Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint-Chapter 83

Angel’s POV

The dress was extraordinarily beautiful and I hated it.

I stood in front of the mirror while the maids hurriedly worked around me, and I looked at the silver embroidery catching the candlelight, the black wolf crest worked into the bodice and I thought: the corridor.

The stairs.

The gardens, if we go that way.

I had only seen the castle a few times - which is, the day we’d arrived and the day I’d tried to run away. I didn’t know much about the castle grounds to plot my escape.

But there would be a moment. There had to be.

Breathe. Think. Wait for it.

The last maid tucked the cloak around my shoulders and stepped back. They all looked at me with the expression of people who had completed a job well.

I looked at myself in the mirror.

Even now, said some treacherous, unhelpful part of my brain, you look like someone worth marrying.

I told that part of my brain to be quiet.

Just when the moon had begun to show itself through the window, there was a gentle knock.

I composed my face.

Here we go.

The door opened.

Three men filled the space.

I looked at Kade - quick and sharp-eyed, the one I’d privately assessed as the most intelligent of the three. At Gareth - quieter, tactical, watchful. And at Bellick.

Bellick, who I had once been absolutely convinced was the Alpha. Who was enormous and scarred and carried himself like a man who had walked through fire enough times that he’d stopped noticing the heat.

Three of them. All of them enormous. All of them standing between me and every exit.

I felt the escape routes closing one by one like doors being quietly shut.

I tried anyway.

"All three of you?" I asked, keeping my voice light. "Is that entirely necessary? I’m one woman in a ceremonial dress."

"Alpha’s orders," Kade said. "You’re to be brought to him safely."

Safely. Interesting word choice.

I nodded pleasantly and followed them out.

The corridor stretched ahead and my mind raced through every option like someone desperately running out of time.

Turn back, claim I forgot something.

Kade would simply wait.

Collapse. Faint.

Bellick would carry me. Effortlessly.

Run.

Three generals, full moon night, heightened senses, my thick dress, no shoes I could actually run in.

I slowed my steps.

"Actually," I said, stopping. "I need to relieve myself."

Kade didn’t even pause. "You’ll have to hold it."

"I really can’t..."

"The ceremony won’t take long."

"Kade." I put genuine strain into my voice, which was not entirely manufactured because I was genuinely strained. "I am not asking to go to another country. I need two minutes..."

Bellick turned around.

He looked down at me from his considerable height with an expression that was not unkind and also not negotiable. "My lady," he said, in the low calm voice of a very large man who has learned to speak carefully because he frightens people otherwise, "if you don’t walk with us willingly, I will carry you." A brief pause. "I would prefer not to. I imagine you would also prefer not to arrive at your own ceremony over someone’s shoulder." His scarred face remained neutral. "We had enough of that yesterday."

I stared at him.

He waited.

I thought about Terrell carrying me through the forest last night and the complete and utter uselessness of every kick I had landed, and I thought about arriving at a moonlit ceremony draped over Bellick like luggage, and I made a decision.

"Fine," I said.

And I walked.

God, I thought, with the resigned sincerity of someone who had genuinely tried everything, if You truly love me and wouldn’t want to see me getting married to a monster, now would be an excellent time to save me.

I had not seen the gardens.

In all my days locked in that room, I had pressed my face against the glass and seen a flicker of them - green and structured and alive - and thought: someday, when this is over, I’ll see them properly.

They were, infuriatingly, beautiful.

Even now, even in the dark with the moon rising above them and my heart hammering and three generals herding me forward like a sheep, I noticed. Flowers I didn’t have names for, their colours gone silver and shadow in the moonlight. Paths of pale stone winding between hedges. The smell of rain on earth and growing things.

I thought: I would have liked to sit here, in another life. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

The generals didn’t stop at the gardens.

They kept walking - through and past and beyond, toward the back of the estate that I had never known existed because no one had told me it existed and I had been locked in a room - and then the garden gave way to a path that sloped gently downward, and the sound reached me before the sight did.

Water. Large, moving water.

And then the path ended and the beach opened up.

I stopped without meaning to.

It was extraordinary. A wide curve of pale sand meeting a sea that went on forever, dark and enormous and silver-tipped where the moonlight found it. The full moon hung above the water like someone placed it there - vast and gold and so close it felt like a presence rather than a phenomenon.

For one helpless moment I forgot to be afraid.

Then I saw the gathering.

Elders, wearing robes, their faces set on the task at hand. Warriors at intervals along the perimeter, still as standing stones. A handful of others I didn’t recognize, positioned together.

And Terrell.

Standing at the water’s edge with his back partially toward me, the moonlight doing what it always did to him - finding the angles, making him look like something from a story rather than a man. He was dressed in the ceremonial version of his authority and he was looking out at the water and he was waiting.

I knew he was waiting for me.

I tried to slow my feet.

Bellick’s hand appeared at my elbow. Keep moving. I kept moving, and the sand was soft under my ridiculous ceremonial shoes, and the elders turned to watch us approach, and I thought: I am actually going to have to think of something else because I have completely run out of options.

We reached him.

Terrell turned, took my hand, and held it with the absolute certainty of a man who was not letting go.

"Let me go," I said quietly, through my teeth, keeping my expression neutral for the audience.

He said nothing.

His grip didn’t shift by a fraction.

"Terrell." Still quiet. Still controlled. "I am telling you right now that whatever this priestess says tonight will mean nothing, because I do not consent to..."

"Has anyone seen Sheena?"

He addressed the question to his generals over my head. Kade scanned the gathering and shook his head. Gareth sent someone at a gesture.

I watched the tension move through Terrell’s jaw and felt something like dread sitting in my chest.

Something is wrong with his plan.

And then movement at the back of the gathering - people parting, heads turning - and Sheena appeared through the crowd.

She was not alone.

I felt Terrell’s hand tighten on mine.

Merrick walked beside her.