Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint-Chapter 94

Alpha Terrell’s POV

I left the hall the moment Sheena finished speaking and I went to the stables myself and I saddled my own horse because waiting for someone else to do it was not something my body was capable of.

Kade appeared at my shoulder before I had finished. "Alpha..."

"Ride or stay," I said. "Decide now."

He was saddled in under a minute.

Bellick and Gareth were in the courtyard when we came out. Neither of them asked questions. They mounted. We rode.

The journey from Black Wolf territory to Merrick’s castle was three days at a reasonable pace. Two, pushed hard.

I made it in less than one.

I rode through the night without stopping - through the dark and the cold and the roads that were empty at this hour except for the occasional startled traveller who heard us coming and had the sense to get out of the way. The horse beneath me was the best in my stable and I pushed him hard and he answered because he was built for this, and behind me I could hear Kade and the others keeping pace without complaint.

The sun came up somewhere on the road.

I didn’t stop for it.

By noon the spires of Merrick’s castle were visible above the treeline and I felt something that had been wound impossibly tight in my chest since the words paralytic compound since the last night loosen by exactly one degree.

She’s there. She’s still there. She just has to still be there. Alive.

The gates opened when they saw me coming - the guards recognized me, or recognized the speed at which I was arriving and made a sensible decision - and I was off the horse before it had fully stopped.

The entrance hall.

"Angel."

My voice came out with more force than I intended, bouncing off the stone walls and up the stairs and through every corridor simultaneously. Servants appeared in doorways. A young footman flattened himself against the wall as I passed.

"Angel!"

Footsteps from the upper corridor.

Merrick appeared at the top of the staircase, looking down at me with the expression of a man who has just been woken abruptly and is working out whether to be concerned or irritated.

"What in the..."

"Take me to her." I was already moving up the stairs. "Now."

"She’s resting." He moved to intercept. "Terrell, she’s had a really long journey and she specifically..."

I stopped on the step directly below him and looked up at him and something in my face made him stop talking.

"Take me to her," I said quietly. "Right now."

A beat.

"What happened?" he said.

"Merrick."

He looked at me for one more second.

Then he turned and walked.

Merrick kept talking as we walked - she was tired when she arrived, she ate dinner in her room, I checked on her this morning and she was still sleeping, she deserved the rest after everything - and I listened to all of it and said nothing because none of it was what I needed to know yet.

He pushed the door open.

"She doesn’t want to be..."

I was already past him.

The room was warm and quied, and Angel was in the bed with the covers drawn up and her eyes closed and her hands at her sides and...

I stood at the foot of the bed.

Something moved through me.

"Merrick."

"She’s sleeping, Terrell, you can’t just..."

"Does she sleep like this?"

He stopped. "What?"

"Like this." I gestured - the perfect stillness of her, the hands too composed at her sides, the particular quality of her face that was not the loose ease of natural sleep. "Does she sleep on her back with her hands exactly like that?"

Merrick looked at her.

A different type of silence.

"I..." He stopped. "I don’t know how she sleeps."

I turned and looked at him. "You don’t know."

He had the decency to look uncomfortable. "We talked and then she went to sleep and I..."

"You haven’t consummated the marriage."

He met my eyes.

"I was going to give her time..."

Something moved through me that was not appropriate right now. It took every muscle in my face to keep from grinning. I turned back to Angel.

"Who has been in this room since yesterday?"

"One maid. This morning. To call her down for breakfast." He was standing beside me now. "She was sleeping so they left her."

I looked out for the maid.

She wasn’t there.

"Get the maid," I said. "The one who came this morning. Get her now."

Merrick stepped to the door and put his head out, bellowing orders at whoever was standing there.

I stood at Angel’s bedside, reaching down to pick up her hand.

It was warm. Her pulse was there - present, steady, but underneath it something wasn’t right.

"What’s going on?" Merrick said, coming back in. "Terrell. Talk to me. What happened?"

"Sheena gave her something."

The words landed.

Merrick went very still. "What."

"Before the ceremony. Herbs. She told Angel they were for weight loss." I set her hand down carefully. "They were a paralytic compound. Nightflower root and black moss."

The silence that followed was the particular kind that exists after something has been said that cannot be unsaid.

"How long," Merrick said, and his voice was not his usual voice at all.

"It seems she took them last night at the earliest. The compound is slow acting unless - unless she took the full dose at once." I pressed two fingers to Angel’s throat, counting. "The pulse is..."

The door opened.

A young maid, barely sixteen, came in with the wide-eyed look of someone who had been pulled from whatever she was doing and deposited into a room full of very serious large men and was regretting all decisions that had led here.

I pointed at the bed. "When you came this morning. Was she exactly like this?"

The girl looked at Angel. Back at me. Swallowed.

"Yes, my lord. Exactly like this. I... I thought she was sleeping deeply. I didn’t want to disturb her so I just..." She gestured at the sheets. "I straightened the covers. She looked so peaceful I didn’t..."

"She hadn’t moved," I said. "From the night before."

The girl’s face changed as she understood what she was saying.

"I didn’t know, my lord, I thought she was..."

I wasn’t listening anymore.

I already had Angel in my arms.

She weighed exactly what she had always weighed - all the soft warmth of her, her head falling against my shoulder with the complete trust of someone who was not there to withhold it - and I held her against my chest and walked.

"Terrell..."

"I need a human doctor," I said, over my shoulder. "Take me there. Now."

"I... yes. Yes." Merrick moved past me and I heard him in the corridor barking orders, and by the time I came down the stairs and through the entrance hall the courtyard was already in motion.

Outside.

The sun was bright and stupid and indifferent.

Merrick’s generals took Angel from me long enough to settle her on a horse carefully, and I swung up behind her and gathered her against me, one arm across her, her back against my chest.

"Go," I said.

Merrick was already moving.

We rode into the village at a speed that cleared the road in front of us without requiring announcement.

The doctor was old and human and had the composure of someone who had seen enough of the world’s emergencies to have stopped being shocked by them. He examined her in silence while I stood at the foot of the examination table and Merrick stood at the door and neither of us spoke.

The doctor checked her pulse. Her eyes. The responsiveness of her hands. He asked me what she had consumed and I described the compound as Sheena had described it to me.

Then he straightened.

He looked at me.

And the look on his face took what had been wound tight in my chest and wound it tighter still until I could barely draw breath around it.

"Tell me," I said.

The doctor set down his instruments.

"The compound you’ve described," he said carefully, "in the dose you’re suggesting - a full month’s preparation taken at once..." He paused. "It has moved through her system significantly. Her body has been working to process it, which is actually the reason her heart is still..." Another pause. "She is stable. For now."

"For now," I repeated.

"The paralysis will likely recede over the next several days as the compound processes out." He held my gaze. "However. The nightflower root in combination with black moss, at that concentration - it affects the heart’s rhythm. Not immediately. But over the coming days, as the compound continues to process, there may be..." He chose the next word carefully. "Complications."

The room was very quiet.

"What kind of complications," Merrick asked.

The doctor looked between us.

"Her heart may struggle," he said simply. "Human hearts are not designed to process compounds of this nature. It may recover fully. It may..." He stopped. "I cannot promise you an outcome. I can tell you that she needs rest, monitoring, and..." He looked at me directly. "She should not be moved more than necessary. She needs stillness and time and someone with her at all hours."