Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint-Chapter 81

Alpha Terrell’s POV

The anger hadn’t cooled.

I had expected it to - anger usually did, given enough corridors and enough stairs and enough time moving through this. It was a practical thing, anger. It burned hot and then it burned down, and what was left afterward was usually something more useful. Clarity. Decision. Purpose.

Not tonight. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Tonight it walked with me every step down to the lower levels, sitting in my chest like something with teeth, and by the time the dungeon corridor materialized out of the torchlight I had stopped pretending it was going to leave on its own.

The lower level was eerily quiet. The torches in their wall sconces threw long orange shapes across the floor. The guard at the corridor’s end straightened when he saw me coming.

I was halfway down the corridor when I heard her.

"Alpha."

The voice came from the second cell - small, urgent, and stripped of every bravery she initially carried.

Lyra had both hands wrapped around the cell bars. Her knuckles were pale with the grip. She looked frightened.

She should be - after defying me and disobeying my rules just seconds after accepting my brand of identity - she should be scared.

"Please. Please, I was only trying to help her. She’s my friend. Whatever you think I’ve done... I was only trying to keep her safe." Her eyes tracked me as I passed. "Please, I can’t... please."

I walked past her cell without stopping.

The guard outside Merrick’s cell saw me coming and had the door open before I reached it.

I went in without breaking stride.

My brother was on the floor.

Not collapsed - not suffering, not pacing, not doing any of the things a man locked in a dungeon cell might reasonably be doing. He was sitting. Cross-legged on the stone floor with his back against the wall and his hands resting loosely on his knees, in the posture of someone who had decided to meditate on the situation rather than be troubled by it. The cot behind him was untouched. He had apparently found the floor more appropriate.

He looked up when I entered.

His expression was, infuriatingly, almost serene.

"You know this wasn’t necessary, right?" he said, before I had opened my mouth. Not a complaint. Just a statement delivered with the same energy he might have used to comment on the weather.

I stood in the center of the cell and looked at him.

The torchlight caught his face and for a moment I was looking at a mirror that had made different choices. Same jaw. Same silver eyes. Same blood. The same mother who had held us both and the same father who had trained us both and a thousand years of shared history that somehow kept failing to prevent us from ending up in rooms like this one.

"Where were you taking her?" I asked.

Merrick tilted his head slightly. "I was helping a friend."

"Where."

"She wanted out." He said it simply, without apology. "She asked for help. I helped." He met my eyes. "That’s what you do for people you care about."

"Even when that help is directed against me."

"I wasn’t acting against you, Terrell." A pause. "I was acting for her. Those aren’t the same thing, regardless of how they feel from where you’re standing."

I breathed in through my nose.

There was a specific variety of anger that Merrick had always been able to produce in me - not the hot, immediate kind that came from a direct challenge, but something slower and more complicated. The kind that came from watching someone be completely, maddeningly reasonable about something you needed them to be unreasonable about. He had been doing it since we were children. He had never once stopped.

"She is my Luna," I said.

"She is a woman who ran from a locked room," he said, "which suggests the current approach to that relationship may require some adjustment."

"Don’t." I took a step toward him. "Don’t do that. Don’t sit there in my dungeon and dismantle my decisions with that voice. You took her out of my territory. You had your hands on her. You were running with her into the dark the night before the full moon and you want to tell me you were just helping a friend?"

Merrick looked up at me steadily.

"The only reason," I said, and my voice had dropped dangerously low, "that I have not done something I would regret - the only reason - is that you are the only family I have left." I reached down and grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him partially upright. "You are the only one. And I need you to understand what that costs me to say right now, when I am looking at you and thinking about where your hands were and where you were taking her..."

Merrick’s hands came up and knocked mine away.

"Get your hands off me."

Not loud. Not theatrical. Just flat and final.

We looked at each other.

Brothers. Twins. Two halves of something that had never had a clean seam between them.

I stepped back.

Turned away from him and stood with my back to the cell and my hands at my sides and breathed, slowly, until the thing with teeth in my chest settled down to something I could work around.

Then I turned back.

"You’ll stay here," I said. "Tomorrow night I seal the bond with Angel. The marriage rites, the full moon ceremony - all of it. When it’s done, when it’s finished and sealed and irrevocable, I’ll have you released."

The serenity left his face.

For the first time all evening, Merrick looked genuinely alarmed.

He stood up. "You can’t be serious."

I said nothing.

"Terrell." He stepped toward me, and gone was the cross-legged composure, gone was the philosophical ease. "You can’t simply... the whole reason I’m here is because of the moon goddess. The mate bond has to be confirmed. The ritual exists specifically because there are two of us and only one of her and the goddess has to be consulted, she has to choose... you can’t just decide to skip that because you’re angry at me..."

"I changed my mind." I moved toward the cell door.

"You changed your..." He made a sound of pure disbelief. "Listen to yourself. This is a lifelong decision. We only get one Luna, Terrell. One. You can’t undo this. Once the bond is sealed under the full moon it is sealed permanently - if you do this wrong, if you force it before the goddess has..."

"I’m not forcing anything." I stopped at the door without turning around. "She’s my Luna. She has been my Luna since the moment she was declared mine. The goddess already made her choice - she put Angel in my path. Everything after that is just ceremony."

"That is an enormous oversimplification of sacred law and you know it..."

"I’m taking what’s mine, Merrick." I put my hand on the door frame. "You should have considered the consequences before you tried to take her away from me."

"Don’t do this."

I stepped out.

"Terrell... don’t do this. Come back and talk to me. This is too important to..."

"Get some sleep," I said.

The guard locked the cell behind me.

Merrick’s voice followed me down the corridor -Terrell. Terrell, listen to me - and I walked through it the same way I had walked through Angel’s kicks and her fury and her grief, putting one foot in front of the other until the voice was gone and there was only the torchlight and the stairs and the long way up.

We only get one Luna.

I knew that.

I had known that for a thousand years. Had known it with the specific, bone-deep knowledge of someone who had spent centuries without, watching other wolves find their mates.

I was done waiting for the right moment, the right ritual, the right version of events in which everyone was comfortable and nothing was complicated.

There was no such version.

There was only tomorrow night.

****

When I entered my chambers, it was warm and lit and smelled of the candles Sheena always used - the heavy jasmine fragrance.

She was standing near the window.

I had known she would be here. The ritual ceremony was tomorrow after all.

She turned when I came in, but I didn’t stop walking. I went directly to the side table and began removing my hunting clothes.

"You’ve been looking for her," Sheena said. Not a question.

"I found her." I worked the laces on my jacket.

A brief pause. "And?"

"She’s back." I set the jacket aside. "She’s in her room."

"I see." Another pause. "I’ve been preparing for tomorrow. Confirming the details of the ceremony, consulting the lunar calendar for the precise hour, making sure the ritual space will be ready." She moved slightly, positioning herself where I couldn’t entirely avoid her in my peripheral vision without making the avoidance deliberate. "I wanted to be sure we’re aligned. That everything is in order."

"It is." I moved to the basin and splashed cold water on my face, stood there for a moment with my hands braced on the table and the water running down my jaw.

"And the secondary ritual?" Her voice was careful now. "To confirm whether Lord Merrick also shares the mate bond with the Luna - I’ve been researching the requirements and I believe I have everything we need to..."

"Forget it."

Silence.

"Alpha..."

"Forget the secondary ritual." I straightened and reached for the cloth on the rail. "Prepare the marriage rites for tomorrow night. That’s all. Angel and I, the full moon ceremony, the bond sealing." I turned around. "That’s what tomorrow is."

Sheena’s composure hadn’t moved. But something behind her eyes had. "And Lord Merrick?"

"Lord Merrick won’t be participating."

"But the sacred law states that when two potential..."

"Sheena." I looked at her directly, and whatever she saw in my face stopped the sentence. "I didn’t ask for an interpretation of sacred law. I told you what tomorrow will be. Prepare accordingly."

She held the look for three seconds. Four.

"Of course," she said. "I only want to be sure that what we’re doing is - that the goddess will sanction..."

"Get out."

Sheena’s expression closed over whatever she’d been saying. She inclined her head, gathered herself with practiced elegance, and moved toward the door.