Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint

Chapter 134

Gareth’s POV

The bottom of the cliff was not what I had expected.

I had expected - I wasn’t certain what I had expected. Something that matched the scale of the drop, perhaps. Something that felt like an ending.

What I found was bones.

Old ones, everywhere - the quiet record of a cliff that had been receiving things for a very long time and had never given any of them back. The fog lay over everything, thick and still, and the trees began where the cliff base ended and went on in all directions into a dark that the torches we had brought did not meaningfully address.

Kade crouched near the cliff base and looked at the ground.

"Fresh marks," he said.

I came to him. Bellick was already there.

The ground near the base of the cliff had the disturbed quality of something that had made significant contact with it recently - the particular impression of an impact, the marks of something that had lain here and then moved.

"He’s alive," Kade said.

"He was here," Bellick said. "Which means he moved. Which means..."

"He probably went into the forest," I said.

We all looked at the trees.

The forest went in every direction, offering no particular indication of which direction was the useful one. No visible path. No sound that distinguished itself from the ambient quiet of this strange place.

I looked at the thirty soldiers behind us - we had left twenty at the top to stand guard.

Thirty was a number that could do things. But thirty was also a number that, spread across a forest of this large expanse with no known direction, became thirty separate small problems rather than one large solution.

"We stay together," Bellick said, before I said it.

"Agreed," Kade said. "We don’t know what’s in there. We don’t know what’s already encountered the Alpha. We do not spread out."

"Direction?" I asked.

They both looked at the tree line.

"He would have gone toward the scent," Kade said. "His primary objective was the Luna. He would have followed whatever trace he could find." He looked along the cliff base. "Which means he moved systematically. Not randomly."

"The east," Bellick said. He was looking at the cliff face - at the specific angle of it, at the way the fog moved in the slight current that came from the east. "The air moves east here. Scent carries east. If he was tracking her..."

"The east," I said.

We moved.

****

Angel’s POV

My feet hurt.

This was not the most pressing problem available to me, but it was the one my body had decided to focus on.

My feet hurt, and I was exhausted, and I was hungry in the deep way that went past the stomach and became a whole-body condition, and I had been awake since morning, and had fallen off a cliff and then through a cave and presented to a man who had told me I would be breeding his heirs, and now I was walking back into the village of that man while Terrell carried him unconscious over one shoulder, and I was trying very hard not to think about the fact that I had not eaten since...

When had I last eaten?

Last night?

Because it sure hell felt like something that had happened in a different life to a different person.

I swallowed.

Do not think about food.

Terrell’s hand was warm around mine. He had not let go since we left the ledge - after staying there for over an hour without a possible solution, we had decided to go back into the village to find one. It wasn’t a wise decision, but it was all we had. And between an hour ago and now, Terrell had gladly knocked Raul out three times to keep him unconscious.

I focused on the warmth of his hand and I kept walking and I did not think about hot bread or fruit juice.

The village looked exactly as it had looked when we had left it. Calm.

This was, in its own way, deeply strange.

Torches burning. People moving between the huts like everything was normal. Children, somewhere - the sound of them. Smoke from cooking fires.

As though nothing had happened.

As though their leader had not been carried away unconscious through their forest. As though the Alpha of Black Wolf was not currently walking through their clearing with said leader on his shoulder and his Luna’s hand in his other hand.

I looked at the people we passed.

They know there’s no way out, I realized. They know we can’t go anywhere. So they’re not afraid of us leaving.

The thought landed with a heavy dread in my chest.

The men in front of Raul’s house saw us coming.

The same guards who had brought Terrell hours ago before their Lord Raul.

One of them stepped forward.

He was large - not Terrell-large - and he had the look of a man who had been down here long enough that the hope of escape had cured itself out of him.

He looked at Terrell and almost smiled.

"We knew you’d be back," he said. The voice of someone confirming a prediction they had made to themselves. "Didn’t take long, did it."

Terrell said nothing.

"What did you expect?" The man continued, with the relaxed energy of someone who had all the time available. "You took our leader, walked off with him - thought we’d try to stop you? Thought you’d find the exit?" He tilted his head. "Sorry about that, but no exit. Been here a hundred years and more. We’ve looked." He said it matter of factly. "Every inch. Every direction. The cliff’s the only way in and it’s a one-way door."

I felt something cold settle in my stomach.

It can’t be, I told myself. Oh God, please, it can’t be true.

"Name your price," Terrell said.

The man looked at him.

"Whatever you want," Terrell said. "Lands. Territory of your own. Women. Money. Resources." His voice was completely serious. "Tell me the way out. I’ll give you anything in my power to give."

The man looked at him for a moment.

Then he shook his head.

"Your money means nothing here, you entitled bastard," he spat. "Your territory means nothing here. What are we going to do with lands and resources we can’t reach?" He looked at Terrell with contempt. "There is no way out. People who come down this cliff don’t go back. That’s just the way of it. And whether you like it or not, you’re now part of us."

The cold in my stomach had moved to my chest.

Oh God.

There is a way. There has to be a way.

But the man’s voice had an honest edge to it - even though it was filled with hate. He sounded like someone who had nothing to gain from lying and had made his peace with the facts.

I thought about spending the rest of my life in this clearing.

I thought about Agnes, on a road somewhere with Merrick, looking for her son, coming back to Black Wolf to find me gone. I thought about the generals at the top of the cliff. I thought about Merrick’s easy voice saying I’ll be back for you, don’t miss me too much.

The nausea in my stomach was threatening to erupt.

"There must be a way," Terrell said.

"There isn’t."

"There is always..."

"Terrell of Black Wolf." The man said his name with venom. "You want a way out? Here’s what you can do. Drop our leader. Go back to that cross and climb on it, because you are our prisoner until this world ends. And the woman..." His eyes moved to me. "She can go back to the master’s bed. Where she belongs."

He turned to the other guards.

"Take Lord Raul," he said. "And get the bastard back to the cross. Extra nails this time. I want him up there with no possibility of escape..."

Terrell dropped Raul and moved immediately.

The first guard reached him and he was knocked out instantly. The second reached him and the same thing happened. The third came from a different angle and Terrell moved like a warrior, knocking a few teeth out of his mouth.

The fourth. The fifth.

I stood back and watched Terrell move through the guards like animal who had been waiting for the opportunity to do this since the moment he had decided not to do it earlier, and I thought: this is who he is. This is what he actually is when he isn’t choosing not to be.

Terrifying.

Extraordinary.

Mine, said something inside me, something strange, something extraordinary.

The fifth guard hit the ground.

And then the head guard’s arm came around from somewhere I wasn’t watching, and his hand had something in it, and the something was at my neck before I had registered the movement that put it there.

A knife.

I went completely still.

Terrell turned.

The expression that moved through his face when he saw me was not something I had words for.

The guard’s arm was solid across my collarbone. The knife was at my neck. I could feel his breathing - controlled, the breathing of someone who had nothing to loose.

"She means something to you," the guard said. "I don’t know what she is to you. But she means something."

Terrell said nothing.

"So here’s what’s going to happen," the guard said. "You’re going to surrender. You’re going to go back to that cross and you’re going to stay on it. And this woman..." The arm tightened fractionally. "Won’t be hurt."