Chapter 148

Merrick’s POV

The dawn was taking its time.

I could tell by the look of the darkness outside the window - the shade of it, the not-quite-black that preceded the first grey sign of morning by about an hour. I had been watching it long enough to know it was finally approaching.

I had not slept. Not a wink.

I was sitting with my back against the headboard, legs stretched out, eyes feeling so heavy - considering the fact that it’s been open for far too long.

I was troubled.

This was the word I kept arriving at when I examined it too close: troubled. Not heartbroken, not devastated, not the feeling of wretchedness that I had been expecting to feel when I walked through that door last night and found Angel in Terrell’s bed.

That was the thing that troubled me.

I had walked into my brother’s room at midnight with my mind full of angry Lunas, stolen babies and problems that needed solving before morning, and I had found my wife in my brother’s bed, and I had felt...

Surprise. Yes.

Anger - a version of it, the kind that was more about the injustice of timing than about the content of the situation. I had been on a horse for two days. I had broken into a castle. I had run across open country in the dark with an infant against my chest, and I had arrived home to find...

But hurt? The heart-wrenching loss of something that was supposed to be mine?

Nothing.

I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes and held them there.

What is wrong with me.

The wolf was the thing that made no sense. My wolf, which was supposed to be the least complicated part of the situation - the instinctive, purely reactive part that didn’t require thought, that simply felt what it felt - had been silent. Completely silent since the moment I had walked into that room. No jealousy. No possessive fury. No grief.

Nothing.

Which meant either the bond was broken, or the bond had never been what I thought it was, or...

Or the wolf knows something you don’t.

I sat with this thought.

The wolf had been silent last night.

The wolf had leapt when I was in the storeroom with Agnes. The wolf had noticed things about Agnes that it had no business noticing. The wolf had nearly kissed her in that inn, had felt things for her, had given in to her wishes and forcefully taken her baby back - an action that might now lead to war.

I was still turning this over, prodding it from different angles, trying to get answers, when a knock came.

"Come in," I said casually.

The door opened, and my wolf moved.

Not leapt, but moved, like it’s been waiting for something and had just received the signal it was waiting for.

A full-body response.

Agnes stood in the doorway.

She was wearing something different now, and her hair was arranged perfectly - lacking all the wildness it’d carried throughout the journey.

She looked at me.

"Should I come in?" she said.

I was already trying to do something about my appearance - one hand going to my hair, trying to smoothen it, the other hand trying to slap color into my face and eyes, the general attempt to look like a man who had simply had a restful night in a comfortable bed rather than a man who had been sitting against a headboard for hours, restless.

I was fairly certain this attempt was not successful.

"Please," I said.

She came in.

I stood - not wanting to give her the idea that I wanted her in my bed, which was technically what I wanted, but she didn’t need to know that - and gestured toward the sofa near the window. She crossed to it and sat carefully, and I sat opposite her.

My wolf was doing something I could only describe as vibrating. I told it firmly to stop. It did not stop.

She looked at me with direct attention.

"You didn’t sleep," she said.

"I’m fine," I said. "Just tired from the road."

She looked at me with the expression of a woman who had decided not to argue.

"I came to thank you," she said. "For everything. For the journey and the protection and the..." She stopped. Started again. "For going in yourself. For my baby." She met my eyes.

"Agnes..."

"You didn’t have to do any of it, you didn’t owe me any of it." she said. "And I want you to know that I know that."

I shook my head. "It wasn’t..."

"It was," she said. Simply. Closing the door on my deflection. "It was, and I’m thanking you for it, and I need you to let me finish."

I closed my mouth.

"Thank you," she said. "For saving my son."

The room was quiet for a moment.

"You don’t need to thank me," I said. "Given what our family... what my family did to yours..." I stopped. "We owed it to you. More than this."

Something moved through her expression. "It wasn’t you," she said. "You didn’t destroy my village. You didn’t kill my family." She looked at me with directness. "Why are you trying to take the blame for something you didn’t do?"

"Terrell is my brother."

"And?"

"I’ve supported him in everything," I said. "Stood beside him. Defended him." I looked at her steadily. "If that doesn’t make me guilty of something, it at least makes me complicit."

She held my gaze for a moment.

"That’s honest," she said.

"You deserve honest."

She looked at her hands briefly. Then back at me.

"I’ll be leaving soon," she said.

The words pierced my heart like a sword to my chest.

"What do you mean," I said, unable to believe what I was hearing.

"I can’t stay here," she said. "I can’t raise Aiden in this castle. I’m not - I’m not ready to live alongside Terrell and call it family. Maybe someday, but not now." She looked at me. "I’ll keep my word. I gave you my blessing, both of you, to be with Angel. That stands." A pause. "But I need to go."

I looked at her.

I looked at her for long enough that she shifted slightly - the small movement of someone who was hiding something more. Something she didn’t want to let out.

"Is Terrell the only reason?" I finally asked.

The stillness that came over her was answer enough that I was right. She was indeed hiding something. Something that’s got to do with me.

She did not look at me.

She looked at the window. At the floor. At the table between us, but not at me.

"Yes," she said. "Terrell is the only reason."

Liar.

The word came from the wolf, not from me.

But I heard it with a clarity that settled something I had been uncertain about all night.

"When do you plan to leave?" I asked.

"Soon." She looked at her hands. "I need to tell Angel first. She’ll be... it’ll be hard for her." A pause. "You’re the first person I’ve told."

I savored this information.

She was looking at her hands and I was looking at her and my wolf was still vibrating.

She was telling me first.

Not out of obligation, despite what she’d said. Not purely out of gratitude. She was sitting in my room in the pre-dawn hours telling me she was leaving because some part of her that she was not going to acknowledge out loud had decided that I was the person she wanted to tell.

Because she wanted me to say something.

Because she was waiting to see what I would do with it.

She would never say this. She would never confirm it if I said it directly. She would leave this room and raise her son alone somewhere and she would call it the right decision and she would be miserable, thinking she was doing the right thing. The perfect thing for her sister.

I knew this about her.

I nodded slowly.

"I appreciate you telling me," I said.

I watched her face.

She nodded, and there it was - the flash of something that moved through her expression too fast to be hidden, something like sunken hope. Disappointment.

She stood.

"I should check on Aiden," she said.

"Of course," I said.

She moved toward the door.

At the threshold... she hesitated, like she wanted to say something more, but decided against saying it.

Then she went through, and the door closed behind her.

I sat in the room in the pre-dawn quiet and I looked at the door she had just walked out of, and I was very clear about exactly one thing.

I was not going to let her leave.

Not because of the restless wolf within me, or because of duty, but simply because my heart wouldn’t bear it.

You’re not going anywhere, I thought. Not as a threat, but as a fact.