Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint

Chapter 135: Chapter 135

Alpha Terrell’s POV

I watched the knife placed against Angel’s throat.

The angle, the pressure, the fraction of an inch between the blade and the skin of her neck, and every part of me fought for restraint, for control. Knowing that one wrong move might end her life.

The guard holding her had steady hands. He didn’t shake. Not once.

"You know what to do," he said. Looking at me. Reading my face. "The cross. Now."

Angel’s eyes were on me.

Not frightened - or frightened, yes, the fear was there, I could see it in the set of her jaw and how still she was, but underneath the fear, was a little fierceness.

"Don’t," she said.

Her voice was steady.

The guard’s arm tightened. "Another word from you and I’ll..."

"Don’t get on that cross," Angel said, directly to me, over the guard’s warning. "Don’t do it. Fight. I’ll be fine, just..."

"I said shut the fuck up!" the guard thundered, the pressure of the blade piercing into her skin.

Angel went quiet.

But her eyes stayed on mine and the message in them was the same: Don’t. Don’t surrender. Don’t let them have you.

I looked at her. At the knife.

I was calculating - the distance between me and the guard, the speed of the guard’s reaction versus mine, whether the advantage I had in both those categories was sufficient to close the gap before the hand moved - and the calculation was not producing a comfortable result. Close, but close in the direction that required something else to change before I moved.

Something changed.

But not what I expected.

From the ground came the grunt of a man returning from somewhere he hadn’t chosen to go, for what was, by my count, the fifth time this night. The sound was followed by cursing, low and venomous.

Raul.

He pushed himself upright.

Held his head.

Looked around the clearing with unclear eyes. At his guards, my presence, and Angel with the knife at her throat.

Something moved through his expression.

Then he started laughing. Like a completely unhinged man.

"Coward," he said, when the laugh had reduced. He was looking at me. "The great Terrell of Black Wolf." He gestured at the clearing. "You thought you’d escaped. Came back to find a way out." Another sound that was almost a laugh. "And here you are."

He crossed the space between us and hit me.

The fist found my stomach with the force of a man who had been unconscious five times and was collecting a debt. I let it land.

"That’s for the first time," Raul said. He stepped back. "I’d go through all five but I have more interesting things to do."

He turned and looked at Angel.

And the expression that moved through his face was the one I had seen before - on the bed, when they’d first brought me into that room. Desire.

He walked toward her.

He took her hand from the guard’s grip with the ease of someone reclaiming something he had already decided was his, and Angel...

Angel looked at me.

One. Fearful. Scared look.

Then Raul moved toward his house and she went with him because the guard still had the knife and because she had no choice.

At the doorway, Raul stopped.

He turned back to look at me.

He wanted to see it. That was the thing - he had come back from unconsciousness five times tonight and he had hit me and laughed at me and none of it had landed the way he wanted it to land, and now he was looking at my face to see if thiswas the thing that produced what he had been waiting for.

I gave him nothing.

My face gave him nothing.

But inside...

Inside, the temperature that had been building all evening reached the point past which temperatures did not continue to build. They converted.

He turned and went inside.

The door closed.

And Angel’s voice came through it.

Please. Please, let go...

All hell let loose, and I charged forward.

The guards came towards me - four, five, more materializing from the edges of the clearing. They came between me and the door, trying to stop me from entering.

I stopped being careful, and I shifted immediately - to out of control to think straight. My wolf emerged with the full, unconstrained force of something that had run out of reasons to stay contained. I felt myself restructure - the bones, the muscle, everything reorganizing into what I actually was.

A big black wolf.

I went through the guards, knocking them out brutally. I was not counting. I was not being strategic. Every part of me that could be called strategic had redirected itself to a single instruction:

Get to that door.

They shifted - some of them, the ones who had the presence of mind for it - and the clearing became a ground of chaos, of a fight between wolves.

I finished what needed finishing.

I reached the door.

I went through it.

Raul had her by the arm.

He had her by the arm and he was already pulling at her clothing roughly, and Angel...

Angel was fighting. With the ferocity of someone who had decided she wasn’t going to become a breeding machine. Her hands were pushing, her voice was loud.

I covered the distance in the room in one stride and hit Raul at full force.

I unleashed all the anger and fury I’d been holding since the moment I came through that door and found her on his bed, naked.

I smashed his head, hit his full weight against the wall, and the wall hit back, and he came off it already shifting.

His wolf was Large. Large for this territory. But not large enough.

I had him by the scruff before he had completed the shift, my teeth finding the back of his neck and I dragged him.

Out through the door.

Back into the clearing.

Into the torchlight and the watching eyes of his people and everything he had built in this hidden territory, I dragged him out and I put him on the ground and I put myself on top of him and I made my position on the evening very clear.

My claws tore at his fur, drawing blood.

He fought. I’ll grant him that - he fought with everything he had, the little wolf beneath me using its weight and its speed and the desperation of something that understood what it was facing. He was not without skill. He was not without strength.

But he was not enough.

I had him pinned to the ground, my claws sinking deeper into his flesh, and Raul was making helpless sounds that were not going to produce sympathy from me...

Light.

From the trees.

The movement of people in large numbers, through the forest, spreading through the dark.

Voices.

My people.