Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint-Chapter 88

Angel’s POV

I didn’t think twice.

Terrell asked the question and the answer came out of me before I’d even fully processed it - clean and certain.

"Merrick."

Immediately the word landed, I felt the ripple of it move through the crowd.

I made the mistake of glancing at Terrell.

Just for a second. Just a fraction of a second.

It was enough.

The hurt on his face was not the obvious wound of a man who had expected to get his way and hadn’t. It was quieter than that. Deeper. The expression of someone absorbing something they had seen coming and finding that anticipating it had not, in fact, made it hurt less.

I looked away.

Stop it, I told myself. Stop it immediately.

I had no business feeling anything about that expression. Not guilt, not pity, not the complicated something that had tried to move through my chest when his jaw had set and his eyes had gone to the sea.

Stop it.

The silence had stretched long enough that Elder Borin was beginning to look uncertain, which on a face as ancient as his was a strange sight.

Terrell cleared his throat.

"Go ahead," he said to the elder. "Begin the ceremony."

What followed was unlike anything I had witnessed in my life, and given the evening’s events that was saying something considerable.

Elder Borin moved to the water’s edge and spoke in the old tongue - the same ancient language Claudia had used, though in his mouth it was ceremonial rather than alive, recited rather than felt. The warriors formed a circle, their torches making a ring of fire around the gathering. The remaining elders took positions at the cardinal points - north, south, east, west - and began a low harmonic sound, something that moved through the sand and up through the soles of my feet and settled in my chest like a second heartbeat.

Merrick stood on my left.

Terrell stood on my right.

I stared straight ahead.

Borin produced a cord - dark silver, finer than thread, shimmering in the moonlight in a way that showed it was not a physical thing - and began the binding rite. He spoke the words over it first, addressing the moon directly, his ancient voice carrying across the beach and out over the water with surprising force. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

Then he moved to Merrick.

He wrapped the cord once around Merrick’s wrist and spoke his name in the old tongue - Merrick, son of the black bloodline, twin born, wolf of the silver eye - and the cord pulsed once with pale light.

Then he came to me.

He wrapped it around my wrist - cool and light against my skin - and spoke words I didn’t understand but felt deep in my soul.

Then Terrell.

I felt rather than saw Borin move to my right. Felt the cord draw gently taut between all three of us. Borin wrapped the final length around Terrell’s wrist and spoke his name.

Terrell. Alpha. First born. Wolf of the black bloodline.

The cord flared.

Not pale this time. Gold - the same gold as the moon directly above us, a brightness that lasted for three seconds and then faded to nothing, and when I looked down the cord was gone from my wrist. Gone from all of us.

But the warmth remained.

I pressed my hand flat against my sternum and felt it there - steady, settled, entirely without my permission.

Borin turned to the gathering.

"It is done," he said, in plain language, for the first time all ceremony. "The bond is witnessed. The moon has sealed what the goddess declared."

The warriors struck their torches against their shields simultaneously. The sound cracked across the beach like thunder.

And that, apparently, was that.

I was married.

To two people.

Not in a church.

But on a beach.

This, I thought, with resignation, is genuinely the strangest night of my life.

I stayed close to Merrick.

For the remainder of the gathering - the elders dispersing, the warriors standing down, the various people who wanted to bow or acknowledge or observe the new Luna from a respectful distance - I stayed at Merrick’s side. He was steady beside me. Warm. He spoke to people when he needed to and shielded me from people when he could, and I was grateful for both in equal measure.

Terrell I did not look at.

Not because I was afraid of what I’d feel. Because I already knew what I’d feel and I needed tonight to not be about that.

When Merrick finally touched my elbow and said, quietly, "Shall we?", I went with him without looking back.

I didn’t look back.

****

His room in the castle was nothing like the locked chamber I’d been living in.

It was large and warm and smelled of something dark and pleasant - cedar, maybe, and old books. Beautiful furnitures. Books everywhere. A fire already lit and glowing brightly.

I stood in the center of it and felt the night sitting on my shoulders like a physical weight.

Merrick turned to face me.

"You’re safe here," he said. "Tonight, and whatever nights after that you choose to be here." He held my eyes. "I won’t try anything you don’t want. I want you to know that. Nothing happens on my side that you don’t choose, and you don’t choose anything tonight except sleep." A pause. "Tomorrow morning I’ll help you gather your things. We’ll go back to my castle together, and you’ll have your own rooms, your own space, your freedom within those walls." The corner of his mouth moved.

I looked at him.

This man who had been in a dungeon since yesterday because of me. Who had smelled of stone and candlelight when Sheena had freed him and had still gone after me on the beach, trying to comfort me. Who was standing in his own room telling me tonight required nothing from me except rest.

"I can’t believe," I said, "that you and Terrell came from the same womb."

He laughed softly. "We get that a lot."

"You’re so..." I searched for the word.

"Handsome?" he offered. "Reasonable? Dramatically better dressed on most occasions?"

"I was going to say easy." I sat down on the edge of the bed. "You’re easy to be around. It doesn’t feel like... like... I’m always bracing for something."

Merrick sat at the far end of the bed. Leaving space. Deliberate space to make me feel more comfortable.

He looked at me for a moment and started smiling.

I couldn’t help but smile back. "What?"

"I was just thinking," he laughed, "that in all my years on this earth, I never imagined getting married like this."

I looked at him - properly looked - and bit my lip.

This was the man I had watched walk through his own castle like every corridor was a stage. The man whose coat alone probably cost more than a small village. Whose tailor - I had been informed - spanned three territories.

That man was currently wearing a shirt that had lost a fight with dungeon floor stones. There was mud - dried mud - all over his clothes from yesterday’s wrestling match with Terrell in the forest, and his hair had long since stopped pretending.

"You got married," I said carefully, "looking like that."

He glanced down at himself. "I was in a dungeon."

"Before the dungeon you were rolling around in the mud."

"I was rescuing you..."

"Merrick." I pressed my hand over my mouth, trying to keep from laughing. "Your collar."

He touched it. His expression flickered. "How bad?"

"It’s very... very bad."

He looked at the ceiling. "I have sent back an entire wardrobe because the embroidery was slightly asymmetrical," he said quietly, to no one in particular.

I completely lost it.

He started laughing too, which made it worse.

"A second ceremony," he said firmly, when we’d both recovered. "When we get to my castle. I will be dressed properly and we will never speak of tonight’s version again."

"Agreed," I said, still wiping my eyes.

I looked at the fire, felt the warmth of the room.

Then I looked at my hands. Gathered myself.

"I need to ask something."

"Ask."

"Lyra." I looked up at him. "She’s still in the dungeon. She was there because she was trying to help me, and she shouldn’t be - she has a family, a life outside of all this, and she’s been caught up in my situation, and she deserves to..."

"I’ll have her released tonight," Merrick said.

Just like that?

I stared at him. "Tonight?"

"Before we sleep." He met my eyes. "She’ll be free to go." A small pause. "She’s important to you."

"She’s my friend," I said. "She’s... yes. She matters."

Merrick nodded simply.

And I did something I hadn’t planned.

I closed the space between us and put my arms around him - properly, the way you hold someone when words aren’t quite enough - and felt him go briefly still with surprise before his arms came around me in return.

"Thank you," I said, into his shoulder.

He patted my back, with the awkward warmth of someone who had not been expecting a hug and was doing his best with it. "Don’t make it strange," he said. But his voice was gentle.

I pulled back and laughed again - shorter this time, quieter.

He looked at me with something in his expression I couldn’t read.

This man, I thought. How is he related to Terrell.

Alpha Terrell’s POV

I heard the laughter from two corridors away.

I had exceptional hearing, and tonight I found it entirely useless and annoying.

Her laugh. Clear and unguarded and genuine. I couldn’t remember if I’ve ever made her laugh. Yet here she was, laughing together with my brother. Her voice floated down the corridor of my own castle, from my brother’s room, on my wedding night.

I reached my door. Opened it.

Closed it behind me.

Closed it, I should say, with a force that expressed my feelings clearly and sent the candles on the mantle guttering sideways before they steadied.

I stood in my room.

My empty room.

My perfectly adequate, well-appointed, warm and empty room that contained exactly one person when it was supposed to contain two.

Is it still possible?

Is it still possible to turn the tables around between tonight and tomorrow morning?