Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint

Chapter 110

Angel’s POV

"These bastards," Agnes said with enough Vernon. "These absolute, unforgivable, foul ..."

"I know," I said.

"I smell like something died in me, Angel."

"You don’t..."

"I smell like the bottom of a merchant’s cart and many weeks of misery and I will never forgive them for it, not for as long as I live, not for one single..."

"Agnes." I was trying not to laugh and mostly failing. "Let me help you with the laces."

She submitted, still muttering, while I worked at the back of the dress - a rough, shapeless thing in the grey of old ash. I got the last lace free and she stepped out of it with the disgust of a woman shedding something offensive.

"Burn it," she said.

"I’ll have it taken away..."

"Burn it, Angel. I want to watch."

"Agnes..."

"I want to stand at the window and watch it catch fire and I want to feel something good about fire for once in my life." She turned to look at me, and despite everything - despite the grief still raw between us and the weight of the night and the impossible strangeness of this room and this castle and all of it - there was something about the expression on her face that I felt the laugh escape before I could stop it.

She stared at me.

Then, reluctantly, the corner of her mouth moved.

"Don’t laugh at me," she said.

"I’m not laughing at you."

"You’re absolutely laughing at me."

"I’m laughing near you," I said. "There’s a difference."

She pressed her lips together against the smile threatening to break through and failed, and for one extraordinary moment we were just two sisters with no worries and miseries...

Then the moment passed and we were back to the present.

"I was also in the hands of slave traders," I offered, while folding the dress with the intention of having it removed from existence at the earliest opportunity. "Before all this. They sold me off. To a man who turned out to be..." I paused. "Well. Very horrible."

"And then what?"

"And then Terrell came to find me." I kept my voice neutral. "He brought me out."

Agnes went very still.

"Terrell," she said.

"Yes."

"Terrell rescued you."

"He did."

The silence had texture to it.

"Agnes..."

"That doesn’t mean anything," she said, with the certainty of someone closing a door before something gets through it. "Rescuing you doesn’t give him a heart, Angel. A man can do one decent thing in a sea of terrible ones and it’s still a sea of terrible things." She turned toward me with the expression of a woman who had made up her mind about hating Terrell eternally. "He’s the reason you were running in the first place. Isn’t that right? Running from the marriage? Running from him?"

I sat down on the edge of the bed.

And sighed.

Agnes had a way of looking at you that made evasion feel useless. She could tell when I was withholding something.

"Sit down," I said. "I’ll tell you all of it."

I told her everything.

Or - almost everything.

I told her about the morning the convent sister had arrived with the news of the village. I told her about the fated bond, and running, and the slave traders, and Hawkins. I told her about arriving at Merrick’s castle. I told her about the journey to Black Wolf and the bond sealing and everything in between.

I left out the lies about Terrell’s deceit on his identity. The murder attempts on my life. The conversation about being turned.

Not because I didn’t want to. But because I didn’t want to add to Agnes fueling rage.

She listened attentively, and when I finished, the room was quiet for a moment.

Then Agnes exhaled.

"Two husbands," she said.

"You’ve already said that part."

"I’m saying it again because it continues to be extraordinary." She looked at the ceiling. "You walked away from a convent, ran from a fated bond, survived slave traders and a horrible man and a castle full of werewolves and somehow arrived at..." She gestured at the room. "Two husbands. One of whom burned our home to the ground."

"I’m aware of the summary, Agnes."

"I’m just... I’m processing, Angel, give me a moment..."

"Take the moment and then go freshen up," I said, standing and walking toward the bathroom curtain, drawing it back. The tub had been filled by the castle staff - warm water, oils, clean towels stacked in a neat column. Agnes appeared at my shoulder and looked at it.

A pause.

"That’s a very good bath," she said, with the reluctant appreciation of someone whose standards refused to take the night off.

"I know."

"I’m still going to help you escape."

"Agnes."

"After the bath." She was already moving past me. "I’ll plan the escape in

the bath. It’ll be clean."

I pulled the curtain closed behind her, cutting off whatever she was going to say next, and sat down on the bed.

Then the knock came.

I crossed to the door and opened it and looked at the figure in the corridor and felt the particular confusion that I still had not entirely resolved - the identical architecture of them.

Merrick seemed to notice me working through it, because something moved at the corner of his mouth.

"Merrick," he said. Helpfully.

"I know," I said, which was not entirely true but felt better than admitting I’d spent four full seconds on the inventory.

"I heard what happened. About the arrival of your sister. How is she?" he asked.

"She’s freshening up." I glanced back at the curtain. "She’s alright." I looked back at him.

He was quiet a moment in the way that meant there was something else.

"Is everything alright?" I asked.

"Yes." A beat. Then: "Is it possible to speak with her? At some point." He said it carefully. "Not now, obviously. When she’s..."

"When she’s what?" I asked. "Ready? Calm? Because I should warn you that Agnes has a complicated relationship with both of those states."

The corner of his mouth moved again. More genuinely this time.

"Later, then," he said. "I’ll come back."

And then - almost before the sentence had finished - he was already turning, already moving down the corridor, with the air of a man who had completed the errand he’d set himself and was returning to wherever he’d come from.

I stood in the doorway and watched him go.

What, I thought, was that.

Behind me, Agnes’s voice floated out from behind the curtain: "Who was that?"

"Merrick," I said.

A pause.

"Who’s Merrick?"

"The other husband."

"What did he want?"

I looked at the empty corridor.

"I genuinely have no idea," I said.