Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint

Chapter 136: Chapter 136

Alpha Terrell’s POV

I knew them before I could see them - the sound of their voices. Gareth. Bellick. Kade. And behind them the organized sound of soldiers moving together.

They came through the tree line and into the clearing and the clearing reorganized itself around their arrival - Raul’s people stepping back into the shadows.

I stepped back from Raul, and quickly shifted into my human form.

Gareth, Bellick, and Kade read the situation, and they moved before I had finished straightening - pouncing on Raul with full force to finish off what their Alpha had started. They had him between them and they were not being gentle about it.

"Stop," I said.

They stopped.

Raul looked up at them. Then at me. The wolf’s damage was evident - the cuts, the deep marks of claws on every part of him. He had the look of a man who had just been reminded of the difference between a territory wolf and an Alpha.

"He’s not dead," I said. "Keep him that way. He may still be useful."

Gareth nodded, hauling Raul upright.

"Alpha." Kade’s voice - something in it that was the relief of someone who has been riding very hard toward something and has arrived. "We found you."

"You took long enough," I said.

Gareth had the expression of a man with things to say about that but decided this wasn’t the moment. "We were combing the entire forest," he said. "Every direction. We saw light and heard..."

"Did you come with a way out?" I said.

The three of them looked at each other.

"We came for you," Bellick said. "First priority. The way out was..."

"Going to be the second priority," I finished.

"We’ll find it," Gareth said. "Now that we have numbers and..."

I stopped listening.

Not because Gareth had become unimportant. Because something had arrived in the air - something that my senses picked up with urgency - and every other input became secondary in the space of a breath.

Blood.

Fresh blood. Very fresh... and close.

Underneath the blood was a scent I knew.

Knew with the bone-deep recognition that came from a bond that had been sealed in the way ours had been sealed. A scent that was imprinted in my memory.

Angel.

I was already running inside Raul’s chambers.

She was on the floor.

I did not remember crossing the room. I was at the door and then I was on my knees beside her and the distance between those two points was not something I had registered traveling.

The blood was...

There was too much of it.

The pool of it, dark and spreading on the floor of Raul’s room, with Angel at the center of it, collapsed and still.

"Angel." My hands found her face - her throat, checking, the pulse that was there but burning low. "Angel. Open your eyes. You need to..." The command wasn’t working. The command had no traction because she was somewhere I couldn’t reach with commands. "Angel..."

I was shaking.

Gareth and Bellick were in the doorway.

I heard them go still when they saw her.

"Alpha." Bellick’s voice. He was already moving, already beside me, his hands finding her wrist, checking. "How long..."

"I don’t know." I didn’t know. I hadn’t known. I had been in the clearing fighting Raul while.

"There’s no time," Gareth said. He was on the other side of her, kneeling. "Alpha. You know what has to happen."

I looked at him.

"His blood," Bellick said. Quietly. "It’s the only..."

"It’s not guaranteed," I said.

"Nothing is guaranteed."

"She hasn’t..." I stopped. "She hasn’t given consent. She doesn’t know what it means. I can’t..."

"Alpha." Gareth’s voice. Steady, direct, the voice of a general who had served me long enough to speak plainly when plainly was what was needed. "She is bleeding out on this floor. If you wait for the right conditions, you won’t need to make the decision." He held my eyes. "You will try everything and know you tried, or you will watch her die with the option unused. Those are what’s in front of you."

I looked at Angel’s face.

The pallor of her. The stillness of her. The pulse that was there but was slowly fading away.

I had told her tonight that if she wanted to leave, I would let her go. I had said it and I had meant it - the most honest thing I had said in years, the thing that had cost me more than anything I had given up materially in my entire life.

Better that she is safe and happy somewhere else than in pain because of me.

She was in pain because of me.

She had been in pain because of me since the moment I had entered her life.

And I was kneeling on the floor of a cave at the bottom of a cliff looking at her bleed and the option in front of me was the one thing I had not fully gotten her permission for, the one thing that required her to be asked, and she was not conscious to be asked.

Better to try everything, Gareth had said.

Better to know you tried.

"Sword," I said.

The word came out rough. The word of a man who has made a decision.

Kade had one. He offered it without being asked, hilt first, in the careful way of someone passing something that mattered.

I took it.

I looked at Angel’s face one more time, and I pressed the blade to my palm.

Drew it across.

The blood came immediately - werewolf blood, dark and warm, carrying everything it carried - and I opened Angel’s mouth with my other hand, the careful gentleness of someone doing something irreversible and understanding that the care of it was the only thing still in his control.

I let the blood fall.

I watched it.

I put down the sword.

And I stayed on the floor beside her, one hand on her face, and I waited to find out what kind of power the bond had and what kind of man I was and whether the thing I was afraid of had the weight to pull her back from wherever she had gone.

"Come back," I said quietly.

"Angel." The word barely above a whisper. "Come back."