Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint

Merrick’s POV

Agnes was standing just inside the door with her arms at her sides and her eyes already moving through the inn’s interior like someone taking inventory, looking for something specific.

"I want to find my son," she said. Not loudly. Just clearly. "I don’t want food."

"I know," I said. "And we will. After..."

"Not after." She looked at me. "Now. My son is more important than..."

"We haven’t eaten since this morning," I said.

"I don’t care..."

"I care," I said. "I’m hungry, Agnes. I’ve been in a saddle for eight hours and I am going to eat before we do anything else because I cannot function properly on an empty stomach and functioning properly is going to matter when we find him."

She stared at me.

"So you can stand there," I said, "or you can sit down and eat something and be ready to actually deal with what comes next." I looked at her steadily. "Your choice."

Something moved through her face - the collision of two things, the fury at being slowed and the pragmatism of a woman who, if she was being honest, had also been in a saddle for eight hours.

Neither one won entirely.

What came out the other side was Agnes remaining exactly where she was, with her arms crossed, looking at me with the expression of a woman who had made a decision about this situation and the decision was: I will not give him the satisfaction of sitting down.

I looked at her for a moment.

Then I turned to the innkeeper, who had been watching this exchange with confusion.

"Food," I said. "Please."

I sat down.

The trader sat across from me, obviously happy that food won over. I ignored him and concentrated on the food when it arrived - a proper meal, hot and nice-looking.

I ate heartily.

The guards filed in, settled at the long table by the wall, were served in turn. The inn filled with the ordinary sounds of tired people and warm food and the relief of a day that was ending.

Agnes stood by the door.

I did not look at her.

I ate my food. I drank my water. I finished what was in front of me and sat back and felt the satisfaction of a man who has addressed a basic need and is now capable of addressing everything else.

Then I called the innkeeper over.

She came promptly, wiping her hands on her apron.

"Sit down for a moment," I said.

She sat, with the uncertain air of someone not accustomed to being invited to sit at her own tables by guests.

"I’m going to explain why we’re here," I said. I kept my voice even. "We’re looking for a child. An infant boy, approximately five to six months old at the time he was sold." I glanced at Agnes, then back to the woman. "We were told you purchased a child."

The innkeeper’s face changed.

Her eyes filled with tears immediately, the tears of a woman who was scared of loosing something important.

"Yes," she said. Her voice was already unsteady. "Yes, I... a boy. I bought a boy." She pressed her hands flat on the table. "He’s mine. He’s been mine..." Her voice broke on the last word. "Please don’t take him from me, please, I love him, he’s..."

"Go and get him," I said. Gently. But clearly.

"Please..."

"I need to see him. I promise you..." I looked at her. "I promise you, whatever happens next, it will be the right thing. But you need to bring him."

She looked at me for a moment with red-eyes.

Then she stood, and I nodded to one of the guards, and the guard went with her, and the inn went quiet.

I did not look at Agnes.

I looked at the table.

They came back.

The guard, the innkeeper, and in the innkeeper’s arms - a child. A boy. A beautiful toddler who was well-fed and well-loved.

Agnes moved before anyone else.

She crossed the room and reached for the child with the urgency of a woman who had been waiting for this moment all her life, and the innkeeper held on - not obstruction, just the instinctive grip of a woman who loved what she was holding - and Agnes looked at the boy’s face.

She looked at him for a long moment.

I watched her face.

I watched the exact second it happened - the shift, the falling, the thing that moved through her expression like weather moving through a sky. Her hand, which had been reaching, stopped. Hovered. Her eyes moved over the boy’s face with the desperate thoroughness of someone looking for something they know should be there.

A tear fell.

Then another.

She stepped back.

She turned away from all of us, from the innkeeper and the child and the guards and me, and she stood facing the wall of the inn, and her shoulders were doing the thing shoulders did when someone was trying very hard to contain emotional outburst.

It wasn’t him.

I knew it before she said anything. I knew it from the second her face had shifted - the hope going out of it, the long held careful hope, replaced by something that was worse than grief because it was the grief of almost, of being this close and finding the wrong door.

"Take him back," I said to the innkeeper. Quietly. "He’s yours. Take him."

The woman clutched the child to her chest with the force of someone who had been given something back that they had believed was lost, and the relief in her face was so enormous that it hit the room like a second thing entirely.

I stood.

I looked at Agnes’s back.

I thought about a dozen things I could say - the reassurances, the consolation about there being more leads, more names on the trader’s list, the certainty that we would find the boy eventually - and I rejected all of them. Every single one of them, in this moment, would be the wrong thing.

Some things needed to breathe before you could put words near them.

I turned to the innkeeper, who was watching Agnes with the expression of a woman who understood exactly what kind of loss she was witnessing.

I leaned close and spoke quietly.

"Say something kind to her," I said. "When you can."

The woman looked at me and nodded.

I straightened up.

"We’re staying the night," I said to her. "I need three rooms." Then I turned and looked at the guard nearest the trader. "You’re going to stay in a room in the slave trader. Make sure he doesn’t leave your sight.."

The woman brought the keys to the rooms. I took them without counting them, handed one to the guard, left one with the inn keeper for Agnes, and headed for the stairs.

I did not look back at Agnes.

Not because I didn’t want to.

But because some things deserved the dignity of not being watched.

I went upstairs.

I lay back on the bed and looked at the ceiling and thought: we have more names on the list. We have more doors to knock on. He’s out there.

And then, because the ceiling had nothing useful to offer:

Tomorrow.

I closed my eyes.