Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint

Chapter 137: Chapter 137

Angel’s POV

The first thing I felt was the absence of pain.

I became aware of this before I was fully aware of anything else - the absence of something that should have been there. I had been stabbed. I knew I had been stabbed. I had felt the unbearable pain, and I had gone down with it. I had also felt a cold chill spread throughout my body.

And now...

Nothing.

I opened my eyes.

The ceiling of Raul’s room. The fireplace, still going. And Terrell -Terrell’s face, close to mine, with an expression of deep fear. His hands were on me - my face, my shoulders, the grip of someone who had been holding on tightly.

I looked at him.

"What..." I started.

"Who did this." He cut me off instead, with still on his voice.

"Terrell, what happened to me? I was stabbed, I felt it, and now..." I put my hand to my side. My clothing was damaged - the evidence of the wound was there, the blood, the torn fabric - but underneath it, my skin was completely whole, without a single mark. "How am I..."

"Who did this," he said again. The same cold fury.

I looked at him.

"The guard," I said. "The one who held the knife to my throat. After Raul took me inside..." I stopped. Not wanting to remember. "After you dragged Raul outside, the guard came in. Through the door." I pressed my hand to my side again. The absence of pain was so strange it was almost more disturbing than pain would have been. "He said Terrell would regret what he’d done to their leader. And then he... he stabbed me." I stopped. "He ran after. I don’t know where he went."

Terrell was already standing.

"Terrell..."

He was already at the door.

"Wait, where are you..." But he was through it, and I was sitting on the floor of Raul’s room looking at the door he had just walked through with a strange feeling.

I looked at my side again.

Then I looked at the generals.

All three of them were finding the walls and the floor intensely interesting. Gareth had apparently discovered something fascinating about the ceiling. Bellick was examining his own hands with rapt attention.

"What happened to me," I said.

Nobody answered.

"Gareth," I said.

Gareth looked at the ceiling.

"Gareth."

He looked at me. Very briefly. Then at the floor. "The Alpha is better positioned to answer that."

"The Alpha just left."

"He’ll be back."

"I want to know now."

Bellick cleared his throat. "The Alpha..."

"Is better positioned to answer," Kade finished.

I looked at the three of them - noticed how they were directly avoiding to look at me.

"You all know something," I said.

Silence.

"Something happened to me," I said. "I was dying. I know I was dying - I felt it, I know what that felt like - and now I’m not. And you three are standing there finding the walls very interesting and telling me to ask Terrell." I sighed in frustration. "Something was done to me. And I would like to know what it was."

Gareth opened his mouth.

The sounds from outside arrived before he could say a word.

All of us moved toward the door.

Terrell was standing in the clearing.

In front of him, on a stake he had apparently acquired and installed in the time it had taken me to have an unsuccessful conversation with three generals, was a head.

I recognized the face. I recognized the guard who had come through the door to kill me.

I looked at the stake in horror.

Terrell did not look at me.

Instead, he turned to address the clearing - the villagers who had gathered to stare at the stake, the remaining guards who were still standing after loosing a fight, his own soldiers arranged at the edges.

"This pack is dissolved," he said.

The clearing gasped collectively.

"You are in my territory," he continued. "This land belongs to Black Wolf. Which means this pack has been operating in my jurisdiction without my sanction." He looked along the gathering with authority. "I am ending it."

Murmuring. Like a quiet protest.

"You can follow me," he said. "Come to Black Wolf. You’ll be given what you need to start again." He paused. "I’m keeping Raul."

More murmuring. Then, gradually, the sound of people arriving at decisions - the nodding, the looking at each other, the body language of a community that had been living at the bottom of a cliff for a hundred years and was being offered a door.

"Does anyone know a way out," Terrell said.

Silence. Complete total silence. Like nobody knew.

Terrell sighed. "We climb then."

Someone near the front voiced out: "Climb? The cliff..."

"Is the only option," Terrell said. "My soldiers have ropes at the top. We go up." He looked along the gathering. "Those who want to come, form a line. We go now."

A hand, from somewhere in the middle of the crowd went up. "Our things. Can we bring..."

"No." He replied simply. "The climb requires your hands. Nothing else." He looked at the people who had taken a step back - the ones who were apparently too scared to take the chance. Who couldn’t risk their lives on a deadly cliff. "If you stay, the ropes stay with you. When you’re ready, they’ll be there." A pause. "And when you make it out, you come to Black Wolf. I’ll have everything waiting."

I stood at the edge of the gathering and I looked at him - at this man who had dissolved a pack that had held him prisoner and put a head on a stake for me and was now making provision for the people who had nailed him to a cross - and I felt that deep butterfly feeling move through me.

He turned.

He found me - the way he always found me in any space, his beautiful grey eyes going straight to where I was - and he crossed to me.

"Are you alright?" he said. His voice had changed from the one he’d used for the clearing. Calmer.

"I’m healed," I said. "Which I still don’t understand. And I want to know how." I looked at him. "But you’re going to tell me later."

"Later," he confirmed.

"But I want to know something now." I held his eyes. "How do I manage? I don’t think I’ll be able to climb that wall." I looked down at my figure, hoping he would understand. My body wouldn’t let me.

"I’ll protect you on the climb," he said, and offered me his hand. "Trust me."

I took his hand, as I prayed that I don’t fall to my death during this climb. And this time, I might not be able to survive it.

We followed behind the villagers towards the cliff, the generals following behind me and Terrell.

Finally we got to the cliff and a cold chill moved through me. It was monstrous from this angle. We stood at its base and I looked up at the rope that disappeared into the fog. The rope went up and the fog took it and the top was not visible and the distance between here and there was not a distance I had a comfortable relationship with.

People were already climbing. Soldiers were on their way up, the villagers behind them.

I watched them go, including Raul who went ahead of the soldier guarding him.

I watched the ones who fell.

Not many - but some. A hand slipping, a foot losing its placement, the terrible moment of someone going backward instead of forward, and then the sound of it, and then silence as death claimed them.

My stomach had been doing something since the first one. By the third, i was trying not to throw up.

Terrell’s hand tightened around mine.

"Be strong," he said, close to my ear. "You are stronger than you think."

"I’m not a climber," I said. My voice came out smaller than I intended. "I’m not... I don’t have the..." I stopped. Said the thing I had been not saying. "I’m not built for this, Terrell. I’m going to fall."

"You won’t."

"The people falling look considerably more capable than..."

"Angel." He turned me to face him, his hands on my shoulders. "Look at me."

I looked at him.

"I will not let you fall," he said. "Do you understand? Not I will try not to. Not I will do my best. I will not let you fall. That is not a thing that is going to happen."

I held his gaze.

The generals had positioned themselves - Gareth and Bellick taking ropes on either side, leaving the center rope for Terrell and me.

"Ready?" Terrell said.

I was not ready.

I was exhausted and hungry and I had been stabbed tonight and healed in a way I did not understand and I was standing at the base of a cliff that had already tried to kill me once and was looking at a rope that went somewhere I couldn’t see.

I grabbed the rope.

I placed my feet against the wall. I pulled.

And it came from nowhere.

The strength.

Not like finding energy you’d forgotten you had, but something physical. Something that was in my hands and my arms and the way my body was responding to the rope and the wall that had not been there before.

I stopped.

I turned my head and looked at Terrell, beside me on the rope, watching my face with the expression of someone who knows exactly what has just happened and has been waiting to see when I would notice.

"Terrell," I said.

"Keep climbing," he said.

"I feel..." I looked at my hands. At the rope. At the ease of what should not have been easy. "I feel strong."

He looked at me.

And in his eyes was something that was almost, almost a smile.

"I know," he said.

"What did you do to me..."

"Climb," he said. "I’ll explain at the top."