Page 69 of The Wolf

Scarlet steeled herself.

Have courage, her mother had always said.

“Please help me,” Scarlet whispered to the empty room.

THIRTY-FOUR

BRINE

The waning moon was high in the sky. Everyone was dancing and singing and drinking, and midnight was just around the corner.

Scarlet was nowhere to be seen.

The courtyard was full to the brim with revelers. Upon a raised gazebo was a four-piece fiddle band, their jaunty music adding to the din of the party and driving the guests into a frenzy. Wolves were quick to anger, yes, but they were just as quick to party the night away.

Someone howled, then another and another.

It was the kind of party Pyre would love. Lots of alcohol, lots of laughter, hedonism in every dark corner. Ordinarily, even Brine would have enjoyed such a celebration, but the folk around him were strangers.

And his true pack wasn’t there.

It had been years since Brine had been what he would considernervous, but now? Now his nerves crept through his veins like a sinister poison, threatening to take him down before he could truly affect any kind of change in the world. And Scarlet was the reason. She had made him like this, though she had spoken barely a handful of words to him.

But how could Brine not replay every interaction between them inside his head over and over and over again until he felt dizzy with it? In the bathtub, when she’d blackmailed him, there had been no denying the electricity between them. The way they’d pressed their bodies against each other in ways entirely unnecessary for fighting, he’d wanted her, and she’d wanted him. Scarlet’s tamped-down emotions be damned, Brine now knew without a shadow of a doubt that she wanted him.

But if she merely wanted him in a purely physical sense and nothing more, then that was more than Brine could bear. He wanted Scarlet, bodyandsoul. She wanted him to achieve her goals. The two of them were not the same.

And yet with every cell in his body Brine longed for Scarlet to appear and stake her claim as his bride. He didn’t want to marry anyone else. He only wanted her, even if her intentions were impure.

At this point, Brine would take whatever of her he could get.

“It is time!” Lady Betraz called out. An immediate silence swept across the courtyard, save for the fiddle band still playing in the background. Every guest stood frozen, mid-sentence and mid-gesture, tense with anticipation. Arwen beamed at her captive audience. “All women wishing to be chosen as Brine’s mate please step forward.”

As expected, an unnervingly large number of women were quick to step forward. Marrying Brine and siring the heir to Arwen’s empire was no small feat. There would be many people vying for his hand, but still … he didn’t see Scarlet among them.

His heart sank.

However, as the female shifters moved into a line in front of Arwen, readying to get sorted into groups to fight each other, a hush somehow fell across the already quiet audience. Brine darted his head left and right, looking for the source of the distraction, only for a familiar figure dressed in the telltale red cloak to part straight through the crowd like a knife.

A bloody knife.

Obediently the red-cloaked woman joined the line of prospective brides, pushed back her hood and then unbuttoned her cloak, tossing it behind her to reveal a stunning dress so deeply red that it was almost black. It hugged every one of Scarlet’s curves in a way that set Brine’s mouth to watering. His eyes were dragged down to the double, thigh-high splits that allowed Scarlet full movement in the dress, the better to fight in.

Scarlet’s pale blond hair shone in the light of the flickering lanterns all around her, twisted and woven into a number of braids that, Brine realized, copied the way he often wore his own hair, only more elaborate. His swallowed down a growl of pleasure.

He caught a whiff of ginger on the air, stronger than usual.And … cinnamon? Pine?His mouth watered at the mere thought of tasting it on his mate’s skin.

Scarlet offered him a soft, lovely smile—the kind he had not witnessed since their shared childhood, and he froze. It was all he could do not to grab Scarlet and run off with her there and then.

Brine couldn’t take his eyes off her. His nose. His tongue. All that was missing was getting hishandson her.

Thiswas what his bride looked like.

His mate. No one else’s.

Brine forced his attention over to his grandmother. She was furious, Brine could tell, even though she remained serene on the outside. Her fist was weakly shaking at her side; her pupils were reduced to slits. Like this, it was easy to see that Arwen was part wolf, though she despised that aspect of her parentage.

It was clear his grandmother wanted to say no—that Scarlet throwing her ring in the game wasn’t allowed, wasn’t legal. But itwas, and when Brine eagerly turned his attention back to Scarlet he knew that she knew this too. She might be a human, but she was a lady of the manor.

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