“I did,” Gregor said. He didn’t sound sorry or amused, just grim. “It was the only way to stop him till someone else got here to hold him down.”
Danny snarled like his dog, lips wrinkled back from his teeth. He twisted angrily against the wolves holding him, until his joints twisted weirdly under Jack’s hands. Tears dripped down his face, cutting through the grime and blood, as he spat at Gregor “You should have let me go. Coward.”
A growl rumbled out of Gregor. “I’ll give you one pass, dog,” he said.
“Fuck off,” Danny said.
Jack shook him hard enough to make Danny’s teeth audibly click together and pull his focus back to Jack.
“What. Happened?” Jack repeated. He tightened his grip until he could feel bone under the layers of cloth and muscle. It was the Numitor who asked. “Danny, tell me.”
For a second the mask of anger slipped and Jack saw something terrible and raw underneath.
“They killed my mam,” Danny said. He sounded like a kid again, all shocked at the unfairness of the world. “They cut my wee sister to bits. I wasn’t there, and they came in the night and…slaughtered… my family.”
“Kath?” Jack asked Ellie. It was stupid. He knew that even before Danny creaked out a bitter laugh at the question. What did he think Ellie was going to say, that Danny had panicked and mistaken a nap for death? It seemed impossible. Jack had expected blood when he raced back to the village, but not this distinct, unheralded murder. So he still waited for Ellie’s nod before he let himself believe it. “Gods. Let him go. Let him up, for fucks sake, I’ve got him.”
The wolves at Danny’s shoulders hesitated but did as they were told. Danny slumped, the fight gone from him now that he’d put his grief into words. His hands lay limply on his knees, fingers curled, and he stared at the lines of his family’s blood worked into the creases.
“Danny. Come on, get up,” Jack said. He pulled Danny to his feet and gripped his shoulders tightly. “Not yet. Not alone. You’re pack. We hunt together.”
The corner of Danny’s mouth twitched slightly, and then he pressed his lips together in a thin line. He wiped tears and snot off his face onto his sleeve and nodded. It was resentful—a short dip of his chin—but Jack supposed it was what he’d get.
He wanted to say more, to make Danny promise not to get himself killed, because…. Gods, Jack could barely accept the idea of Danny gone from his side. The thought of Danny gone,dead, and not somewhere that Jack could imagine going to someday? That dropped dread through Jack like a stone, from the pit of his throat all the way down to his wolf.
“Danny….” The words stuck in Jack’s throat, and he couldn’t get them out. It felt too naked, tooraw, like he was laid out on Rose’s table again. The Pack didn’t need to know their Numitor was so weak. Jack cupped his hand around the back of Danny’s neck with the old familiar affection. “The prophets won’t take anything else from us.”
“Won’t they?” Danny pulled away from Jack and walked away. He was barefoot, but he didn’t seem to care as he headed toward the barn.
Gregor stopped him on the way past, a hand on his chest and a brief, unfriendly look traded between them. Then Danny nodded and went over to fold himself down on the wall outside the barn. He pulled his knees up and hunched over to rest his head on them.
“Go get him some shoes,” Jack told James. The big wolf sneered at him, defiance in every line. Jack grabbed him by the collar and hauled him to his feet. He leaned in until he could smell James’s breath on his lips, sour with what was going on inside him. “Do as you’re told. Or, if you’re no use to the Pack, I’ll flay you for the prophets myself.”
The words were enough to make James flinch. He staggered away and glared when Jack let go of him, a flush on his throat and under his stubble. Then his resistance spluttered out. He muttered his surrender under his breath and stalked away, making a point to shoulder past the assembled wolves.
That left Jack with no more excuses.
He turned to Gregor. “What happened?”
Gregor shook his head. He had to swallow before he said anything. “I don’t know,” he said. His mouth twisted in a humorless smile. “It was already… done… when we got back. Kath was dead, Bron… they cut her open to kill the baby. Then they left them both to die. Your dog wasn’t in a state to tell us anything.”
It sounded brutal, almost careless. Jack knew better. Gregor had always swallowed pain whole instead of in bites, as though letting it hurt all at once was easier.
The neat little terrier woman from the town was gone. She looked like a scrapper now, in borrowed jeans and a too-big sweater. But her hair was still neat, and her lips were primly pressed together.
“It was our fault. The dogs,” she said. One of the wolves snarled, a low, ripped-from-his-throat sound, and she flinched. Jack didn’t bother to look, he held up his hand to shut the wolf up.
“Go on.”
Millie swallowed hard. “Tom, our Tom,” her voice cracked as she said his name with the hardness that only came from betrayed love. The cowed dog from the pen, with the milk-glazed eye—as though the gods had thought being a dog wouldn’t be hard enough for him. Jack felt the old, lazy stir of pity, but it flickered out as it faced what Tom was involved with. “He went to talk to Kath. She was always… kind to him, you know. After Danny left, he’d do odd jobs for her that she couldn’t be bothered with. Or she’d send him down to town for errands, to me. Kath could never abide Lochwinnoch.”
“Does that matter now?”
Millie had to think about it. Then she shook her head. “No, I suppose not,” she said. “She let him in. I saw him going in, but I didn’t think anything of it. He loved Kath. He followed Bron around like a lost puppy. If anything, I thought he’d finally spit the prophets’ poison out of his gut, once he had the chance. He wasn’t abadlad, you know. He was angry, resentful of the gods, but weare, us dogs. We know what else we could have been.”
It wasn’t an excuse. She sounded baffled.
“What. Happened?”
