Wolves Don't Apologize (Version 2)

Intro

Steel jaw trap under snow, chain rusted to the bone

Grandfather walked forty lines before the sun had grown

Said a wolf don't say sorry for the blood caught in his tooth

Said the winter don't care if you're gentle or you're truth

Verse 1

Grew up in the shadow of a smokehouse and a scale

Grandfather's hands like leather, cracked and never pale

He skinned what he needed, never skinned it for the sport

Said the trap ain't cruel, it's the hunger makes report

Winters came in white, buried roofs up to the beam

He walked the line at four, breath hanging like a dream

Sold the pelts to a trader who would shave down every weight

Said the poor pay double just to pass through his gate

I learned that math in the cold before I learned it in school

Learned a starving man ain't got the luxury of cool

Now the block is my line, every corner is a trap

I move through the static like a signal through the gaps

Momma kept his coat, the fur gone thin and gray

Said it kept us breathing through the coldest of our days

I wear the weight of it now, walking through the frost

Every debt he never spoke I'm the one who pays the cost

Chorus

Wolves don't apologize, they eat when the night is cold

Every scar's a lesson that the winter never told

We don't ask forgiveness for the hunger in our eyes

Wolves don't apologize, they just survive

Verse 2

Now the trader's a landlord with a different kind of scale

Same hand on the ledger, same story, thinner tale

I stack what I'm given, count it twice by the door

Learned to trust the silence more than promises before

Ran with a pack of brothers through the block like it's a den

Ate first, fed the young ones, that's the law that we defend

No apology for eating when the table stayed this thin

No apology for surviving what the system locked us in

Ash on my knuckles from the fires that we made

Kept the block from freezing when the heat wasn't paid

Every scar I carry got a story like a brand

Every deb