Chapter 156

Angel’s POV

The dress was taking too long.

I had sent the maid twenty minutes ago to go get me a proper dress to change to, and right now, I was sitting on the edge of the bed, filled with impatience. I was excited. Extremely excited that I couldn’t sit still in this room any longer. Merrick’s face when he had told me. The way something in me had simply - exhaled. The guilt I had been carrying about what I couldn’t give him, set down cleanly, by him, without drama.

I wanted to find Terrell.

I wanted to tell him that I knew, that Merrick had come, that everything felt lighter in a way I hadn’t expected it to.

The maid finally arrived with the dress.

I changed quickly, and was reaching for the door when it opened from the other side.

Terrell.

He came in beaming in a way I had not seen on his face before. He crossed the room and put his arms around me before I had finished registering his arrival.

"My love," he said. "I missed you."

I laughed. It came out genuine and slightly disbelieving. "You left me few hours ago," I said. "After two days of..." I blushed, "you only just left, and you miss me already?"

He kissed me.

"I simply can’t get enough of you," he said against my mouth. "And now..." Something moved in his expression. "Now I don’t have to share. The universe has finally seen reason."

I laughed again. "Merrick spoke to me."

"I know."

"Are you actually happy about this?"

"Angel." He looked at me with complete seriousness. "My joy at this specific development has no bounds. None. I am a man without the bounds of joy right now."

I shook my head at him. "You’re impossible."

"And yet." He kissed me again, drawing me closer, and I leaned into it because I was apparently a woman who had decided that this was her life and had no objections. His forehead came to mine. "Agnes and Merrick," he murmured. "The universe knew what it was doing after all."

"She’s going to fight it," I said.

"Of course she is." Something warm in his voice. "But I trust my brother."

I smiled.

He nuzzled my face with his - like two deers in love - and I was in the middle of deciding whether the pack business I had interrupted him from could wait a little longer when a knock came.

Hard. Urgent.

"Terrell." Merrick’s voice boomed through the door. The urgency of it stopped everything in the room. "Are you in there?"

Terrell was at the door before I had straightened, opening it.

Merrick came in.

I looked at his face and my stomach dropped.

"Aiden," he said. "Someone has taken him."

The words rearranged everything.

"How." Terrell’s voice had gone to the version of it that had no warmth in it, the version that was cold.

"Agnes left him with the maid. Both the maid and the child are gone." Merrick was moving as he spoke. "She’s... I had to stop her from going to the northern territory herself. She’s not..."

"Agnes?" I said. "Where is she..."

"Still in her room. She’s..." He looked at me briefly. "She’s not good."

"The northern Alpha," Terrell said. It wasn’t a question.

"It’s possible."

Terrell’s face hardened instantly. "Brother, didn’t you threaten them hard enough? How dare they come into my home without fear! We need to end this now."

Terrell was already moving. Already calling - his voice thundering through the corridor. "I need every available soldier. Assembled. Now!!! We are going to war."

I followed him.

"Terrell..."

"Stay in the castle, Angel..."

"Listen to me." I caught his arm. He turned, and the expression on his face was the one I had never been entirely able to look at directly - the Alpha’s face, the one who burns down villages and calls it justice. "You don’t have to go to war. Innocent people will die..."

"It has to be done."

"You don’t even know it was them..."

"They came into my home," he said. Flat. Furious. "They took a child from under my roof. A child who rightfully belongs to your sister. If I do nothing, every pack within a hundred miles reads that as an invitation to cross me." He held my eyes. "I didn’t get to where I am by looking weak. I will not start now."

He turned.

I went after him.

"You want war," I said. "Fine. But the villagers - the people who had nothing to do with, don’t harm them. Please."

He looked at me like I had said something structurally impossible.

"That’s not how it works," he said. "When an Alpha falls, his pack falls with him. That’s the law of it."

"Terrell..."

"Bellick will stay back. He’ll protect you and your sister." He held my gaze for one more moment - something in it that was not cold, that was the other version of him, the one I had been sleeping beside for three days - and then he left.

I stood in the corridor and heard the castle coming alive around me with the sound of men preparing for violence.

And I felt something I had felt before.

Not in this body - in a story I had heard from Agnes, in the painful tone of her voice when she described the hill. The sound of everything burning and turning to ash. To mere dust.

I turned and ran.

Agnes was pacing when I opened the door.

The room - my room, which had become her room, which had somehow become the room where things happened - could not contain her anymore. She was holding something against her chest. Baby clothes. The small soft things that Aiden wore, pressed to her like she was trying to hold him by holding what had touched him.

She was crying.

Not quietly this time. Not the controlled version, but the open kind, the kind that had given up on containment.

I went to her.

I put my arms around her and she leaned into it with her whole weight, and I held her up because she needed it.

"I just got him back," she said into my shoulder. "I just... one week. I hadn’t even had one week with him..."

"I know."

"It’s my fault. I left him. I shouldn’t have..."

"Agnes..."

"I saw her face in the throne room, Angel." Her voice broke. "I saw the Luna’s face and I knew she hadn’t given up and I still left him and now he’s..."

"He’s not gone forever," I said. "He’ll be found. He’s a special, findable child and he will be found."

"They’re going to war." She pulled back enough to look at me. Her eyes were red. "They’re going to go burn those people alive and that woman... that woman loved him, Angel, even if she had no right to him, she loved him, and they’re going to..."

"I know." I held her face. "Agnes. Listen to me. The men are not thinking right now. You and I are. Which means we need to stop them."

She looked at me.

"Go to them," I said. "Talk to Terrell. To Merrick. Tell them there’s another way."

"Terrell won’t listen..."

"He might listen to you," I said. "He owes you. He knows he owes you." I held her eyes. "And you know what war looks like from the inside. You were on that hill. You know what it costs the people who didn’t start it."

Agnes was quiet.

I watched something move through her - the grief, the fury, the face of a woman who had survived something and understood its weight in a way that theory never could.

She looked down at the baby clothes in her hands.

Then she looked at me.

"You’re right," she said. Very quietly. "I know what that looks like." She pressed her lips together. "And I won’t have it done in my son’s name."

I felt the relief move through me.

I took her hand.

"Then we have to go," I said. "Right now. Before it’s too late."

Agnes - still holding onto the baby’s clothes - took my hand, and we hurried out.