Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint-Chapter 97

Alpha Terrell’s POV

They found her in her cell last night. She did it herself.

Those were the words that kept running through my mind even as Kane finally returned with the sword.

He offered it to me, but the rage in me was so profound that I stood, unsheathed it and swiftly flung it against the far wall.

I stood there and looked at the sword sticking out of the wall.

The hilt was trembling.

Kane was looking at it too, with the expression of a man mentally wondering the cause of my rage.

She killed herself.

Sheena had decided that her own hand was preferable to mine, and in doing so had taken everything she knew about dark magic and whatever else she had been carrying and put it somewhere I couldn’t reach.

She was lucky Angel survived.

That was the only thought that had any clarity in it. Everything else was noise - the cold fury, the frustration of an unanswered question, the strange complicated grief of someone you had trusted doing something unforgivable and then removing themselves from the accounting before it could be settled.

She was lucky Angel survived.

Because if Angel hadn’t, I would’ve gone any length to revive her, then kill her with my own hands.

Kane appeared at my elbow, speaking quietly the way he did when he was being careful with me. "Alpha." A pause. "Are you alright?"

I said nothing.

Another pause. Then, quieter still, with the carefulness of a man who had navigated my moods for decades and knew exactly which doors to try: "Should I - I could arrange a woman for you. For the evening. Someone to take the edge off." He cleared his throat. "Your usual preference. And a werewolf - I know, no human can manage you when you’re like this."

I had already drawn my breath to refuse.

But I stopped.

Looked at the sword in the wall.

Looked at the worried faces of my generals, and made my decision.

"Go ahead," I said flatly. "My usual kind." I walked toward the corridor without waiting for his response. "I need her in my bedchambers. In an hour."

I left Kane standing alone and went upstairs.

***

Angel’s POV

It took four days before I could walk the length of a corridor without needing to hold the wall.

Five days before I could manage the stairs without someone’s arm.

Seven days before my body felt entirely my own again - all of it, fingers to feet, present and responsive and mine - and I stood in the middle of my room on the seventh morning and took a full deep breath and felt it reach the bottom of my lungs without interruption.

Better.

I followed the doctor’s medication to the last drop - partly because I was genuinely frightened by what had happened to my body and had no interest in a repeat, and partly because having a schedule gave the days a shape that kept me from spending all of them doing what I was apparently doing regardless.

Thinking about Terrell.

I couldn’t stop.

I had tried. I had applied myself to the task of not thinking about him with genuine effort and discovered that there was apparently nothing more effective for keeping a person at the front of your mind than working very hard to push them to the back of it.

He kept arriving.

Not the Alpha - not the black wolf crest and the title and the weight of what he had done. The other version. The one I had known first, before I had known who he truly was. The man who had held my hands and walked me back to camp - the night I was determined to escape after Hawkins castle. Who had sat across from me and made me feel like my words were worth listening to. Who had taken It upon himself to protect and care for me during our journey back. Who had looked at me with so much hunger and longing.

Uriel, I had called him. A name he had borrowed because his real one would have ended everything before it began.

But the man underneath the name...

Stop it.

But then, sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder if he ever thought of me. If he had eventually moved on.

He had returned the book after all.

If I should fall off a horse, or pretend to be sick right now, would he come running?

But even as I was engrossed in the thoughts of him, I allowed myself to think of the other problem: Can I look at his face and not think him the monster who murdered my family? Or am I simply getting frustrated with the thoughts of him because he is far away?

After all, distance, they say, makes the heart grow fonder.

Oh God. What is going on with me?

I was in the garden with Merrick, the sun warm on my face, the pond catching light in small sharp flashes. There was a blanket and a basket and Merrick’s company, and it was... genuinely lovely. Merrick was easy to be with, in the way that a warm room was easy to be in. Everything considered, comfortable. Generous.

And I was sitting across from him thinking about his brother.

I brought my attention back. Deliberately. Like picking something up off the floor and putting it back where it belonged.

"...been doing?" Merrick said.

I looked at him. "Sorry?"

"I asked how you’ve been doing." The easy patience of him. "And before you answer... I’ll tell you that you’ve been somewhere else three times in the last twenty minutes, so feel free to tell me actually."

"The medication," I said. "It makes me foggy."

He looked at me.

I looked at the pond.

"Yes," he said, in the tone of someone knowing it was a lie, but accepting it regardless. "Of course."

We ate for a while in the comfortable quiet that had developed between us over these weeks.

Then Merrick said: "I’ll be travelling tomorrow."

I looked up. "Is everything alright?"

"Fine. Just..." He broke off a piece of bread. "Things have changed. Between my brother and me. Between all of us. I’ve let too much time pass without... before all of this, I rarely visited Black Wolf. We would meet on neutral ground, exchange information, handle what needed handling. Very civilized. Very distant." He looked at the pond. "That doesn’t work anymore."

My heart had done something mesmerizing at the words Black Wolf.

I kept my expression neutral.

"How long will you be gone" I asked. Casually.

"It’s a two days’ ride." He glanced at me. "I’ll be back within the fortnight."

And there it was - the thing I should have let pass, the question I should have let sit, the impulse I should have absolutely, certainly, without any question, ignored.

"Can I come?"

Merrick stopped.

He looked at me with the focus of someone who had heard exactly what was said and was now examining what was underneath it.

"It’s not necessary," he said. Gently. "You’re still recovering. The journey is..."

"I want to," I said.

"Angel."

"I want to come."

He was quiet for a moment.

Then: "You know he’ll be there."

"I know."

"You tried to escape from that castle."

"I know that too." I met his eyes. "I still want to come."

The pond caught light. A bird moved through the far hedge. Merrick looked at me with the expression of a man who could see considerably further into a situation than he was going to say out loud, and was making a choice about what to do with that.

"You’re sure," he said.

I pressed my lips together. Thought about the book under my pillow that I had moved to the bedside table and then moved back under the pillow and was currently pretending I hadn’t moved back.

"I’m sure," I said.

He nodded slowly.

"We leave at noon tomorrow," he said.

I looked at the pond and told myself the feeling moving through me was simply the interest of a woman visiting a place she had been before.

I was lying, obviously.

***

I practiced in the mirror.

It had seemed like a reasonable idea when I thought of it - rational, even. I would decide what to say, I would say it to my own reflection until it sounded like something a confident woman might say, and then I would arrive at Black Wolf territory and say it to Terrell and the whole thing would be - handled.

I stood in front of the mirror in my nightgown with my hair loose and looked at myself.

"I wanted to thank you," I said. "For what you did. While I was... for taking care of me."

My reflection looked back.

The words sat in the air between us and sounded exactly like what they were - rehearsed, careful.

I tried again.

"I’ve been thinking," I said to the mirror. "About some things. About what you told me when you thought I was sleeping. About..."

I stopped.

He didn’t know I could hear him.

I wasn’t certain I could hear him - it was more like impressions than words, like sounds reaching down into wherever the paralysis had put me, warmth and low voice. I didn’t have sentences. Just - the fact of him. His continuous presence, for seven days.

I looked at my reflection.

"I don’t think you’re a monster," I tried.

Pause.

"I think what you did to my family was monstrous." I held my own gaze. "I think there’s a difference. I think." I pressed my lips together. "I’m not sure about the difference yet. But I think I need to... I think we need to..."

I stopped again.

What did we need to do, exactly?

I had no clean answer. That was the problem - on the day I’d received the horrible news, I’d had clean answers, a clear ledger of who was guilty and who deserved to feel the wrath of my family’s revenge. I had arrived at Merrick’s castle weeks ago with a clear answer about Terrell.

Monster. Murderer. The man who destroyed my family.

Clean. Simple. Closed.

And somewhere along the line, the clean answer had developed cracks. Not disappeared. Just became complicated. Become something that required me to stand in front of a mirror at midnight and try to put words to it.

"I’m coming to Black Wolf," I said to my reflection, "because I want to. Because something in me needs to see him with my own eyes and decide for myself what that means."

My reflection said nothing.

"And if he’s terrible," I added, "I will leave."

I turned away from the mirror and got into bed, with the book still under my pillow.