Page 89 of The Wolf

The Hood?

“Why … why are you here, Lady Marianne?” Scarlet croaked as she climbed to her feet, legs shaking. “Why did you save me? What do you want?”

Lady Marianne held up her hands. “I want nothing from you.” She offered Scarlet a smile. “Call me Robyn. Snakes like him”—she pointed toward Tarros’s corpse, disgust curling her lip— “have a habit of popping up when you least want to see them. I’m glad I followed my instincts and did a perimeter sweep before going to the manor.”

A perimeter sweep?

As Robyn swiftly and with precision removed her arrows from Tarros’s back, wiped them clean on the grass and returned them to her quiver, understanding dawned on Scarlet: Robyn was working with Brine. With the dragon shifter and the fox.

Scarlet’s stomach dropped. Lady Marianne was part of the Dark Court.

Out of the fire and into the frying pan.

She scoured the ground and snatched up her dagger from the dirt as Robyn faced her. The lady eyed the weapon and then Scarlet.

“I mean you no harm. I want only your safety. Come back to the manor where you’ll be protected. I’m sure Brine—”

“I can’t go back there,” Scarlet rasped, wishing desperately for the woman to understand. “This estate holds nothing for me. I need to get out.We…” Her hand went to her belly. “We need to be free. To be safe. I refuse to stay in that prison any longer.” She stared Robyn down. “Are you going to be an obstacle?”

To Scarlet’s surprise—or, perhaps, not to her surprise at all—Robyn smiled gently, and held up her own hands in a placating gesture. “I’m not here to send you back. I’m not here to tell you what to do at all. This isyourlife, Scarlet. If you need to leave this place … if you need to leavehim… then you have to do what you must.”

“I need your word that you will keep silent.”

Robyn cocked her head. “You want me to lie for you?”

“You’ve lied for everyone else, have you not?”

“That’s fair. I won’t tell anyone that you’ve gone. But you should know that running never solves the problem.”

Scarlet couldn’t help herself; she rushed forward and hugged Robyn with a ferocity the other woman eagerly reciprocated. It was only in that moment that Scarlet realized just how starved for genuine, no-strings-attached affection she was.

“Thank you,” she whispered into Robyn’s ear. She was crying, but no longer in sadness. “Thank you, thank you.”

She released the lady and backed away.

Scarlet paused beside Tarros’s corpse and kicked him hard and then spat upon his back. “May you rot in hades.”

“Safe travels.”

“Happy hunting,” Scarlet murmured in return before she picked up her pace and left Lady Marianne behind. She wasn’t sure where she planned to go, but there was one person who had the answers.

It was time she visited Ari.

This time for her own salvation.

FORTY-SIX

BRINE

A very long three days passed. Brine did not go back to the cottage. He still couldn’t face Scarlet, nor trust himself to act accordingly around her. He knew it was inevitable that he’d have to confront the woman he loved about her betrayal, but he didn’t know what he would say to her when he did.

So he threw himself into work instead.

At first Brine was overwhelmed by everything he had to do. He didn’t even know where to start. But Brine was not alone, and with the help of Pyre, Tempest, Damien, Robyn and all her Merry Men, Brine began clearing out his grandmother’s organization, gutting it from the inside out. Things went even more smoothly when Tempest brought in some of her fellow Hounds to help.

But for every task completed, Brine frustratingly had to face down a new challenge for the position of alpha in the Betraz pack. Even the wolves who supported the takedown of Old Mother were not unilaterally in support of Brine, and there were many who hadn’t had an issue with Lady Betraz in the first instance. Brine thought he’d struggle with these bouts—he was still recovering from his injuries incurred during his fight with his grandmother—but with every new fight where he ruled supreme, he gained the confidence to know that nobody was going to beat him.

He was the new alpha, and eventually they’d all come to accept it whether they liked it or not.

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