Page 77 of The Wolf

She crept away from the doors of the dining hall.

And if the diamond mines were how her stepmother was financing her entire, abysmal takeover…

Then that was where Scarlet would hit her.

THIRTY-EIGHT

SCARLET

Scarlet suppressed a cough as she felt her way through the mines. Felt, because they couldn’t afford to give away their position by lighting a lantern.

She wasn’t alone. Jaq, Gus, and Pru were all with her. She should have known she wouldn’t have been able to stop them from helping her, especially when she had perhaps not-so-subtly asked them where the best place to get the supplies she needed from the manor were. But there was another person who rounded out the party who had surprised Scarlet.

Mourne.

The enigmatic, unreadable Mourne, one of Lady Arwen’s enforcers. Granted, he had never been one to treat Scarlet unfairly, but that didn’t mean she considered him a friend or someone she could trust. So when Mourne had overheard Scarlet and her friends discussing the plans, Scarlet thought she’d been caught. This was the end. She was dead.

Instead, something changed the entire course of their plans: Mourne informed them that he wished to help. When asked why, he simply said that he’d never liked the way things were run in the first place, that he was a part of the pack because it had been expected of him from his family, and all he wanted was to create a better province in which he could grow old with his wife.

Perhaps, before her marriage to Brine, Scarlet wouldn’t have believed him. She would have thought he was lying to get more information from her. Instead, all she saw was a sincere love for his wife upon Mourne’s face, which deeply affected Scarlet. So the shifter was in on the secret, and had in turn proved supremely useful.

They had made their way into the mines with no pushback. They were well ahead of schedule, and all because of Mourne. In return for him risking his position to help them out, all he asked for was should things go south, Scarlet got his wife out of Betraz and safely away across the sea. Scarlet didn’t want to think about things going south, but she nevertheless agreed.

If things go wrong, can I save everyone?

They crept deeper and deeper into the bowels of the mines. The air was getting thicker and harder to breathe. Scarlet wondered how on Earth anyone managed to work down here for twelve hours at a time. There wasn’t much of a choice she supposed.

Scarlet felt a hand on her back suddenly drag her against the stone wall.

“Stay back,” Pru hissed. She was the smallest, and the quickest on her feet, so it made sense for her to be at the front of the party to act as lookout.

Everyone shrank against the wall with Scarlet as her friend scanned the area.

Jaq was behind her, hand on her shoulder steadying her as they slowly retreated into the shadows at Pru’s insistence, everyone breathing in perfect irregularity as two wolves swinging a lantern rounded the corner and, blissfully, did not look down the shaft to their right as they passed.

Scarlet’s lungs burned as she held her breath. That was the second time they’d almost been caught.She didn’t want to think about how quickly they would have been captured had Mourne not been on their side, informing them when the various guard shifts occurred.

Eventually, they reached the weakest part of the mines. A fault line ran beneath the bedrock for at least half a mile, more than big enough to ensure the entire system would collapse if a series of explosions were let off.

Silently, and with shaking hands, the group set up their explosives. Scarlet had made them in her workshop that afternoon, fighting the adrenaline in her system so that she didn’t accidentally blow up the manor instead of the mines.

After they set up the charges, they returned the way they came, until a light could be seen at the end of a distant tunnel, signaling their escape from the mines.

Scarlet made eye contact with Mourne through the dim light. “Ready?” she whispered.

He nodded minutely. “For years.”

Scarlet set the trigger that would begin the chain of explosions approximately one minute from now … and paused. She could hear voices. Familiar voices. One she hated, and one she wished she did, but didn’t.

Her stepmother, and Brine.

“Scarlet, don’t,” Jaq urged, picking up on the voices moments after her.

Mourne tried to drag her back toward the entrance. “Leave them. They’re part of this. We have to do this for the greater good.”

She was going to be sick. Panic filled her.

“I know you care about him, Scarlet, but the others are right,” Gus pushed. “We need to set the charges off, and we need to go.Now.”

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