Scarlet

pulled the duck wings and legs out of the pit. “These are done.”
    She took a drumstick for herself and handed the other to Wolf. Ran didn’t complain about the two bony wings, and Scarlet grimaced when he pulled the first apart, cartilage popping loudly at the joints.
    “ Bon appétit ,” said Ran, picking at the meat with his eerily sharp nails, juices dripping down his arms.
    Scarlet nibbled at the meat, while her two companions attacked their shares like animals, each keeping a wary eye on the other. She leaned forward. “So, Ran. How did you get away from the train?”
    Ran tossed the clean bones of one wing into the lake. “I might ask you the same.”
    She pretended that her heart wasn’t pulsating erratically. “We jumped.”
    “Risky,” said Ran with a smirk.
    Wolf bristled. The relaxation that had graced his features before was gone, replaced by the simmering temper Scarlet had seen at the street fight. The tapping fingers, the jostling foot.
    “We’re still a long way from Paris,” said Ran, ignoring Scarlet’s question. “How unfortunate this turn of events has been. For the plague victim, of course.”
    Scarlet adjusted the breast meat. “It’s awful. I’m grateful that Wolf was with me or I’d probably still be stuck there.”
    “Wolf,” said Ran, enunciating it very carefully. “What an unusual name. Did your parents give it to you?”
    “Does it matter?” said Wolf, tossing away his bone.
    “I’m only making conversation.”
    “I’d prefer silence,” Wolf said, a growl in his tone.
    After a moment in which the distrust was palpable between them, Ran faked a gasp. “I’m so sorry,” he said, picking the last bit of meat from the bones. “Have I stumbled upon a honeymoon? What a lucky man you are.” His face taunted as he pushed the shredded meat into his mouth.
    Wolf curled his fingers into the sand.
    Squinting at the man through the haze of smoke and heat, Scarlet leaned forward. “Is it my imagination, or do you two know each other?”
    Neither denied it. Wolf’s focus was pinned to Ran, a twitch away from attacking him.
    Suspicion sliced through Scarlet’s thoughts and she gripped the gun. “Roll up your sleeve.”
    “I beg your pardon,” said Ran, licking the juices as they dripped down his wrist.
    Clambering to her feet, she leveled the barrel at him. “Now.”
    He hesitated only a moment. Expression unreadable, he reached for his left wrist and rolled the sleeve past his elbow. LSOP1126 was tattooed across the muscle of his forearm.
    Anger boiled up inside Scarlet, every bit as hot as the coals beneath the fire. “Why didn’t you tell me he was one of them?” she hissed without taking her focus or the gun off the tattoo.
    For the first time, Ran’s composure stiffened.
    “I was hoping to determine why he’s here and why he’d approached you on the train, without alarming you,” said Wolf. “Scarlet, this is Ran Kesley, a Loyal Soldier to the Order of the Pack. Don’t worry, he is only an omega.”
    Ran’s nose wrinkled at what Scarlet could tell had been a low insult.
    She swapped her attention between the two. “You could smell him on me,” she said. “When I came back to the car, you knew—and you knew he was following us, all this time! How—?” She gaped at Wolf. The unnatural eyes. The uncanny senses. The teeth. The howls. The idea that he’d never had a tomato before. “Who are you people?”
    Hurt flinched across Wolf’s face, but it was Ran who spoke. “What exactly have you told her, brother?”
    Wolf stood, forcing Ran to tilt back his head to hold his stare. “She knows I’m no longer a brother to you,” he said. “And she knows that no one with that mark can be trusted.”
    Ran smiled at the irony. “Is that all?”
    “I know you have my grandmother!” she yelled, startling a flock of swallows out of the nearest tree. Once their flapping had gone quiet, the woods settled into a thick hush, Scarlet’s words still ringing. Her hand started to shake and she forced it to be still, though Ran continued to sit sprawled and at ease on the shore.
    “You have my grandmother,” she said, more slowly this time. “Don’t you?”
    “Well. Not with me…”
    White sparks flashed across Scarlet’s vision, and it took all her willpower not to pull the trigger and erase his smugness. “Why are you following us?” she said when the throbbing rage had become a manageable simmer.
    She could see him calculating his response.