Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint-Chapter 87

Alpha Terrell’s POV

"Bring her here."

Gareth changed direction without breaking stride, and they all came to a halt in front of me - Sheena between two of my generals, her robes disordered, her expression filled with fear.

I looked at her.

She looked back at me.

"Why," I said, "would you lie about something sacred?"

"I didn’t lie." The words came out with a lot of conviction. "I misread the goddess’s message. The smoke moved toward Lord Merrick, the signs were... I interpreted what I saw and I reported what I believed to be..."

"Sheena." I kept my voice even. "I have known you for so many years. I have watched you work. You do not misread. That is specifically the thing you do not do." I looked at her face - at the fearful expression she was trying to hide. "You reported what you wanted to be true."

Silence.

She held the look for three long seconds.

Then something in her face shifted. Dropped. Became... smaller.

"I misunderstood," she said again. But quieter. Less conviction in it.

"And the part where you declared yourself my true mate." I heard the flatness in my own voice. "Was that also a misunderstanding?"

The silence was different this time.

It was the silence of someone who had nothing left to say.

I felt something that was not quite pity settle over my anger like a hand over a flame.

years.

She had been in my court for decades.

I thought about that - thought about what a long time alongside someone might do to a person, what feelings might accumulate in that time without either party acknowledging it - and I felt the anger lose some of its heat.

"Get her out of my sight," I said.

"Alpha..."

"I’m not punishing you tonight, Sheena." I turned away. "Tonight I don’t have the capacity. But you will present yourself to me tomorrow and we will have a very different conversation than the one you’d prefer." I paused. "Go."

I heard them move away. Heard Sheena’s voice drop to nothing and the sound of footsteps on the garden path fading.

I stood alone with the moon.

You could stay here, I thought. And sulk all night on this garden path like a man who has never once accepted a situation he didn’t choose.

I looked at the moon.

The moon, enormous and impartial and rising steadily toward its peak, looked back.

The marriage rites.

They were still valid - Claudia’s declaration didn’t dissolve them, it complicated them. The bond needed sealing. The full moon would not wait for my feelings about the arrangement.

I could go back down to that beach and complete the rites and seal what needed sealing, or I could stand here grinding my teeth at the sky until the moon finished its arc and the window closed and I had wasted the one night in the lunar cycle when the ceremony was possible.

I was not a man who wasted windows.

I straightened. Set my jaw.

Looked down the garden path toward the sound of the sea.

Fine, I thought, in the direction of the moon.

Fine. But I am not sharing the bond willingly. She is going to have to choose me. Properly. On her own terms.

And she will.

I walked back toward the beach.

***

I came down the garden path and onto the beach and the crowd parted the way it always did and there they were at the water’s edge.

Merrick.

With his arm around my mate while she cried into her hands.

I was across the sand before I had decided to move.

Merrick looked up when he heard me coming - I wasn’t being quiet about it - and something moved through his expression. Not guilt. The look of a man who had anticipated this exact moment and was making peace with the consequences.

I reached down and drew Angel to her feet in one motion, positioning myself between her and my brother.

"Get your arm off her," I said.

Merrick stood slowly. Brushed the sand from his clothes with the maddening composure that had been irritating me since we were children. "She was upset," he said. "She needed..."

"She needed me..."

I stopped.

I heard myself.

Breathed.

The elders were watching. The warriors were watching. Every single person on that beach was watching, and Angel was standing beside me with her tear-stained face turned up toward mine and her expression said that if I finished that sentence the way I’d been about to finish it, something would break that couldn’t be repaired.

I closed my mouth.

Merrick reached out and took Angel’s hand.

Calmly. Holding my gaze over her head while he did it, making absolutely certain I understood the statement being made.

"She belongs to me as well," he said. "We are going to do this the right way."

I looked at his hand around hers.

I looked at his face - my face, the same silver eyes looking back at me.

And the urge that moved through me then was damn dangerous.

But I wasn’t going to act on it.

Not in front of her.

I held the look and breathed and did not move.

Then Angel pulled her hands free.

Both of them.

I watched her straighten.

Watched something shift in her posture - the tears not gone but pushed somewhere below the surface.

"I am not a rope," she said.

Nobody spoke.

She looked at everyone with a stiff stillness in her posture.

"If this is happening," she said, and her voice was completely steady, "I have conditions."

Elder Borin - one of the oldest men alive - asides myself - and who was meant to officiate this marriage ceremony, voiced out.

"The Luna does not issue conditions to the Alpha concerning the marriage." His voices sounded deep. "You will be joined to both brothers and you will remain submissive..."

"I’m human."

Borin stopped.

"I’m no werewolf," she continued, meeting the old man’s eyes directly. "I have no bond that needs sealing to keep me whole. I have no pack. No obligation to sacred law that was invented by wolves for wolves." She paused. "I can walk away from this beach tonight and live a complete life. A quiet life. Can either of them say the same?"

I said nothing.

I was watching her.

I couldn’t stop watching her - standing in that beautiful dress I had picked out for her, with her hair half-undone by the sea breeze and her eyes absolutely certain, and I thought with a clarity that was almost painful: this is the woman the goddess chose for me and she is standing on a beach negotiating terms with my entire pack and she is extraordinary.

I hated the timing of the thought. I had it anyway.

"So." She turned to face the gathering fully. "You hear my conditions, or I walk. And given what Claudia just announced in front of everyone, you can all consider what that means for your Alpha and his brother."

Silence.

The silence of an entire pack recalculating.

Merrick broke it first. "I would love to hear your conditions," he said, and the warmth in his voice was so genuine and so infuriating that I had to look away from him.

I looked at her instead.

She glanced at me - just briefly, a sideways look that was filled with distaste before moving away - and then said: "Go ahead." Quietly. "I’ll try my best to honour them."

The try was the most honest thing I had said all evening.

She addressed the elders directly, which was - I noted - not something most people did, and certainly not most people in her position, and certainly not with that tone.

"I will not serve two households simultaneously," she said. "I’ll divide my time between both castles. On my schedule. My terms." She paused. "Neither of them will summon me, command my presence, or send anyone to retrieve me." Her voice didn’t waver. "I come and go when I choose. When I’m ready."

Elder Borin opened his mouth.

I looked at him.

He closed it.

Merrick was nodding with the enthusiasm of a man agreeing to terms he would have accepted without negotiation.

I stood very still and I listened and I did the calculation that I suspected she knew I was doing - that I suspected she was watching me do from the corner of her eye.

She would set her own schedule.

She would come and go as she chose.

She hated me.

I had given her every reason to hate me and she had taken all of those reasons and built something very solid out of them, and the solid thing was pointing directly at one castle and away from the other.

I knew which castle she was going to first.

I knew it before she said it.

I asked anyway.

"Who do you plan to stay with?" The words came out level. Controlled. I was proud of how controlled they were. "Tonight. After the ceremony."

She didn’t look at me as she said the next words.