Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint-Chapter 76

Angel’s POV

"I said it was complicated, Angel."

"How can you like being held captive? Don’t you know how terrible that could be!" I nearly yelled at her, remembering the horror I passed through in Hawkins castle.

She pressed her lips together. "I said you wouldn’t understand, Angel. Let’s forget about that and talk about what happened to you instead." She said, her voice was gentler now. She already knew, I thought - or suspected. She’d had her suspicions about Uriel, after all. Had received that mark from him. But she asked anyway, and I found that I was too tired to be anything other than honest.

"Uriel isn’t Uriel," I said. The words came out flat and simple, stripped of everything dramatic because I didn’t have the energy for drama anymore. "He was never Uriel. It was a name he used because he needed me to trust him before I knew who he was." I looked at my hands. "He’s the Alpha, Lyra. The real Alpha. He’s been the Alpha the entire time." 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

Lyra was quiet for a moment.

"That’s what I was trying to warn you about," she said softly. "What will you do now?"

"I don’t know." And there was something almost freeing about saying that out loud. I don’t know. Not a plan, not a declaration, just the plain and undecorated truth. "I need somewhere to lie low. Somewhere I can think without..." I stopped. "Without him near me."

"Do you not feel anything for him anymore? After everything?" Her voice was careful. "You did, once. I saw it."

I flinched.

"The man I felt something for," I said quietly, "doesn’t exist. I built him out of lies he fed me." I lifted my eyes to hers. "And even if he did exist - even if every real thing I saw in him was real - it doesn’t change what he did. It doesn’t bring my family back."

Lyra opened her mouth.

"Don’t," I said.

She closed it.

There were some things that didn’t need another layer of complicated on top of them. This was one.

****

The afternoon wore on slowly, the grey light through the shutter cracks shifting and dimming by degrees.

At some point Lyra mentioned that she might have found food if it weren’t for the risk of running into guards outside.

"We’ll manage today," she said. "Tomorrow the search will have either found us or moved further out. Either way there’ll be more movement."

"I’m not hungry," I said, which was true. The idea of food felt absurd, like someone suggesting I take up a hobby.

"You need to eat."

"I ate breakfast." Cold, tasteless, under duress, while watching Terrell stare out a window preparing to break my world - but technically, yes. Breakfast had happened.

Lyra gave me the look that comment deserved but didn’t push.

I moved to the hay in the corner - dry, as I’d hoped, smelling of dust and old summer - and lay down with my cloak pulled over me.

"Wake me if anything happens," I said.

I was asleep before she answered.

I dreamed in fragments.

My sister’s voice, calling from somewhere I couldn’t find.

Silver eyes.

A black wolf crest, heavy as a stone.

The sound of a door closing.

The knocking pulled me up out of nothing.

I was sitting upright before I was fully conscious, my heart already hammering - and across the dim room Lyra was on her feet, completely alert, already moving. She found me in the near-dark and pressed one finger to her lips.

I didn’t breathe.

The knocking came again. Not frantic. Almost measured. Knock-knock. Pause. Knock.

Like someone who knew someone was inside and was being polite about it.

Which somehow made it worse.

Lyra positioned herself to one side of the door - and I watched her take up a posture that was combat-ready.

Silence.

Five seconds.

Ten.

I had just begun to wonder if they’d gone when the door exploded inward - iron bar and all.

Lyra moved quickly, throwing herself at the silhouette in the doorway with her full weight.

The silhouette caught her.

Not grabbed - caught, effortlessly, one hand closing on her forearm and redirecting her momentum in a single fluid motion that deposited her to the side with a loud thud.

"I am not my brother," said the voice in the doorway, dry and entirely unruffled.

Merrick stepped into the thin light.

Or - I thought it was Merrick. The same tall frame, same silver eyes catching what little light there was, dark clothing. But something about the way he stood was different from Terrell - easier, less contained. And the expression on his face, when it found mine across the dim space, was almost amused.

Almost.

Lyra had already recovered - she was back on her feet, between him and me, vibrating with hostility. "You broke the door."

"It was locked." He said it as though this were a perfect explanation. His eyes hadn’t left my face. "I knocked first. I feel that should be noted."

"You broke the door," Lyra repeated.

"I’ll have it fixed." He said fleetingly before turning towards me. "Angel, I’m not here to take you back." He held both hands slightly open, away from his body - a gesture of peace. "I just need to talk to you."

"How did you find us?" Lyra demanded before I could speak. "We covered our tracks. The scent trail should have been..."

"Disrupted. Yes." He glanced at her briefly. "Effective work, actually. The rotten mash and the - well." A pause. "Very creative."

Lyra did not look complimented.

"Then how," she pressed.

Merrick returned his eyes to me. "I’ve had someone watching you," he said. "Since we arrived at the castle."

The words landed quietly but the impact wasn’t quiet at all.

"Watching me," I repeated.

"Not inside your chambers," he said immediately, something in his tone clarifying before I could spiral into the worst interpretation. "And not to report back to Terrell or me - this was entirely different. I just had one of my own men keeping eyes on your movements. On who came and went from your door. On whether you were safe." He paused. "He saw you leave the castle. Followed at a distance. Came to tell me before he came to tell anyone else."

I absorbed that.

"So you’ve been spying on me," I said.