Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint-Chapter 73

Alpha Terrell’s POV

She hates me.

The words moved through me with every step down the corridor.

She hates me. She hates me. She hates me.

That look in her eyes. I had braced myself for many things - anger, tears, screaming. I had prepared myself for all of it. What I had not prepared myself for was that particular variety of stillness - the kind that lives on the other side of something being completely broken. The kind that is so far past anger it has become something else entirely.

If that look could draw blood, I would have bled out on her floor.

I walked without direction for a while, my hands at my sides, my jaw tight enough to ache. The castle corridors blurred past me. Guards stationed at corners straightened as I passed and I didn’t see any of them.

Think. I needed to think. I needed someone to think with.

Kane was useless to me here - my beta would tell me I was better off with another Luna - a werewolf to be precise. Merrick was after my mate, which was a problem I hadn’t even begun to address. Sheena was - Sheena was her own catastrophe.

That left my generals.

I changed direction and headed toward Kade’s room, moving with the kind of controlled urgency that kept people out of my way without requiring me to say a word. Kane had been assigned a room in my palace for a reason. Asides being my youngest general, he was still without a family of his own. Staying close to his brother, Kane was ideal for the mean time.

I knocked once. Twice. I was on the third knock and already losing what remained of my patience when the door swung open.

Kade stood there shirtless and smiling - the smile of a man who had been very pleasantly occupied and was not remotely sorry about it.

One look at my face and the smile died.

He stepped out fully into the corridor, pulling the door shut behind him, and I noted with grim amusement that he made very sure I couldn’t see past him into the room. There would be a woman in there. There was always a woman in there.

I remembered when my biggest problem was choosing which woman to fuck.

"I need counsel," I said flatly. "Get Gareth and Bellick. Now."

Kade’s eyes moved over my face. "Your room or..."

"Not my room." I glanced at his closed door. "And apparently not yours."

A look of sheepishness almost crossed his face, but he pushed it in. "Give me two minutes and we’ll go to Bellick’s quarters."

He disappeared inside.

I stood in the corridor and stared at the wall and thought about the way Angel had flinched when I stepped toward her.

I had never wanted to undo a moment more in my entire life.

Not the raids. Not the wars. Not every brutal thing I had done in the name of power and territory and survival.

That flinch. That one moment of her pressing herself against the wall like she needed to put stone between herself and me - that was what I would carry.

Kade reappeared, dressed. We walked in silence through the castle and out toward the general lodgings, and he had the wisdom to ask me nothing.

While Kade hurried towards Gareth lodgings to go get him, I moved towards Bellick’s.

Bellick’s quarters were warm and smelled of wood smoke and the particular homeliness of a man who had built something real for himself. He was at the table with his wife when we walked in - she looked up, saw my face, and her expression turned serious.

"Excuse us," Bellick said to her quietly.

She rose, touched his arm briefly as she passed, and greeted me with a small nod before disappearing into the back rooms.

I watched her go.

I sat at the head of Bellick’s table - not because I was performing anything, but because centuries of being the most powerful person in every room had made it instinct. Bellick settled into the chair beside me - while Kade who had quickly returned - leaned against the wall near the door.

We waited for Gareth.

He arrived within minutes, took one look at the assembled group and the closed expressions we were all wearing and sat down without a word.

"I told her," I said.

Silence.

"She knows I’m the Alpha," I continued. "She knows what I am. What I did." I looked at the table. "She told me to get out."

Bellick exhaled slowly through his nose.

Kade immediately left the wall and grabbed a seat at the table.

Gareth leaned forward, elbows on the table. "First priority," he said, "is making sure she doesn’t run."

Something hit me like cold water.

I hadn’t thought of that.

In the wreckage of the last hour - in the weight of her grief and the look in her eyes and the sound of those two quiet words - I had not thought about the door I’d walked out of and left unlocked behind me.

I was already standing.

Just then a knock came at Bellick’s door.

I heard her before Bellick opened it - a girl’s voice, young, cracking with distress, asking if the Alpha was here. Saying she was looking for the Alpha.

The words hit me before she even entered the room.

Bellick led her in. She was one of the kitchen girls - young, eyes red, wringing her hands with the concentrated desperation of someone delivering news she doesn’t want to deliver.

"What is it." My voice came out harder than I intended.

She flinched. Then she started crying in earnest, words tumbling out between gasps - she’d been sent up with the Luna’s lunch, she hadn’t been gone long, she’d knocked and there was no answer, so she tried the handle and it just...

"The door was open," she said. "My lord, I went in and her room was - it was empty."

The room went very still.

My heart didn’t drop.

It stopped.