Chapter 150

Lord Merrick’s POV

The room suddenly felt smaller after she left, and I sat there, thinking about that last moment when she’d hesitated at the threshold, obviously wanting to say more but couldn’t.

She definitely was not leaving.

Not if I had anything to do with it.

I was on my feet immediately, moving toward the door. I needed Terrell. I needed to say out loud the thing I had been circling all night, to say it to the one person who would understand the complications of it because it clearly involved our shared nature, our shared bond, our shared mate.

I hastened my steps and went straight for Terrell’s room, but it was empty.

I stood in the doorway and looked at the made bed - the room looked cold, like it hadn’t been occupied for hours.

Was he in Angel’s room then? Impossible. Agnes was there, which meant Terrell would not be, because Terrell, whatever his other qualities, was not a man who walked into a room containing an angry Agnes without armor and a reason.

Which meant he was somewhere else. But where?

I chose the throne room as my next target, and went in the direction of the stairs. But somehow, I bumped into Gareth in the hallway.

He had the look of a man who was going somewhere with purpose and had encountered an obstacle in the form of me. He pulled up short and greeted with a small bow. "My Lord."

"Have you seen my brother?" I asked.

Something moved through Gareth’s expression.

"Just came from him," he said.

"And?"

"He’s..." Gareth appeared to be selecting words. "Indisposed."

"Indisposed."

"In a separate bedchamber." He looked at me with the expression of someone braced for a reaction. "With the Luna."

I absorbed this.

I waited for the thing that was supposed to follow the absorbing. The pain of it.

Still nothing.

What is wrong with me.

"There’s also," Gareth said, in the tone of someone who has been saving the actual problem for this moment, "an Alpha at our gates."

I looked at him.

"From the Northern territories," Gareth said. "He came with his Luna and a few soldiers. She’s..." He seemed to be searching for the accurate word. "Raging heavily down at the throne room."

The child.

The Luna had come for Aiden.

I looked down the hallway toward the throne room and back at Gareth, then I made a decision without hesitation. This whole thing needed to end right here. Once and for all.

"Terrell stays where he is," I said.

Gareth looked at me carefully.

"I’ll handle it," I said.

"My lord..."

"We’re twins, Gareth." I looked at him. "You’ve seen us do this before."

A pause. Then something moved through his expression - he was calculating, weighing his options.

"He did say he didn’t want to be disturbed," Gareth said slowly. "And if this isn’t resolved..."

"He won’t be pleased," I agreed. "So let’s resolve it."

Gareth nodded.

"One more thing though," I said, as we turned toward the throne room. "You’ll have to follow my lead. Like you’ll do Terrell’s."

Gareth nodded, "Yes, Alpha."

I cringed at the name. It definitely wasn’t for me.

The thing about becoming Terrell was that it was not an impersonation.

It was a subtraction.

I removed the ease from my posture. The accessibility, the small adjustments I had always made to signal to rooms that I was approachable, that I had no particular investment in being feared, that I would rather have a conversation than produce dread.

I took those away.

What was left underneath was Ice and cruelty. Terrell. And I settled into the throne with the aura of a man who had been sitting on thrones since before most of the people in his territory had been born.

I looked at the doors.

Bellick and Kade brought them in.

The Northern Alpha was just like I remembered - a large man who carried himself with the awareness of his position. Looking like he rather be anywhere else than here.

His Luna was a different matter.

She came through the doors with the energy of a woman who had not slept and had ridden through the night determined to achieve her goal. Her eyes found me on the throne and she pointed before she had fully cleared the doorway.

"You." She advanced with the momentum of a tigress. "You will bring my son out right now, do you understand me? You come into my home, into my nursery, in the dead of night like a common thief - you took him from his bed while he was sleeping, you..."

"My lady..." Gareth began.

"Don’t my lady me..." She swung toward Gareth briefly and then back to me. "You snake. You lying, conniving - you sat in my hall and spoke to me of peaceful dialogue and the whole time you were planning to - to rob me, and I want him back, I want him back right now or so help me I will kill you..."

"My lady." Gareth’s voice carried authority. "You will be mindful of the words you address to the Alpha of Black Wolf pack."

She stopped.

She looked at Gareth.

Then she looked at me.

Then something shifted in her expression - she looked like someone who noticed a discrepancy between what she expected and what she’s seeing, examining it with the focus of someone who trusts her own eyes.

"That is not the Alpha," she said.

The room went very quiet.

"That is Lord Merrick." She pointed at me with the certainty of recognition. "That is the man who came to my palace. I saw his face. I looked at his face for a long time and I remember it." She turned to the room at large, to Gareth, Bellick and Kade, and the other guards stationed around. "That man is not the Alpha. He’s the brother. The one who stole my son."

Gareth turned to the Northern Alpha with the patience of someone who has decided to reason with a more stable mind.

"Alpha," he said. "I trust you understand that Alpha Terrell and his brother Lord Merrick are mirrored twins. Your Luna is understandably distressed, but I’d ask you to help her understand the situation before she says something that gets her punished."

The Northern Alpha looked at me, then at his Luna. "My love," he said carefully, to her. "Alpha Terrell and Lord Merrick are mirrored twins."

She stared at him.

"They are identical," he said. "Both of them." A pause. "The man who came to our castle was his brother. The Alpha is..." He looked at me. "This is the Alpha."

She looked at me.

She looked at her husband.

She looked back at me, and I watched the certainty waver - the recalibration happening in real time, the disorientation of someone who has been absolutely certain of something and has encountered a fact that doesn’t fit.

"Mirrored twins," she repeated. Slowly. As though tasting it.

I let the silence sit for exactly long enough.

Then I spoke.

"Are you done with the noise?" I said. In Terrell’s voice. Terrell’s coldness.

The Northern Alpha stepped forward immediately, like a man who has just heard a tone of voice and understands what it means.

"Alpha Terrell," he said, with a deep bow that was completely unnecessary for a man in his position. "Please forgive my wife. She’s been... the child, the journey, she didn’t sleep, she... "

"What brings you to my territory," I said, "had better not be the boy."

"We simply..."

"Because if it is," I said, "you’ve come a long way to leave empty-handed."

The Luna’s face crumpled. "Please." She cried. "He’s my son. I’ve been raising him. He knows my voice, he reaches for me..."

"He was sold," I said, with hardened expression."To you. While his mother was alive." I held her eyes. "A mother who survived what was done to her and has been looking for him for months." A pause. "The child belongs to the woman who carried him. I will not separate a child from his birth mother." I let that sit. "Not for any reason."

She was crying now - openly, and I felt something in me resist the cold. I was not Terrell. I had never been Terrell, not in the ways that mattered, and watching this woman cry over a child she had loved was not something I could be entirely unmoved by.

But I held the cold.

Because Agnes needed me to hold it.

I turned to the Northern Alpha, and I let something sharper come into my voice - the edge that Terrell used when he was done with the conversation and wanted the room to understand it.

"I’d advise you," I said, "to take your Luna and leave my territory while my patience still extends to advice." I held his gaze. "You’ve heard what I am. You know what Black Wolf does to its enemies." A pause, precise as a blade. "I fight battles and I burn what’s left. I leave nothing for the families to identify, let alone bury." I kept my voice level, which made it worse than if I had raised it. "Is that a lesson you want for your pack?"

The Northern Alpha’s face had gone pale, and he immediately went on his knees.

"Alpha. I beg your patience. Your mercy. I would never - we would never raise a hand against Black Wolf." He looked up at me. "Forgive us. We’ll go. We’ll go now."

"Then go," I said.

He stood.

He put his hand on his Luna’s arm.

"Come," he said to her, gently. "We need to leave."

"I can’t..." She was still looking at me. "I just... he’s the only child we’ve..."

"We can try again," he said with reassurance. "We are alive. We’ll go home and try again." He guided her toward the doors. "Come."

She went, still looking back and crying, until the doors closed behind them.

The throne room finally settled.

I let out a breath that I had been holding for the duration of the conversation and slumped back in the seat.

That ended quickly, I thought.

Then I felt her.

Not saw - felt, in the way I had been feeling things related to Agnes since the storeroom floor.

I turned.

She was behind the pillar at the side of the room.

How long she had been there I couldn’t determine.

She looked at me. Eyes filled with pain.

"You burn the bodies," she said, her voice vibrating with pain. "You leave nothing for the families to bury. Just like what was done to mine." She pressed her lips together. "I thought you were different from your brother, Merrick."

The cold fell away entirely.