He snorted to himself, twitched his ears, and headed back along the rucked-up trail he’d left on his hare hunt. The Pack already knew the prophets were out there. Now they knew where and how many were left.
The sense of being watched dug into his shoulders again. He froze, his hackles raised, and growled low and scratchy in his throat. All he could smell was frost and empty air, a hint of icy heather and oak. When he twitched his ears, he could hear the creak of the snow as it settled and the distant crackle of frozen trees.
On the wind the echoes of the wolves’ voices drew back together and stitched into a stale exhalation from the wild.
Little wolf, little wolf…
It was barely there, a breathy whisper that faded when he tried to actually listen to it. Cold, bone-hard fingers pinched the end of his tail and yanked. Jack pinned his ear and spun around. He snapped his teeth at the empty air and felt cold bite up into his nose assomethinglaughed.
…run away home….
The cold fingers shoved and jabbed at him. Jack stumbled and spun, teeth bared, as he was buffeted and pinched. They stretched out his lips, wet and tight, and flicked the end of his nose.
Through the thin huffs of laughter, his assailants found their words again. The voice was clearer now, but not louder. It was a dozen voices layered, not quite perfectly, on top of each other as they singsonged,
Your father is gone…on…on…
The fingers pinched his ear and bore down, suddenly hot as the skin split under the force.
…and your brother soon too!
A yank made Jack stagger as a quick rip of pain jabbed down into the corner of his eye, and then the itch at the base of his neck was gone.
He was alone. Blood dripped down onto the snow in fat red drops from his split ear and crystalized on the snow. Habit made him reach for the Wild and then recoil from the cramped muscle tightness of it. It felt like a sprain did under your skin, the rubber-band tension and soft, inflamed tenderness of infection.
If he needed to, he could still drag it to heel, rip it open and see what spilled out, but not easily and with no guarantee that the infected grafts wouldn’t slow him down. So he’d wait until he needed it. The Wild always took a kinder view of need than it did of pride. Even with the Wolves.
Jack snarled at the emptiness, hair still bristled down his spine like a hog, and wrinkled his lips back until he could feel the cold on his gums. Sannock Dead or just dead, he didn’t care for his new visitors.
Harbingers never helped anyone.
He pushed himself into a ground-eating lope. The familiar singsong rhythm of the song carried the stand-in words around his head on a loop. Worry ate at his bones like acid and released a cold broth of anger into his blood.
They might never know what happened to the Old Man, but the prophets had been behind it, behind everything. It had been Job’s poison in Da’s ear that saw Jack stripped of position and exiled. They’d taken his da, his tattoos, and—accidentally or not—given him Danny only so they could take him away too.
It was enough. Jack would be damned if they got the satisfaction of killing Gregor too.
He barreled back into the wolves’ settlement on ice-raw paws, his breath hot as it smoked over his tongue and between his lips. Sweat matted his fur down from his shoulders to his tail. He stripped it off like a sodden coat. The slap of cold air against his spine and between his legs felt good against his overheated skin, even as his balls tightened and goose pimples pricked his arms and legs.
Nothing.
Jack had expected bloodshed and confusion, to find whatever was left of his brother dead or dying in the heart of their territory. Instead it was quiet, almost peaceful under the thick quilt of snow.
Except Jackknewhe was too late. He could feel the awful weight of it in his gut, an anticipation of something terrible held back by a single thin thread of ignorance. Jack stood there for a second with the bleak knowledge that he was going to find out what it was.
“Get the fuck off me!” It was Danny’s voice, but raw and broken. “This wasyourfault.”
Jack moved before his brain caught up with his feet. He sprinted through the snow toward Danny’s voice, between the houses and across the neglected scrub at the back of the Old Man’s house.
The old barn was there to pen sheep in the winter, when the hunting was thin and the pups needed mutton to wolf down with scraps of deer. Da had always said it was always easier than trying to fill hungry bellies from their neighbors’ farm stock and pets. But this was the Wolf Winter, when the wolves expected to get fat on easy prey, so no one had bothered. The old building, weathered wood patched with tarred planks where it had rotted into holes, should have been empty.
Yet what looked like half the Pack were huddled around it. The rest were trying—and failing—to drag Danny away. He was naked and battered, blood half-dried on his skin and gloved on his hands, but that didn’t stop him. He spat every swear word he’d ever learned at Gregor—battered and with a bloodstained, makeshift bandage around his leg—as he struggled against the wolves who had their hands on him.
In that second, Jack didn’tcarewhat had happened. The harbinger’s warning took on a different tone in his head—if Gregor had hurt Danny, then Jack could learn to do without his brother—and he snarled through human teeth as he threw himself at Gregor. He rammed his shoulder into his brother’s stomach and took both of them down into the snow.
Numitor or not, he couldn’t fight the whole Pack. Wolf or man, both of them agreed on that simple fact. It didn’t matter. If they’d hurt Danny, he’d fucking try.
He threw a punch at Gregor’s face and barked his knuckles against skull as Gregor twisted out of the way. They scuffled in the snow, all fists and knees and the strange release of years of animosity. It always felt good to split Gregor’s lip, in Jack’s experience, but for the first time, he could appreciate how simple it was too.
