Page 61 of The Wolf

Scarlet was serving food at the celebration dinner. Arwen did not waste a single moment in which to humiliate her stepdaughter, even though Scarlet herself was therealheir to all of Betraz. It was why she supposed that Arwen had kept Scarlet alive all these years. She was the source of her stepmother’s power. Arwen had married Scarlet’s father and gained the title of Duchess but without his child, the title would go to the next member of the family.

It was ironic really.

Scarlet should be duchess and yet she was a pauper dressed in rags, cinder, and ash.

She glanced around the room, her gaze momentarily pausing on Brine. His attention shifted in her direction, and she glanced away immediately. He’d been in her thoughts more than she’d have liked.

Scarlet hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her encounter with the dragon and the fox shifter in the woods and had sworn herself to secrecy on their and Brine’s behalf’s. For Brine wasn’t on Old Mother’s side, not by a long shot.

And neither was she.

But if they were both against Arwen, and Arwen was trying to control the two of them, couldn’t they stop her … together? Didn’t it make sense to join forces? They were, ultimately, powerless without each other. Scarlet didn’t possess the influence to take down Arwen on her own, and Brine lacked the knowledge and scheming required to win against her without losing his life in the process.

Dangerous musings indeed.

She poured some wine into someone’s cup and kept moving, hardly sparing them a thought as she drifted in her own mind. There was only one idea that she kept coming back to. It was crazy and Arwen wouldn’t like it, but it might be their only choice.

Scarlet had to marry Brine.

It was plain and simple.

She’d find a measure of protection in his name and he’d have the wife his stepmother demanded of him. It wasn’t perfect by a long shot but becoming his wife would protect them both.

All that remained was getting him to choose her.

The wolf in question was sitting up on the dais in the dining hall beside his grandmother, looking every inch a pagan prince. His ink-black hair was braided away from his face, accentuating the severe lines of his handsome face.

So far Scarlet had only seen Brine dressed to fight, his clothes covered in grime and mud and soot. But now he was dressed in midnight velvet and a white silk shirt. Scarlet knew her stepmother’s influence when she saw it. She had no doubt Brine had not chosen his clothes—if the uncomfortable way he hooked a finger around the high collar of his shirt was anything to go by—but even so, the close-fitting clothes suited him well.

Stop staring.

This was what would bring the real trouble. Her inability to stop noticing how he’d changed over the years and how devastatingly attractive he’d become. Scarlet hated herself a little more as she peeked at him from beneath her lashes as she continued to serve the room. He was nothing like the young boy she remembered.

He laughed at something a wolf said, his silver eyes twinkling. Brine didn’t fit with his company. It was nothing about the way he looked, more how he carried himself.

Brine held power.

Scarlet could sense it and so could Arwen if her smug expression was anything to go by.

Scarlet moved back toward the wall, near the end of the dais. Arwen never wanted Scarlet too far away.

Once again, Scarlet found herself wondering about his plans. What had Brine come here planning to do? Steal his grandmother’s province? Spy for the Dark Court? Burn everything to the ground? As much as Scarlet loathed most of the wolves in the pack, she knew she couldn’t allow that. Like it or not, some in this manor were family. She had to protect them.

She wished she’d asked the fox and the dragon what their intentions were for Betraz.

“I have top-of-the-range silk from the Giants,” Lady Mistel of the Betraz court excitedly announced to her neighbor on her left-hand side. “You wouldn’t know how talented they would be with silk, given their size, but it truly is the best in the land!”

“Well, they have to be good for something,” Texel said, laughing gruffly. He held the same prejudice toward other species as Arwen. Scarlet had never understood it, not really. The Talagan shifters faced the worst kind of prejudice from the kingdom of Heimserya The Dark Court had been about rebelling against that prejudice for years. So why did the wolves look down their noses at other kingdoms, and other species? Why did they hate humans so much?

Likewise, why did Arwen hate the shifters so? Scarlet knew she was half elf and half wolf. She could shift at any point, but Scarlet had never seen her do so. Did she hate her own heritage so that she wished to stamp it out wherever she saw it?

It was hardly as if Arwen were kinder to humans either. All Scarlet had to do was look at how she was treated by her. But it wasn’t the same as her hatred for shifters, though she surrounded herself with them. Not for the first time Scarlet wondered if she worked with the wolves simply because to her they were expendable.

“Top up my glass, Red,” a jarringly familiar voice called out, taking Scarlet out of her head and beckoning for her to serve him.Tarros. She could do nothing but bow her head gracefully, emerge from her invisible position against the wall, avoid eye contact, and pour him more wine.

Be quick about it. Just get it over with.

Just as she finished replenishing the glass and set it down, Tarros not-so-subtly glided his hand up Scarlet’s leg, below the hem of her dress, and squeezed roughly into her bare thigh.

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