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Did she-wolves have a game they played like this?
Prestige games with these wolves did not interest him. These wolves were of no use to him, like a seller offering him a well-priced property with no place in his portfolio.
“Do you know what I grew up doing?” Sterling asked the wolf with deadly quiet.
“Fucking your mama?”
“Ratting. I chewed through walls. I chewed through dumpsters. I had milk teeth and milk claws. I ratted, or I starved.” Sterling tilted his chin to show the faint scars on his upper lip.
Dogsratted. He had grown up with his mother’s desperate shame in his snout, and her miserable pride when he’d succeeded in ratting something for them to eat. He’d grown up hunting the vermin by that miserable, greasy diner. He’d been so hungry his hunger had made him not care about his mother’s misery at his activities or success.
That was where he’d first learned to peel his feelings down off the walls and put them in that box.
Winter had been horrified to learn he had had to rat. Her scent of grief and horror and love had bloomed around him—and with it, pride. She had not been ashamed he had been a ratter. She had also not tried to comfort him. He was not less to her. She defended him, she fought for him, she faced down Elders and war-forms on snowy nights at his side.
He washers, as much as she washis.
Which meant he would rat again. To be hers once more. For her to be his again.
His new companions reconsidered their choices. He had prestige—he had killed an Elder Alpha, even one as worthless as Jerron—but he was also a mongrel. Two things at once.
The rook: the piece that could move like no other. The piece that was like no other.
A few of the wolves fell back half-steps, no longer interested in a confrontation with him and withdrawing support.
Wise.
Another shove.
No words, no statement. Just a shove, and a step forward.
Sterling planted his foot to absorb it. Pain from the claws he’d gotten in that leg spiked. A sharp/dull pain as the damaged fibers and tissues protested. That night flashed in front of his mind, escaping the box for a moment, andherblood on the air, and the shame of how fasthehad healed. Thathehad not been the one dying forher.
This wolf needed a lesson.Hewas not part of their little pissing matches.
He planted off the injured leg—not strong enough yet, more rehab needed—and snapped a low, underhanded fist into the wolf’s liver.
The wolf stumbled back a step, surprised, and moved to counter—
His body, after the characteristic delay of a direct liver shot, informed him of the spasms that jolted through his frame. The wolf didn’t noodle to the ground like many would have, but did stagger back, doubled over and flailing while he tried to breathe and reorganize his stunned torso.
Sterling locked his hands behind the wolf’s neck, yanked him forward and down, and snapped his knee into the wolf’s face. His kneecap hit the wolf’s forehead.
Perfect.
The wolf, stunned by the knee to the head and his torso, not sure where anything was, dropped to the ground. One of his cohort pounced with a snarl, and they tumbled onto the unfinished wood floor. Little splinters dug through his shirt into his back. A sneaky elbow caught his cheek, but unbalanced the wolf. It was easy exploding, reversing, and getting mount to deliver a fist square to the wolf’s cheek and jaw while ducking around a third wolf’s attempt to peel him backwards with an elbow around the neck.
Sterling grabbed the wolf under him by the hair and slammed the back of his head into the floor, then burst up and slid away from a third wolf. A fourth wolf he drove backwards into the unfinished wall, smashing the wolf’s spine against an exposed beam.
Your environment is a weapon.
His father’s voice slid out of the box.
Another smash of the fourth wolf just for good measure.
Some of the others grabbed the first and second wolves, shouting it was over, enough was enough.
Sterling shook splinters out of his hair and watched, cold and empty. The first wolf now sported a split forehead. Blood poured down his face. Dripped on the unfinished floor. Which, now that he was paying attention to it, had years of stains on it.
