Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint Chapter 102

Alpha Terrell’s POV

rrick sat with my statent for a long mont. Long enough that I could hear the fire in the corridor through the closed door, long enough to hear the distant sound of movent from the direction of Angel’s room.

"You’re serious," he said.

"When have I said sothing like this and not been serious?"

"It’s..." He leaned forward, elbows on knees, looking at the floor. "Terrell, conversion isn’t - it doesn’t always work. For humans. The success rate..."

"I know the rate."

"If it doesn’t take..."

"I know what happens if it doesn’t take." I held his gaze. "I know every risk. I’ve known them since tonight, since I was carrying her across that garden and counting the seconds between her pulses and thinking..." I stopped. Breathed. "Thinking that this keeps happening. And every ti it happens we are one piece of bad luck away from a result that can’t be fixed."

rrick looked at .

"And if she says no?" he said. Quietly. "Because you know we have to ask her. We can’t do this without..."

"I know that."

"She’s going to say no, Terrell. You know she will. She’s going to hear we want to change what you fundantally are and she’s going to..."

"I know," I said. "I know what she’ll say. And I’m going to ask her anyway, because the alternative is watching sothing find her on a night when we’re not close enough to..." I stopped again. Looked at the window. "I was in the garden tonight because I followed her. Because I watched her walk out of the dining room and I told myself she was fine and then I followed her anyway, and when she cried out I was close enough to get there in ti." I looked back at rrick. "What about the night I’m not close enough? What about the night she wanders sowhere and I’m three days away at Black Wolf and you’re not watching and whoever has been trying to reach her finally..."

I stopped speaking.

rrick was very still.

We sat in the quiet of the study and I looked at the glass on the desk and felt the truth of the evening settling into my bones - the fourteen minutes of counting, the spread of inflammation I had watched with more focused terror than I had felt in a very long ti, the sound of her crying out in the dark.

"She’s going to fight it," rrick said finally. "The idea of it."

"Yes."

"You’re going to have to convince her."

"I know."

"How?" He looked at . "How are you going to convince her? She’s already..." He gestured vaguely, a gesture that encompassed everything. The history between us. The distance at dinner. The way I’d been keeping to myself since her arrival.

I picked up the glass.

Finished it.

Set it down.

"I’ll figure it out," I said.

rrick looked at for a long ti. Then he reached across and picked up the bottle and poured more into my glass without being asked.

"She ca back here herself," he said, quietly. "You know that. No one made her."

I looked at the refilled glass.

"I know," I said.

"That ans sothing."

"I know that too."

He sat back.

"She called you rrick, right?" he asked. "When she woke up. After the seven days."

"Yes."

"And you left."

"Yes."

He was quiet for a mont. "Why?"

"Because she needed to co back herself," I said. "Or not at all."

rrick said nothing.

"And she ca back," I said.

"She ca back," he agreed.

I picked up the glass.

"Go back to her," I said. "She’ll want soone when the doctor is done."

"And you?"

"Don’t worry about ." I said.

rrick stood. Straightened, and moved toward the door.

***

Angel’s POV

I didn’t see Terrell after that night.

Not at breakfast - rrick brought it up himself, appearing at my door with a tray. Not at midday, when the maid ca to help to the bath and back. Not in the corridors, though I listened for footsteps with more attention than I was comfortable admitting.

The hand had improved - the inflammation down from its worst, the burning reduced to sothing manageable, a dull ache that reminded of its presence whenever I forgot about it, which was not often.

rrick checked on three tis.

Once in the morning, when he brought the tray and sat with while I ate and he talked about his day.

Once in the afternoon, when he ca with books from the library - a selection, he said, chosen by describing my apparent tastes to the librarian and letting her make recomndations.

Once in the evening, brief, to make sure the dication had been taken and the hand was progressing.

"He asked about you," rrick said, during the afternoon visit. Casual. Not looking at .

"The doctor?"

"Terrell."

I looked at the book in my lap. "What did he ask?"

"How the hand was. Whether you’d eaten." A pause. "Whether you’d slept."

I turned a page I hadn’t read. "What did you tell him?"

"The truth." He glanced at sidelong. "That you were doing well. That you’d eaten everything on the tray, which I found encouraging. That you seed like yourself."

I nodded.

"He didn’t co up himself," I said.

"No."

I turned another unread page.

"Is he avoiding ?" I asked, and I aid for the tone of soone asking a practical question and landed sowhere slightly more honest than that.

rrick was quiet for a mont.

"I think," he said carefully, "that he’s giving you space."

"He gave a great deal of space yesterday."

"Yes." Another careful pause. "He’s not - Terrell doesn’t always know what to do with sothing he can’t resolve through action." He turned a book over in his hands. "When there’s sothing to do - a problem to fix, a danger to address, a person to carry across a garden - he’s completely capable. It’s the in-between that’s difficult for him."

I thought about how he’d cared for for seven days at rrick’s castle.

About the book he’d left under my pillow.

About the short ti between my cry in the garden and the doctor arriving during which he had sat on the edge of my bed with my hand in both of his and not moved once.

Action, I thought. He’s good at action.

"I’m not a problem to be resolved," I said.

"No," rrick agreed. "You’re not. That’s rather the difficulty."

He left at the evening visit with the promise of dinner brought up again and the instruction that I was not to attempt the stairs alone, which I accepted with more grace than I might have managed twenty-four hours earlier because my hand still ached and the stairs were the last thing on my mind.

The castle settled into its night-ti quiet soon enough.

I ate dinner at the window - the grounds below dark and still, the garden invisible from this angle, which I was choosing not to think about as a taphor. The food was good, but the silence was a bit uncomfortable.

I washed my face with my good hands. Changed into my sleeping clothes, and prepared for bed.

Then I laid down.

I reached over and put out the lamp.

The room went dark - not completely, the moonlight coming through the gap in the curtains in a thin silver strip that lay across the floor and reached the foot of the bed and stopped there. Enough to see shapes. Enough to know where the walls were.

I lay on my back and looked at the ceiling and listened to the castle.

He asked how you’d slept.

I closed my eyes.

He followed you into the garden.

I turned onto my side.

Even though he acted like he didn’t care about your movents in the castle, he followed you.

That notion had been sitting with all day in the way that things sit with you when you’re trying not to pick them up. The difference between the Terrell who had carried over his shoulder through the forest and the Terrell who had ignored since my arrival.

Distance, I had decided. Indifference. He was definitely...

A sound.

I stopped breathing.

A sound from the corridor outside my door, like muffled footsteps.

I lay still.

Listened.

It didn’t repeat.

I stared at the strip of moonlight on the floor and thought about all the tis soone had tried to kill , and sothing cold moved through that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room.

Who wants dead? I thought. Who wants dead so badly that they can’t even wait for my wounds to heal.

The silence continued.

I let out a slow breath.

Stop it, I told myself. It’s a castle. Castles make sounds.

I closed my eyes again.

And the door opened.

Not with violence - not thrown, not forced. Quietly. The careful opening of a door by soone who did not want to wake the person inside.

My heart stopped.

Then:

"It’s ."

Two words. Low. Very familiar.

Terrell.