No complicated prophet schemes. No reluctant alliance or grudged respect.
Just the old, easy hatred of each other and the satisfaction of being in the right.
Gregor spat blood into Jack’s eyes and followed it up with a headbutt. Stars flashed black across Jack’s field of vision, and Gregor managed to get him on his back and by the throat. Hard thumbs dug into Jack’s windpipe, and he choked as he tried to suck in air. He groped around for something and wrapped his fingers around a rock, but before he could swing it, Gregor was dragged off him.
He managed to get a kick in to Jack as they dragged him away. Jack wheezed out a thin “fuck” as he felt his ribs bow under the impact, but they didn’t break. He sucked in cold air through his raw throat and scrambled to his feet to go after Gregor. Or whoever had broken up the fight. In the red of his temper, he wasn’t sure what he intended.
Millie stepped in front of him, her good hand up to hold him back, and the other—the one she might still lose after she saved Jack’s ass in the fight with the prophets’ monsters—held gingerly across her body. She smelled like blood and pain, sharp and sour on her skin.
“Stop it,” she said, her voice thin. Then she glanced over her shoulder. “Both of you.”
There was a sudden scuffle around the wolves that held Danny and a startled yelp. It wasn’t Danny.
Millie took a deep breath and let it out raggedly. “All of you,” she shouted. “Just stop it. This isn’t going to help.”
Behind her, Gregor sucked blood from his split lip. He looked as frustrated as Jack did to have their fight interrupted.
“He started it.”
Jack stepped forward until Millie’s hand was braced against his chest. He ignored her as he glared at Gregor, into the grim mask of his own face.
“You touch Danny again, and I’ll throw you off the fucking cliff,” he snarled.
“Try.”
Ellie stepped up next to Millie. She met Jack’s eyes as though she thought she had the right.
“Nobody has laid a hand on your dog,” she said. “We’re trying to stop him hurtinghimself.”
The same old instinct that had made Jack punch Gregor made him look to his brother for confirmation. Gregor was a lot of things, but he’d never been much of a liar. After a sullen moment, Gregor shrugged away from the wolves holding him and nodded.
“Your dog has more bark than brains,” he said. There was respect in his tone despite the words Gregor had never much respected prudence. “He wants to run off after the prophets on his own and get himself killed.”
To the side, apart from both factions of the Pack, James curled his lip at them all.
“I told them to let him go,” he said, his voice still rough with misery. “If your dog can take a bite out of that old bitch, more power to his jaw. And if she kills him… who gives a fuck? No one does about my boy, and he was a wolf, not just a dog.”
Gregor turned to glare at James. “It won’t bring your son any closer to home either,” he said. “The Wild has him, not Hel.”
“And you’re not even a wolf anymore,” James sneered. There was a glitter in his eye that spoke of wanting to hurt anything—Gregor, Danny, or himself. “Not a prophet either. So why don’t you mind your betters or, better still, you can—”
Gregor punched him in the throat, and something popped under his knuckles. James’s eyes bulged as he choked on the words he’d been about to say, and he clawed at the collar of his jumper with blunt fingers as he gaped like a fish for air.
It would heal and it probably wouldn’t take that long, but it was an unpleasant few seconds to spend choked while it did.
“Anybody else have anything to say about what I’m not?” Gregor asked as he glared around him. Lost wolf or not, nobody quite had the courage to hold his gaze as he caught theirs. Eyes dropped in silent acknowledgment that, for now, they’d submit to him. “Whatever the prophets cut out of me, I’m still the Old Man’s pup. That makes me more wolf than you.”
“You’re still an asshole,” Jack said, to make the point that he wouldn’t.
Gregor just showed him bloody teeth. It wasn’t an insult that bothered him. At his feet James sucked in thin ribbons of breath through his broken throat. He glanced up, bloodshot eyes bleak with a rage that neededsomethingto chew on.
“Tell them to let me go,” Danny said. His voice was steadier, the curses bitten back between his teeth, but still raw. He was on his knees, his arms twisted up behind his back and a wolf’s arm around his throat. His face was flushed and puffy, with a stain that spread from his jaw halfway to his eye where someone had hit him “Jack. They’re hurting me. Get them off me.”
Jack swallowed the order instead of spitting it out. It didn’t want to go. His throat felt raw with the need to get the wolves off Danny, but the calm was a lie. In all the fights that Danny had lost over the years, he’d never admitted that it had hurt him, not even when he had two dislocated shoulders and was sobbing with the pain of it. He’d never asked for help either, not from anyone.
Not for himself.
“Danny. Danny-dog.” Jack pushed through the wolves and crouched down in front of Danny. He started to reach for Danny’s face, but the self-conscious awareness of the wolves watching made him settle for shoulders instead. It was the wrong choice—he could feel it in his gut, in the tension under his fingers—but it was too late to change his mind. “What happened? Who hit you?”
