Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint-Chapter 91

Angel’s POV

I opened my eyes to find him watching me.

Not intrusively - he was sitting on his side of the bed, already dressed, leaning back against the headboard with his arms loosely folded, and there was something in his expression that was - warm. Unhurried. Like he had been there a while and hadn’t minded.

"Good morning," I said, voice thick with sleep.

"Good morning." The smile that came with it was slow and genuine. "You’re beautiful when you sleep."

The blush arrived before I could do anything about it.

"Stop that," I said, pressing my face into the pillow.

"I’m simply making an accurate observation."

"You’re being kind."

"I’m being factual." His voice carried that particular certainty that Merrick always had - the ease of someone who had decided something and saw no reason to qualify it. "There’s a difference."

I lifted my face from the pillow and looked at him with the skepticism that the statement deserved.

Beautiful. Me. With my face that obviously looked blotchy right now. From crying yesterday and sleeping with that same tear-stained face.

Let me not even begin to talk about my heavy size.

"The puffy cheeks," I said flatly. "The..."

"Are you seriously sitting here arguing with a compliment?"

"I’m questioning its accuracy."

"Angel." He looked at me with an expression that was both amused and serious in equal measure. "I have lived long enough to know exactly what I’m looking at. I don’t say things I don’t mean." He held my eyes. "You are beautiful. The fullness of you, the softness of you - all of you. Not despite anything. Because of everything." A pause. "Believe it or don’t, but I’m not revising the statement."

Something happened in my chest that I allowed for exactly three seconds before I cleared my throat and sat up.

"I’m going to go get ready," I said.

He smiled. "Probably wise."

The maid had packed up everything, which I appreciated. I washed and dressed in something plain and practical - appropriate for travelling, inappropriate for whatever rank I was apparently now supposed to inhabit - and stood in my old room for a moment before I left it.

The window Terrell had latched shut.

The chair he’d sat in all night, watching me sleep.

The tray on the table from dinners I hadn’t tasted.

I looked at it all for one moment.

Then I went to find Merrick.

He was waiting in the corridor, which I appreciated. We walked down together and the castle felt different in the morning - quieter, the ceremony of the night before settled into the stones like something absorbed.

When we got to the dining hall, Terrell was at the table.

I saw him before he saw me - or before he chose to acknowledge that he saw me - sitting at the head of it in the morning light with a cup in his hand and his jaw set and his eyes somewhere distant.

He looked up when we entered.

For one moment - just one - his eyes found mine.

Something moved through them that I caught and immediately lost again, too quick to name.

Then he set down his cup.

Stood up.

And walked out of the room.

Just like that. No drama. No acknowledgement. He simply... left. Before I had even reached my seat.

I sat down.

I looked at the empty chair at the head of the table.

Merrick said something beside me - something gentle and redirecting, offering bread, pouring something warm - and I answered him and ate what was put in front of me and acted like someone having a normal morning

But the empty chair sat at the edge of my vision the entire time.

And later, when Merrick’s men were assembled and the horses were ready and the whole organised departure was underway - bags loaded, farewells exchanged, the Black Wolf gates standing open - I found myself looking.

Just once.

Scanning the courtyard, the steps, the windows.

Terrell was nowhere.

He didn’t come out.

Didn’t appear at a window.

Didn’t send word.

I turned forward as we rode out through the gates and I told myself the tightness in my chest was the morning air and nothing else.

I told myself that very convincingly.

Almost.

His indifference settled into my bones like cold weather, and I tried not to think too much about it.

The gates of Black Wolf territory disappeared behind us and I kept my eyes forward.

I was good at that. Forward. One foot in front of the other, or in this case one horse in front of the next.

Merrick rode beside me - close enough that our horses’ strides fell into an easy rhythm together. His men formed a moving perimeter around us, front and back, the kind of formation that was formed to protect.

The trees thickened on either side of the road.

And there it was.

The feeling arrived without announcement - cold, dark, settling between my shoulder blades like a hand pressing between them. I found myself scanning the treeline unconsciously. Left side, right side, the shadows between the trunks, the places where the undergrowth was dense enough to hide...

Stop it, I told myself.

I scanned the treeline again.

Someone had tried to kill me on our journey here.

The culprit was never found. No explanation given. Which meant whoever it was, was still out there. Roaming free and probably preparing to strike again.

A branch moved on the left.

My whole body pulled tight.

A bird came out of it, wings loud in the morning quiet, and flew away over the canopy.

I breathed out slowly.

"Angel."

Merrick’s voice. I turned.

He was watching me with the rapt attention of someone who had been watching for a while. "You’re alright?"

"Yes," I said.

He looked at the treeline I had just been watching with my eyes. Then back at me.

"You’re safe," he said, simply. Not the reassurance of someone trying to convince me, just a statement of fact. "I have twelve men on this road. Four of them I’ve trusted with my life for longer than most kingdoms have existed. Nothing will reach you."

I nodded.

"Angel."

I looked at him properly this time.

"Nothing," he said, "will reach you."

I took a breath. Let the trees be trees for a moment.

"Tell me something," I said, trying to keep my mind busy and occupied.

"Anything."

"Tell me about when you were young." I settled more comfortably in the saddle. "You and Terrell. How did it end up the way it is now - him at Black Wolf, you ruling your own territory?"

Something shifted in Merrick’s expression. Like the look of someone deciding where to begin a long story.

"Every territory under my authority," he said, "ultimately belongs to Terrell. As Alpha, everything falls under the Black Wolf banner. My lands, my villages, my castle - it’s all part of the same structure." He glanced at me. "Think of it like... Terrell holds the whole sky. I hold a particular portion of it. The stars in my section still belong to the same sky."

"That’s a very poetic way of describing it."

"I have my moments." The corner of his mouth moved. "The practical version is that one Alpha cannot personally govern every village, every dispute, every trade agreement and territorial boundary across that much land. Terrell needed someone he trusted absolutely to manage a sector. Someone who understood how he thought, shared his priorities, and would never use the position to build something against him." He paused. "There are only so many people who fit that description."

"So he gave it to you."

"He gave it to me. My lands still operate under Black Wolf law. But the day-to-day - the governance, the relationships with neighbouring territories, the wellbeing of the villages - that’s mine."

I thought about that. "And your people - they shift into black wolves too?"

"Every one of them."

I blinked. "Even if they weren’t born into the pack?"

"Even then." He glanced at me sideways. "When someone joins the Black Wolf pack, takes the oath, accepts the brand - the pack bond changes them at something deeper than skin level. Their wolf, if they have one, eventually turns." He paused. "It doesn’t happen overnight. It’s gradual. Weeks, sometimes months. But it happens."

"Lyra’s family," I said slowly.

"Yes. Whatever colour their wolves were before - grey, brown, white - they’ll turn in time." He looked at me. "That’s partly what the marking does. It’s not just identification. It’s a physical tethering to the pack. The brand works with the bond to begin the process."

I sat with that for a moment. A whole family, slowly changed at the cellular level by the pack they had chosen. Or been brought into.

"Is that - does it hurt them? The changing?"

"No more than any shift hurts." He considered. "Less, actually, for those who’ve been shifting for years. The colour change is subtle. Most of them don’t notice it happening."

I nodded slowly, filing it away. There was so much I didn’t know. So much that had been happening around me and inside the people around me that I had no framework for.

"Tell me more," I said. "About how it all works. The hierarchy, the rules, what it means to be..." I hesitated on the next word. "Luna."

He looked at me with something that was quiet and serious and warm all at once.

"I’ll tell you everything," he said. "I promised you that. All of it - the structure of the pack, the duties that come with the title, how to navigate the politics, which elders to trust and which ones to watch carefully." He held my gaze. "You won’t go into any of it blind. Not on my side."

Relief settled in my chest at that.

We rode in comfortable silence for a while after that - the kind of silence that was simply two people occupying the same space without needing to fill it.

Then Merrick said: "Do you intend to come back? To Black Wolf territory?"

I kept my eyes on the road ahead.

The question sat in the air between us, patient.

"I don’t know," I said.

Merrick said nothing.

"I don’t know when," I amended. "Or if..." I stopped. Reorganised. "I need time before I can be in that place again. Around..." I didn’t finish the sentence.

He didn’t make me.

"I understand," he said. Just that.