Page 58 of The Wolf

For lack of anything better to do, Brine wandered for the next fifteen minutes in the direction of the entrance to the trial. Something told Brine that his final opponent would be near the edge of the estatehoping that he would be too injured and too exhausted to fight properly. True to instinct, as he crossed the threshold into a small clearing before he reached the exit proper from the forest, Brine heard a rumbling.

He didn’t give the wolf any quarter. He had gone through rougher fights in less favorable conditions in order to defend Heimserya against its previous traitorous king. And he regularly fought a bear, of all things. A single wolf was nothing.

He avoided the wolf’s attack as if he were dancing, elegantly dodging any and all charges from the shifter until the wolf snapped back around to hit him again. Brine leapt onto his attacker’s back as if the shifter were a horse, roughly shoved his fingers into the wolf’s eyes, then nimbly jumped away just before the wolf rammed into a tree and knocked itself unconscious.

With a grim smile, Brine wiped the wolf’s blood across his chest. The previous smears of blood had dried and crusted over to form a second skin. Then he cut a wad of fur from behind the wolf’s head, and kicked the creature into the undergrowth for Pyre and Damien to take away.

He headed to the entrance of the trial, victorious.

In truth, Brine felt the opposite of victorious. He hated these trials. These mirthless, pointless trials, where you had to whittle out the weakest members of the pack in order to be accepted.All of these wolves could have been trained better, he realized sadly, thinking of the training he had received at the hands of the Dark Court.All of them could have been true warriors. Fighters worthy of my time. Instead they’re all simpering pups.

When Brine reached the edge of the woods, where the evergreen pines thinned into large, broad-leaved oaks and beech trees with large swathes of grass between them, and the paved courtyard where everyone waited for him was within sight, the mangled red wolf who Brine had immediately disliked suddenly appeared from behind a tree.

He wasn’t part of the trial—he would have been no challenge considering his injuries—but he stood in Brine’s way nonetheless.

Tarros,he thought, squaring his shoulders and holding himself at his full height when he realized there was no way he could get away with ignoring the despicable wolf.The one who covets Scarlet.Brine had learned this from the maids in the manor, who had been fearful about telling him. Clearly Scarlet wasn’t the only human Tarros antagonized.

“Step aside,” Brine said calmly, nostrils flaring under the heavy tang of blood and sweat clinging to his skin.

Tarros spit on him instead. “I know what you’ve done,” he seethed quietly. “You won’t get away with your tricks.”

Brine’s best defense was to ignore him. After all, who would believe him? He pushed the wolf aside. Tarros growled and snapped at him but otherwise did nothing. For Tarroscoulddo nothing against Brine, even after he’d spent the last two hours fighting ten opponents without a break.

Then he left the trial grounds, walked across the threshold into the courtyard, and readied himself for the days-long celebrations that always followed a trial.

Brine had no idea how he would pretend he was happy about the whole thing. More than that, he dreaded what he had to do on the final day of celebrations: choose a bride.

TWENTY-EIGHT

SCARLET

Under normal circumstances, Scarlet loved helping bring babies into the world. It was one of the best uses of her talents after all, and was something she knew her mother would have been proud of. The look of relief on the father’s face when the child was born safe and healthy, and his wife was still breathing—still alive—was a drug more intoxicating than any Scarlet had concocted on behalf of her stepmother.

But the birth of half humans within Betraz was terrifying. For any mother in the province, the birth of a mixed child was a delayed death sentence.

Scarlet was beyond exhausted. It was the night of Brine’s trial, which of course she hadn’t been invited to, but shehadintended to watch it from the sidelines. But then Scarlet had been called out in the middle of the night—a call she could not ignore—to help with the difficult birth of the baby. Dimly, she felt guilty about how wrapped up in her own problems she was. They seemed so insignificant compared to what the family she’d just helped were about to go through. Giving birth to the child was only the beginning.

Now they had to find a way to live safely from prejudice, imprisonment, and death.

All Scarlet could do, if the family willed it, was securely place them on a ship with the help of Ari and send them off across the sea. It was the only way to guarantee their safety, though the babe had to be healthy and old enough to travel first.

It was two hours from dawn when Scarlet passed the courtyard, the broad-stoned area that led out to the entrance to Brine’s trial. Her stomach lurched. Had he survived? The odds were drastically against him, but in her heart Scarlet knew he would be successful. There had been a glint in his eye, even as a boy, that told her Brine was a survivor. He would not be taken down so easily. But even so, Scarlet worried that he might have gotten hurt—perhaps irreparably so.

Then she listened to the din from the courtyard, still rowdy even this early in the morning, and Scarlet frowned. They certainly didn’t sound like the violent, jubilant cheers she would have expected if Brine had come back damaged or dead. Rather, everyone sounded surprised. Surprised but delighted. Which could only mean one thing.

Brine had won.

He’s now one of them.

Scarlet felt sick. No she hadn’t wanted him to die, but for him to win? He had to commit murder over and over again to become blooded. She swallowed thickly at the thought and tried not to retch.

She hovered in the back of the courtyard to watch as Brine prowled through the crowd. His skin was shining with sweat, his chest covered in blood, his midnight hair wild around his head. A feral grin on his face made him look every inch the wolf he was even in his human form.

It disturbed Scarlet that she found Brine attractive even when he looked this savage. Perhaps that waspartof the appeal, though Scarlet didn’t like that idea one bit. Her heart was thumping regardless, blood rushing to her face as Brine scanned the crowd, hopefully looking for…

Her?

Stop it.

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