Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint

Chapter 126

General Gareth’s POV

The fog swallowed him.

One moment the Alpha was at the edge - the black wolf, enormous and gigantic - and the next moment he was over it, and the cliff had him, and the fog closed behind him like a door shutting.

The three of us stood at the edge and looked at where he had been.

The silence was the silence of men who had just watched something happen that they were still processing.

"Right," Kade said.

No one answered.

The fog below the cliff moved the way fog moved - slowly, without urgency, concealing everything it had decided to conceal.

I looked at Bellick.

He was looking at the cliff edge with a calculating expression.

"We wait," Bellick said.

"Two hours," Kade said. Not agreeing. Repeating the instruction back like he wanted to be sure he heard that.

"He said two hours."

"He said two hours while he was standing at the edge of a cliff about to go over it," Kade said. "I’m not entirely certain that was his most considered instruction."

"It was still an instruction."

"Bellick." Kade turned to look at him with a direct look. "He went down a cliff that kills everything. Everything. We have seen things go over that cliff. We have never seen them come back."

"He’s not everything."

"No, he’s the Alpha, which is why we’re supposed to protect him," Kade said. "That is our specific function. We were sworn to personally protect him. I attended the ceremony, I remember the vows, and none of them said stand at the top of the cliff and count to two hours."

I looked between them.

"He also went down there for the Luna," I said.

Both of them looked at me.

"Which means there are two of them down there," I said. "Which means whatever we decide, we’re deciding it for both of them."

Kade pressed both hands to his face briefly, removed them. "We go after him."

"We go after him with what," Bellick said. "The three of us. No rope, no equipment, no backup, no one in the territory who knows where we are or what’s happened." He looked at Kade steadily. "We go over that cliff and we’re three more bodies at the bottom."

"We’re generals..."

"We’re generals, not the Alpha. There’s a difference." Bellick crossed his arms. "If something has gone wrong down there - and something has gone wrong, we all know it, that horse was not an accident - then we need more than three men. We go get Kane. We get soldiers. We come back with something that can actually help."

I looked at the cliff.

I thought about the horse - the way it had died, the direction it had run, the deliberateness of it. Someone had done this. Someone had planned this, had arranged a horse, had known where we were going and when, had known which horse Angel would be riding.

"He’s right about the horse," I said quietly.

Kade stopped.

Both of them looked at me.

"Someone knew," I said. "About the trip, the market, which horse. They had to know in advance." I looked at the dead animal. "This was prepared. Which means whoever prepared it is still out there, and they’re waiting to see if it worked."

A sound, from somewhere to the left - the two women, the ones we had brought for the veil arrangement, standing a distance back from the edge with the looks of people who had been trying very hard to be invisible and had not entirely succeeded. They had been there through all of it. I had almost forgotten them, which was either a testament to their stillness or to how thoroughly the last half hour had occupied every other piece of my awareness.

The younger one stepped forward. Her hands were clasped in front of her and she was pale in a way that had nothing to do with the weather.

"Is there anything we can do?" she said. Her voice trembled.

I looked at them.

They were frightened. Genuinely frightened, the honest kind that came from standing at a cliff’s edge watching an Alpha go over it. They had no business being here. They had been brought for a specific, limited, now-concluded purpose and the landscape had changed entirely around them while they were standing in it.

"Get on your horses," I said. "Go home. The road back is clear - stay on it and don’t stop for anything. You’ll be fine."

They nodded. The younger one looked at the cliff one more time and then they both turned toward the horses.

"Wait!" Bellick called out.

They stopped.

He came forward until he was close enough that the instruction was clearly for them and not for the general air. His voice was not harsh, but it was very serious.

"What happened here today," he said, "stays here. With you. No one hears about this - not the people you live with, not your family, not the women you talk to, not anyone." He held their eyes in turn. "Do you understand what I’m telling you?"

The elder woman looked at him with the clear-eyed attention of someone who had understood from the first sentence. "Yes."

"No one," Bellick said again.

"No one," she confirmed.

They left. The sound of hoofbeats - moving away, then gone.

The three of us stood alone at the top of the cliff.

Kade turned to Bellick. "Why did you do that?"

"Because someone is watching," Bellick said. "Someone arranged that horse. They are waiting to find out if the Alpha is dead." He looked toward the tree line - the road, the direction of the market, the landscape that had looked ordinary two hours ago. "If word gets back that he went over the cliff - if it travels before we know what’s actually happened - then we have a problem."

Kade’s expression shifted.

"Someone has been trying to kill the Luna," Bellick continued. "Multiple times. And now this." He looked at us both. "What does that look like to you?"

I thought about it.

"The Luna has no pack," I said slowly. "No family. No position of her own outside of the bond."

"Exactly," Bellick said. "She’s not the target for herself. She’s the target for what she represents."

"The lineage," Kade said. Quietly.

"He’s led for over a thousand years and has no heir," Bellick said. "No confirmed bloodline. No succession that’s been established. If the bond produces nothing - if the Luna is removed - then the question of who leads Black Wolf after Terrell becomes very open." He looked at the cliff. "And some people have been very patient about that question."

"But there’s Lord Merrick," I said.

"Merrick is capable," Bellick said. "But Merrick left on his own mission. He may be exposed too." He looked at me. "Which means right now, the Alpha needs to be safe. The Luna needs to be found. And no one outside this cliff top needs to know that either of those things is currently uncertain."

I sighed deeply. Things were beginning to get way too complicated.

"How long has he been down there?" I asked.

Bellick looked at the sun.

"Maybe thirty minutes," he said.

"We should go," Kade said.

"We should..."

"Bellick." Kade intercepted, "I hear everything you’re saying. It’s right. All of it." He looked at the cliff. "But he’s been down there thirty minutes and we haven’t heard anything and the Luna is down there too and I am not standing at the top of this cliff for another ninety minutes telling myself I’m being strategically patient."

Bellick looked at him.

Looked at me.

I met his eyes and gave him the honest answer: I’m with Kade.

A long moment passed.

"We don’t go down," he said. "Not yet. We get Kane. We get soldiers. We come back with something that can help rather than three more bodies adding to the problem." He looked at Kade. "But we go now. Right now. Not two hours."

Kade was already moving toward his horse.

I was behind him.