Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint Chapter 76

Angel’s POV

"I said it was complicated, Angel."

"How can you like being held captive? Don’t you know how terrible that could be!" I nearly yelled at her, rembering the horror I passed through in Hawkins castle.

She pressed her lips together. "I said you wouldn’t understand, Angel. Let’s forget about that and talk about what happened to you instead." She said, her voice was gentler now. She already knew, I thought - or suspected. She’d had her suspicions about Uriel, after all. Had received that mark from him. But she asked anyway, and I found that I was too tired to be anything other than honest.

"Uriel isn’t Uriel," I said. The words ca out flat and simple, stripped of everything dramatic because I didn’t have the energy for drama anymore. "He was never Uriel. It was a na he used because he needed to trust him before I knew who he was." I looked at my hands. "He’s the Alpha, Lyra. The real Alpha. He’s been the Alpha the entire ti."

Lyra was quiet for a mont.

"That’s what I was trying to warn you about," she said softly. "What will you do now?"

"I don’t know." And there was sothing almost freeing about saying that out loud. I don’t know. Not a plan, not a declaration, just the plain and undecorated truth. "I need sowhere to lie low. Sowhere I can think without..." I stopped. "Without him near ."

"Do you not feel anything for him anymore? After everything?" Her voice was careful. "You did, once. I saw it."

I flinched.

"The man I felt sothing for," I said quietly, "doesn’t exist. I built him out of lies he fed ." I lifted my eyes to hers. "And even if he did exist - even if every real thing I saw in him was real - it doesn’t change what he did. It doesn’t bring my family back."

Lyra opened her mouth.

"Don’t," I said.

She closed it.

There were so things that didn’t need another layer of complicated on top of them. This was one.

****

The afternoon wore on slowly, the grey light through the shutter cracks shifting and dimming by degrees.

At so point Lyra ntioned that she might have found food if it weren’t for the risk of running into guards outside.

"We’ll manage today," she said. "Tomorrow the search will have either found us or moved further out. Either way there’ll be more movent."

"I’m not hungry," I said, which was true. The idea of food felt absurd, like soone suggesting I take up a hobby.

"You need to eat."

"I ate breakfast." Cold, tasteless, under duress, while watching Terrell stare out a window preparing to break my world - but technically, yes. Breakfast had happened.

Lyra gave the look that comnt deserved but didn’t push.

I moved to the hay in the corner - dry, as I’d hoped, slling of dust and old sumr - and lay down with my cloak pulled over .

"Wake if anything happens," I said.

I was asleep before she answered.

I dread in fragnts.

My sister’s voice, calling from sowhere I couldn’t find.

Silver eyes.

A black wolf crest, heavy as a stone.

The sound of a door closing.

The knocking pulled up out of nothing.

I was sitting upright before I was fully conscious, my heart already hamring - and across the dim room Lyra was on her feet, completely alert, already moving. She found in the near-dark and pressed one finger to her lips.

I didn’t breathe.

The knocking ca again. Not frantic. Almost asured. Knock-knock. Pause. Knock.

Like soone who knew soone was inside and was being polite about it.

Which sohow made it worse.

Lyra positioned herself to one side of the door - and I watched her take up a posture that was combat-ready.

Silence.

Five seconds.

Ten.

I had just begun to wonder if they’d gone when the door exploded inward - iron bar and all.

Lyra moved quickly, throwing herself at the silhouette in the doorway with her full weight.

The silhouette caught her.

Not grabbed - caught, effortlessly, one hand closing on her forearm and redirecting her montum in a single fluid motion that deposited her to the side with a loud thud.

"I am not my brother," said the voice in the doorway, dry and entirely unruffled.

rrick stepped into the thin light.

Or - I thought it was rrick. The sa tall fra, sa silver eyes catching what little light there was, dark clothing. But sothing about the way he stood was different from Terrell - easier, less contained. And the expression on his face, when it found mine across the dim space, was almost amused.

Almost.

Lyra had already recovered - she was back on her feet, between him and , vibrating with hostility. "You broke the door."

"It was locked." He said it as though this were a perfect explanation. His eyes hadn’t left my face. "I knocked first. I feel that should be noted."

"You broke the door," Lyra repeated.

"I’ll have it fixed." He said fleetingly before turning towards . "Angel, I’m not here to take you back." He held both hands slightly open, away from his body - a gesture of peace. "I just need to talk to you."

"How did you find us?" Lyra demanded before I could speak. "We covered our tracks. The scent trail should have been..."

"Disrupted. Yes." He glanced at her briefly. "Effective work, actually. The rotten mash and the - well." A pause. "Very creative."

Lyra did not look complinted.

"Then how," she pressed.

rrick returned his eyes to . "I’ve had soone watching you," he said. "Since we arrived at the castle."

The words landed quietly but the impact wasn’t quiet at all.

"Watching ," I repeated.

"Not inside your chambers," he said imdiately, sothing in his tone clarifying before I could spiral into the worst interpretation. "And not to report back to Terrell or - this was entirely different. I just had one of my own n keeping eyes on your movents. On who ca and went from your door. On whether you were safe." He paused. "He saw you leave the castle. Followed at a distance. Ca to tell before he ca to tell anyone else."

I absorbed that.

"So you’ve been spying on ," I said.