Jack looked around as wolves nodded and looked at him expectantly for the excuse they needed to do the right thing. They’d just given him the excuse he needed to do the necessary thing, and Gregor waited expectantly for his brother to seal his position as Numitor.
“Danny doesn’t make my decisions for me. I lead the Pack,” Jack said. Then he spat on the floor. “But he is my mate, my Pack. If you don’t like it, then rot down here with the prophets.”
He was a fool, Gregor thought with frustration as Jack turned his back on the Pack and stalked over to the Sannock, but it was the first time he’d ever admired his brother. Their da had raised them to put the Pack above everything, and here they both were—idiots in love with the impossible choice.
“I told you it’s a deal,” Jack said to the horned Sannock. “So let’s go. The Sannock and Scottish wolves hunt together for the first and the last time.”
Gregor squeezed Nick’s hand again and then let go. “I hope you can keep up.”
The Sannock tilted his head and gave Gregor an unreadable look. “Not the first.”
It raised its hand and flexed its fingers. As it closed them, a spear was already there, ice-caked and thrust headfirst into the ground. The smell of the Wild, air so fresh it felt like it had never seen the inside of someone’s lungs, bloomed in the dank concrete slaughterhouse as the Sannock wrenched the spear free.
The blade was chipped obsidian, black and glossy, and the shaft just plain wood. It wasn’t ornate or enchanted, just a very old thing that belonged in the Wild.
“You know the way, murder-bird,” the Sannock said as he raised the spear. His arm tensed as though there were something heavy caught around the chipped blade. The aircreasedaround it and then parted in a long, rippled sheet, and the Wild poured around them. “Lead the way.”
This time the change wasn’t a choice. Nick and the bird both cried out in pain as the Wild remade them to its design and tossed it into the air. Its scream was a harsh rasp of indignation, and it flapped it wings frantically as it took flight.
Chapter Twenty-Five—Jack
THE EDGEof the bird’s wing clipped Jack’s cheekbone, the impact of it hard enough to sting. He hadn’t realized it was so close, hadn’t seen it. He dodged backward to avoid another blow and absently touched his cheek. His eye, where it had been, throbbed with a dull, hot ache spread back into his skull. He could smell his own blood, taste it caught in the back of his throat.
It would heal. If Jack lived long enough.
The carrion god shot up toward the high ceiling, and angry croaks trailed behind him. But it wasn’t the smooth, cast concrete of the humans’ bunker anymore. Now it was the vaulted roof of a huge cave, strung with stalagmites and limned with streaks of soot and salt, that he swooped around.
The gray bloody walls had ceded the space to rough rock, painted with strong ochre lines half lit by the glow from the bonefire’s embers. Blood still stained the uneven floor, but it was old and dried out. The dead were left behind, but the skins the prophets had worn lay spread out on the stone—whole again, lush and clean. Whatever the prophets thought they’d gained from their treachery, the Wild had chosen what belonged to it.
Jack took a deep breath. The air was so fresh that he thought it might never have seen the inside of someone else’s lungs before. He could have used it to try and rally his wolves, but there was a bitter knot in his throat that wouldn’t give way. Let them do what they wanted. He was done trying to be what they wanted.
The carrion god screeched and swooped down from the ceiling. It skimmed over their heads close enough that Jack could smell the odd sweet-and-salt smell of its feathers as they brushed his head and disappeared through the twisted fracture that was the mouth of the cave.
Jack pulled his wolf up from under his skin and went after the bird as soon as his feet hit the uneven floor of the cave. He squeezed his heavy shoulders through the crack and heard Gregor curse as he got stuck behind Jack’s tail. It didn’t take long to lose the bird in the narrow, switchback tunnel, but he could feel a tickle of fresh air on his nose, so he followed that.
He scrambled up a bank of shale at the end of it, gravel sharp as it dug under his toes, and out into the frozen, snow-blind maw of a storm. Ice pinched at his nose, and snow crusted in his ears as the wind slammed into him. The raw socket of his eye felt like it had cracked as the cold seeped into his bones.
Even a wolf could shudder at this Winter.
Gregor grabbed a handful of Jack’s fur and dragged himself up out of the cave. He tightened his grip as the wind hit him with spiteful force, and he hunched down to brace himself against Jack’s shoulder. For the first time in his life he was glad of his brother’s company.
“Where’s Nick?” Gregor asked. He had to stop and cough, hunched over, his free hand braced against his side as the air got into his lungs. When he was done, he rested his head against Jack’s, his confession for Jack’s ears only. “If I’m the one who can’t keep up, leave me.”
Jack growled at him but didn’t shrug him off. He could smell blood and exhaustion on Gregor, the stale chemical stink of spent adrenaline. Even without his wolf, Gregor would run until he dropped… but he’d already tapped his reserves. There wasn’t much left.
A flick of Jack’s ear signaled his agreement as he turned his head away. If Gregor fell behind, Jack would let him… but if they lived, he’d come back. The only people his brother had ever loved were Nick and his dead daughter, so he deserved the chance to at least hold this child.
To rest with them if that was all he could offer.
Danny scrambled out of the cave, ungainly and graceless. His front paws scraped the rock, and Gregor grabbed him by the scruff to drag him the rest of the way out.
The Sannock were next, boneless and graceful as they slid out of the hole. They had dirt in their hair and scrapes on their hands. It didn’t make them any less strange, any lessother. Nothing else followed them out of the cave.
Jack sagged. He’d thought some of the Pack would follow, from the habit of loyalty if nothing else. But they’d had too much asked of them, from his dog to the Sannock. The Wolf Winter was meant to be their triumph, not their undoing. Maybe it was best that Jack wouldn’t be remembered in the catechism—king for a day and then packless.
Before he could slide too far into self-pity, the dog bumped against him, all rangy muscle and bony shoulders. It laid its head over Jack’s shoulders in reassurance, and Jack remembered hehada pack. A bird, a dog, and his brother—but they were his.
“Pick your path, wolf king,” the horned Sannock said. “Pick up the thread, never mind the blood, and pull your fate to you.”
