Even if they were more evenly matched these days, the reminder he could have ever hurt Nick always reined in his temper. Not that he had to show that.
“I could say the same,” he reminded Nick in a low, dangerous voice. “Do that again, and you’ll find out why not.”
Nick didn’t even flinch at the barely veiled threat. He leaned in until they were almost nose to nose, his breath warm against Gregor’s face.
“You think I should be scared of you?” he asked. “That’s what you want?”
The temptation of Nick’s mouth caught at Gregor. He resentfully ignored it.
“I want respect,” he said. “I’d accept fear.”
Nick leaned in and kissed him, his free hand cupped around the back of Gregor’s neck. It was a quick hard press of lips, breath mingled between their mouths, and obviously meant to make a point. Gregor didn’t care. He pulled Nick closer, twisted his hand in the padded folds of the oversized jacket, and bit at the soft curve of the lips pressed to his.
His human, his carrion god. The prophets might have fucked to make Nick and the gods might have brought him back to life, but they could all fuck off if they wanted to take him back. He was Gregor’s now, the only thing other than his wolf that Gregor had ever loved without hating at the same time.
The one thing he’d ever beaten Jack at, because Gregor wouldn’t have to choose between the Pack and his mate. That choice had been made for him already.
Nick sighed into Gregor’s mouth and pulled away. He tightened his hand around the nape of Gregor’s neck and rubbed his thumb along the tight ridge of tendon in his own version of possession. His eyes were soft and vague for a moment, and then he blinked them back into focus and cleared his throat.
“Then don’t be a dick,” he said as he pulled away from Gregor. “Don’t leave me in the dark. I’ve had enough of that.”
Nick pulled his jacket tight around him and stalked over to the door. He wrestled it open and squeezed out through the gap. The wind pulled the door out of his hand and it slammed behind him hard enough to dislodge chunks of half-frozen ice from the corners of the hut.
Lust and anger were both volatile scents. They hung in the air behind Nick as he slammed the door behind him, hot and red, but the gray thread of old, worn fear pulled through it. He’d grown up with no idea of what the world really was, afraid of the inside of his own head as people told him that what he saw made him mad. The things people hadn’t told him had gotten him killed.
Gregor resented the idea that Nick would lump him in with the prophets and the ignorant. It sat in his throat, thick and rancid like a lump of sour meat he couldn’t quite swallow.
