Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint

Chapter 99

Lord Merrick’s POV

I sat across from my brother and waited.

Terrell was looking at the table between us with the focused attention of a man reading something important in the grain of the wood. His hands were clasped in front of him. His jaw was set hard, like the face of a man who had decided on a particular direction and was focused on it.

He cleared his throat.

"What brings you here?" he said.

I looked at him.

"That’s what you want to discuss," I said. "Right now."

"Isn’t it why you’re here? For Pack’s business?"

I held his gaze for a moment. He held mine back with the complete determination of a man who was going to win this particular standoff through sheer refusal to acknowledge there was anything to stand off about.

"Fine," I said. "Pack business."

We talked.

Border maintenance. Patrol rotations. A trade agreement that needed reviewing before the winter season made the roads difficult.

Terrell listened, responded, and made wise decisions to every problem I laid on the table with no hesitation or distractions.

Anyone watching from outside the room would have seen two men conducting ordinary business.

Anyone who knew him the way I did would have noticed that every twenty seconds or so, his eyes would move briefly toward the door.

When we were done he stood.

"Good, that sums up everything." he said. And moved toward the door.

"Where are you going?"

"To my chambers."

I looked at him. "Really."

"Yes. Why. Anything else?"

"You’re going to your chambers," I said. "And pretend you didn’t notice Angel standing in your throne room."

Something crossed his face so quickly it almost didn’t happen. "I noticed her," he said. "It’s impossible not to notice her."

"And?"

He looked at me with the expression of a man who found the question genuinely confusing. "And what?"

"Terrell." I pointed at the chair he had vacated. "Sit down."

He looked at the chair. Looked at the door. And decided to sit.

"Angel is here," I said. "In this castle. The same castle she was trying to escape from. The same castle she eventually ran away from with no plan because she couldn’t be in the same space as you." I held his gaze. "She also rode three days to get here."

"She came with you."

"She asked to come with me."

He was quiet.

"I didn’t suggest it," I said. "I didn’t invite her. I told her it wasn’t necessary. She asked, Terrell. Twice."

He looked at the table. At the same grain he’d been reading earlier. "She wanted to be near you," he said. "That’s why she asked. She probably didn’t want to remain at your castle all alone."

I thought about the picnic. About the way she had been present and not present simultaneously - answering me, smiling at me, while something behind her eyes was somewhere entirely different. About the twenty minutes in which she had drifted away three times without noticing.

"No," I said simply.

He looked up. "No? Then why?"

"I don’t know," I said. "But I know it wasn’t that."

He absorbed this.

I watched him decide not to hope. Watched him physically construct the alternative explanation - the reasonable, safe, contained version that didn’t require him to expose anything.

"She probably came for Sheena," he said. "To confront her. She nearly died because of those herbs... it would make sense that she’d want to..."

A knock at the door.

"We’re busy," I said.

"My lord." The guard’s voice came in carefully. "There’s a maid here for you. She says it concerns the Luna. She says it’s important."

Terrell and I looked at each other.

"Let her in," we said, at the same moment.

The girl who came through the door looked like she was walking to her own execution.

Young. Trembling in a way she was trying to control and not succeeding at. She stopped a respectful distance from the table and looked at Terrell with the expression of someone who had spent the walk here rehearsing exactly how much trouble they were in.

"Speak," Terrell said.

"I didn’t say anything," she started, which was a genuinely terrible way to begin a report and I watched Terrell’s eyes narrow. "I mean... I want you to know that I kept to the instruction, my lord. I didn’t say anything."

"Say what," Terrell said. Slowly. The voice he used when his patience was structural rather than comfortable.

"The Luna - she asked about the high priestess." The maid’s voice was steadier now that the first sentence was out, running on the momentum of something already begun. "She said she wanted to speak with her. I told her..." She stopped. Swallowed. "I told her that the priestess had passed. That was all I said. I didn’t say anything about the... I didn’t discuss the circumstances. I said I wasn’t permitted and I left."

Silence.

"That was all?" Terrell said.

"Yes, my lord. I swear it."

He looked at her for three seconds.

"Go," he said.

She went, with the energy of someone not running only because running would look worse.

The door closed.

Terrell looked at the table.

Then he looked at me.

And I watched the alternative explanation he had constructed settle into place with the quiet finality of a man who has found the answer he was looking for and is also, privately, disappointed that he found it.

"There it is," he said. "She came for Sheena."

I started to speak.

"She’s been through something that nearly killed her," he continued, and his voice was even, measured, the voice of someone talking themselves down from a height they had briefly considered. "She finds out the person she once trusted tried to kill her. She probably wondered what Sheena’s reasons might be... I think she needed closure. That’s why she’s distracted. That’s why she asked to come." He nodded slowly, confirming it to himself. "Not for... that’s the only reason."

I thought about telling him what I actually believed.

I looked at his face - the careful arrangement of it, the way he had constructed this explanation like a wall and was standing behind it with both hands - and I made the decision that he needed to find his own way to the truth rather than have it handed to him.

"You’re probably right," I said.

He stood. "I’m going to my chambers."

"Terrell."

"What?"

"Did you kill the priestess?"

He didn’t say a word as he turned and left.

This time I let him go.

I remained in the room for a while, before deciding I needed to see Angel. I had to know how she was settling in.

I found her exactly where I expected to find her.

In her old room, the one she’d been given on first arrival. She was in the window seat with her knees drawn up and her eyes on the grounds below, and she didn’t turn when I came in, which meant she’d heard me and hadn’t needed to.

I crossed to her and put my hand on her back. "Are you alright?"

She turned.

She looked at my face, and then - very briefly, with the quick assessment of someone who has been doing this without fully realising it - at my clothing. My collar. The particular way I was standing.

Something in her face settled.

"I’m fine," she said. And smiled.

I grinned. "You thought I was my brother."

She turned back to the window. "I’ll learn to tell the difference eventually."

"You have all the time you need," I said.

She didn’t respond to that.

We were quiet for a moment. Outside, the afternoon light was moving across the Black Wolf grounds in long golden strips.

Then Angel said: "I heard Sheena is dead."

"Yes."

She was still looking at the window. "Do you think Terrell killed her?"

I thought about the whole situation carefully. "Terrell had every right to end her life for what she did to you. You are the Luna, Angel. To not just one but two brothers. An attack on the Luna is an attack on..."

"That’s not a yes or a no," she said.

I looked at her profile. At the line of her jaw, at how still she was when she was thinking hard about something she hadn’t yet decided how to feel about.

"I don’t know, Angel." I said. "I honestly don’t."

She absorbed that.

"I want to be alone," she said.

"I’ll come for you at dinner," I said. "Call a maid if you need anything before then."

She nodded.

I went to the door.

I stopped with my hand on the frame and looked back at her.

She was still looking out the window at the Black Wolf grounds. At the courtyard below. At the castle she had fled, that she had ridden three days to return to. I noticed her eyes moving carefully over every inch of the view as though memorizing it.

Or looking for something.

Or someone.

I left her to it.